nTCEC - Season 1 - Superfinal | Houdini vs Stockfish | 16CPU

[gladius]

Houdini wins the Superfinal 25-23 and is therefore the nTCEC Grand Champion. Congratulations to Robert Houdart and thanks to everyone following nTCEC. Season 2 will begin in the autumn, about 4 months from now.

Congratulations to Robert for a great match, and all the SF team as well. Thank you Martin for running such an amazing tournament!

[Adam Hair]

Houdini wins the Superfinal 25-23 and is therefore the nTCEC Grand Champion. Congratulations to Robert Houdart and thanks to everyone following nTCEC. Season 2 will begin in the autumn, about 4 months from now.

Thanks for your time, money, and effort in running nTCEC, Martin. I hope you have enjoyed this season as much as all of us have. Looking forward to competing in season 2.

Go Gaviota!

[Jouni]

Great tournament. Web presentation was peerless and final was really surprising! My prediction was 29 - 19 for Houdini. Remember, that cluster Rybka with 64 cores was helpless vs. Houdini 3 .

[IanO]

Thank you, Martin, for running such a strong and gripping event! And thanks to ALL the competitors! I don't think there has been such complete participation in a computer tournament since the pre-internet glory days of the WCCC. I mean, the only heavy-hitters missing from the lineup were Strelka, Naum, Fritz, Spark, and Zappa! Quite a contrast to recent WCCCs! I hope that this event will inspire the participants to sharpen their opening books and take a vacation this August in Yokohama for the upcoming WCCC.

I would like to especially call out Martin's beautiful TCEC web site with the amazingly functional graphs and principal variation displays. It made for a unique and enlightening experience to see deep into each opponent's thought processes. Certainly, it should be considered state-of-the-art for chess event reporting. It must have taken a TON of work to implement, and in my opinion it was well worth it! (Reminder: he has a PayPal donation button.) All other events, human and computer, should pay close attention!

A question for the spectators and participants: which was your favorite game in the event?

[carldaman]

Superbly run engine competition, Martin -- very well done job!
I liked the way things were tweaked to improve the quality of both the games and the website presentation. Congrats to the worthy finalists as well!

PS. Is there a way to download the games from the SuperFinal ?

Cheers,
CL

[Martin Thoresen]

PS. Is there a way to download the games from the SuperFinal ?

Cheers,
CL

Of course.

http://www.tcec-chess.net/season_archive.php

Best,
Martin

[Mike S.]

All games of nTCEC Season 1:

http://remixshare.com/dl/x21h6/nTCEC-Season1_PGN+CBV.7z

= PGNs with and without engine output, and CBV

(requires http://www.7-zip.org/ which is a must-have anyway)

[ernest]

= PGNs with and without engine output, and CBV

Unfortunately, the "with engine output" can only be read with ChessGUI...

[Modern Times]

Thank you, Martin, for running such a strong and gripping event! And thanks to ALL the competitors! I don't think there has been such complete participation in a computer tournament since the pre-internet glory days of the WCCC. I mean, the only heavy-hitters missing from the lineup were Strelka, Naum, Fritz, Spark, and Zappa! Quite a contrast to recent WCCCs! I hope that this event will inspire the participants to sharpen their opening books and take a vacation this August in Yokohama for the upcoming WCCC.

For the public I think this is better then WCCC. Some engines would not qualify under their stricter rules, and live coverage of WCCC games is patchy. nTCEC runs rings around WCCC. But admittedly a different focus - WCCC is allegedly for the programmers, and nTCEC is for the public. So both have their place and their supporters.

[Laskos]

Thank you, Martin, for running such a strong and gripping event! And thanks to ALL the competitors! I don't think there has been such complete participation in a computer tournament since the pre-internet glory days of the WCCC. I mean, the only heavy-hitters missing from the lineup were Strelka, Naum, Fritz, Spark, and Zappa! Quite a contrast to recent WCCCs! I hope that this event will inspire the participants to sharpen their opening books and take a vacation this August in Yokohama for the upcoming WCCC.

For the public I think this is better then WCCC. Some engines would not qualify under their stricter rules, and live coverage of WCCC games is patchy. nTCEC runs rings around WCCC. But admittedly a different focus - WCCC is allegedly for the programmers, and nTCEC is for the public. So both have their place and their supporters.

WCCC is for chess engine authors and book builders to have a nice vacation and informal meetings, in which they discuss about girls and glorious 1970es in CC. Surely not an event of public interest. Its title must be changed into something more appropriate like "Invitational Computer Chess Meeting and Dinners".