Stockfish wins TCEC 9 & PGN superfinal available

[Jeroen]

Congratulations to team Stockfish for winning the TCEC 9 superfinal against Houdini. But also congrats to Robert Houdart, Houdini won the rapids and put up a good fight in the superfinal.

I have made the PGN for this TCEC 9 superfinal available, plus a new Noomen Testsuite based on this superfinal PGN. You can download them here:

http://blogchess2016.blogspot.nl/2016/1 ... oomen.html

Thanks for all the people who made TCEC 9 possible. I really enjoyed watching it!

Finally, we saw that if you feed the engines sharper, unbalanced lines, you get more decisive results and more exciting chess. Which was exactly the intention. If you play short, level openings in such a setup (which was my original intention), then we probably would have seen 90+ draws and less sharp, too solid play.

When hardware gets stronger, programs are close and the time control is long like in TCEC, IMO we need this "checkers type" of tournament, i.e. choosing unbalanced lines, to prevent 100 draws in the future.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Congratulations to team Stockfish for winning the TCEC 9 superfinal against Houdini. But also congrats to Robert Houdart, Houdini won the rapids and put up a good fight in the superfinal.

I have made the PGN for this TCEC 9 superfinal available, plus a new Noomen Testsuite based on this superfinal PGN. You can download them here:

http://blogchess2016.blogspot.nl/2016/1 ... oomen.html

Thanks for all the people who made TCEC 9 possible. I really enjoyed watching it!

Finally, we saw that if you feed the engines sharper, unbalanced lines, you get more decisive results and more exciting chess. Which was exactly the intention. If you play short, level openings in such a setup (which was my original intention), then we probably would have seen 90+ draws and less sharp, too solid play.

When hardware gets stronger, programs are close and the time control is long like in TCEC, IMO we need this "checkers type" of tournament, i.e. choosing unbalanced lines, to prevent 100 draws in the future.

25 wins, not bad, but in the future I wish myself at least 90+ wins.

the final was good, the testsuite also was good, but, for the future, I wish myself:

- much better opening variety ( you have included only 1.d4 and 1.e4 lines, where are the 1.g3, 1.c4, 1.Nf3 and 1.f4 lines?); A code completely missing
- a bit shorter lines

the claim that shorter lines will bring more draws is too far-fetched, according to me; on the contrary, I think they will bring more wins; let's just remember TCEC 7 stage 3, where, with 2-moves balanced & unbiassed opening book half of the games ended in a win. But, most importantly, there were way way more interesting than any reasonable game with longer unbalanced(and necessarily biassed) opening.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Marco certainly has opened up the bottle of champagne.

[Jouni]

Stockfish scored in first half 27,5 and second 26,5. In previous superfinals quite similar scoring for winner (first and second half):

Code: Select all

season     4: Houdini     13 - 12
           5: Komodo      12,5 - 12,5
           6: Stockfish   18 - 17,5
           7: Komodo      17 - 16,5
           8: Komodo      26,5 - 27

BTW: SF max depth must increased, because in some endings it reached 127! Of course game 17 was draw, because both engines show 0,00 - end of discussion.

[Norm Pollock]

Congratulations to team Stockfish for winning the TCEC 9 superfinal against Houdini. But also congrats to Robert Houdart, Houdini won the rapids and put up a good fight in the superfinal.

I have made the PGN for this TCEC 9 superfinal available, plus a new Noomen Testsuite based on this superfinal PGN. You can download them here:

http://blogchess2016.blogspot.nl/2016/1 ... oomen.html

Thanks for all the people who made TCEC 9 possible. I really enjoyed watching it!

Finally, we saw that if you feed the engines sharper, unbalanced lines, you get more decisive results and more exciting chess. Which was exactly the intention. If you play short, level openings in such a setup (which was my original intention), then we probably would have seen 90+ draws and less sharp, too solid play.

When hardware gets stronger, programs are close and the time control is long like in TCEC, IMO we need this "checkers type" of tournament, i.e. choosing unbalanced lines, to prevent 100 draws in the future.

What was the outcome of the review of the controversial game involving gtb adjudication?

[Jeroen]

I believe the result was unchanged, hence the final result is 17-8 with 75 draws in favour of Stockfish.

[Jhoravi]

I suggest more Opposite side castling Openings!!!!!

[JJJ]

54,5 % seem in the average range of the winner of each final. Congratulation to Stockfish and his great team. Congratulation also to Houdini and his creator to have made a challenging opponent for this final.

And also congratulation to all others engines and creator, everyone deserves it. Thanks you for have make this happens !