RedQueen 1.13 certainly played strong chess, and it will be interesting to see the performance of Ben-Hur Carlos Langoni Junior' s engine in the next rounds
TCEC season started with a bang, as all of the first five games finished with decisive results. 2900+ englines gave no chance to their opponents, scoring full points with black or white.
You can replay all games with analysis here
Quazar 0.4 by Dmitry Morozov, with strength increased approximately 300 ELO point relative to 0.3 version, defeated DanaSah 5.0 by Pedro Castro.
The Baron 3.34b with FRC version released and changes in evaluation LMR introduced, could not hold the power of Protector version 1.5b2, an improved variant of Protector 1.4 that won TCEC division D in 2011.
In the drama of the day RedQueen 1.13 was holding the much stronger Hannibal 1.3 to an equal position, but it strangely lost on time. Martin Thoersen commented for Chessdom, “The error was strictly a programming error which did not occur in the TCEC testing (blitz). As per the TCEC rules the result will stand, like in a human tournament where a player is flagged.” Thus, Hannibal was awarded the full point, but both engines performances will be of great interest during the next rounds.
In the other matches Spike 1.4 , the first Computer World Champion in Chess960 back in 2005, won with white against Rodent 0.17, while Junior dominated Nebula 2.0b.
