After the first double round robin of TCEC’s First Division, Chiron and Ethereal are sharing the lead with a convincing lead ahead of opposition. Bot have 9,5/14, leaving Fizbo full two points behind.
More about S13 of TCEC: Official website of TCEC / Test beta GUI for TCEC / Full participants list / Leela Chess Zero wins TCEC Div 4 / Ethereal wins TCEC Div 3 / Ethereal wins TCEC Div 2
Chiron, the current Italian Computer Chess Champion, plays with a special S13 version at TCEC. After stability issues last season, it has come to the new season stronger than ever. With the extra ELO points it seems ready to climb to the Premier Division and stay there. Chiron itself is a unique engine using special detection of pawn blockages. Chiron can instantly detect and correctly score as draw most of the positions with dynamic or static pawn structures. Many engines, even the strongest ones, will score some positions with incorrect high values, but Chiron’s code for detection has been developed following the rules described by Omid David in his paper “Blockage Detection in Pawn Endgames”. This feature doesn’t make Chiron stronger, yet it is interesting for analysis and could avoid Chiron to enter a draw endgame thinking it could be won. You can get your copy of Chiron and enjoy its unique style at the official website of the engine
Ethereal, the youngest engine in the field and the second strongest open source project after Stockfish, is still the favorite in the division. Despite losing a direct match to Chiron, it plays convincing chess, squeezing advantages from dry positions. Greatly influenced by Crafty, Stockfish, TSCP, MadChess, and Fruit, the chess engine by Andrew Grant won convincingly Division 2 and is dubbed by many a favorite to attack the 4th position or more at this edition of TCEC. Visit the official GitHub webpage of the project
TCEC First Division standings after 14 rounds
1. Chiron S13 – 9,5/14
2. Ethereal 9,5/14
3. Fizbo 7,5/14
4. ChessBrainVB 6,5/14
5. Fritz 6,5/14
6. Laser 6,0/14
7. Booot 5,5/14
8. Jonny 5,0/14
