Komodo, the chess engine by Mark Lefler, Larry Kaufman, and the late Don Dailey, won the first stage of the Top Chess Engine Championship. It collected 20,0/23 with 17 wins, 6 draws, and 0 losses. The silver medal of the stage is for the defending champion Stockfish with 19,0/23, while the bronze is for Houdini with 16,5/23.
Andscacs came close to the medals with 16,0/23. Booot, Fire, Chiron, and Ginkgo all qualified for the next stage, highly contesting the positions until the very last game.
Stage 1 consisted of 276 games. Of them 101 were white wins, 62 black wins, and draws 113, making the total draw rate at the low 40%.
Currently Stage 2 is being played. It will determine the two finalists of this year’s competition. Follow the games live at the official site
Season 10 proves the boom in engine development, as historical stage medal winner Gull remained 9th, while another medalist Rybka is at 19th position.
Scroll down for full standings and additional statistics provided by Assaf Wool from My TCEC Experience
Final standings TCEC Stage 1
1. Komodo 20,0/23
2. Stockfish 19,0
3. Houdini 16,5
4. Andscacs 16,0
5. Booot 15,0
6. Fire 15,0
7. Chiron 14,5
8. Ginkgo 14,5
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9. Gull 10. Fizbo 11. Hannibal 12. Nirvana 13. Jonny 14. Bobcat 15. Texel 16. Vajolet 17. Wasp 18. Arasan 19. Rybka 20. Nemorino 21. Fruit 22. Gaviota 23. Hakkapeliitta 24. Laser
Very low draw rate thanks to an intriguing openings selection by Nelson Hernandez
The three most common game termination causes were:
57.6% – TCEC win rule
20.6% – TCEC draw rule
9.8% – TB position
9.8% – 3-fold repetition
TCEC moves per game, median = 56.5, average = 63
There is a long right tail of long games. About 10% of the games were over 100 moves long, 6 games over 150 moves, the longest had 236.5 (Komodo-Chiron).
Using ECO codes there were 144 different openings played. The top ECO codes were:
B20 9 times – Sicilian defence
A80 8 times – Dutch
A01 7 times – Nimzovich – Larsen attack
B00 7 times – King’s pawn opening
Using full opening name there were 235 different openings in 276 games. Reti: KIA was repeated 4 times, 8 more openings were repeated 3 times.
Using only the first letter of the ECO codes we get the following distribution:
Currently Stage 2 is being played with the top 8 qualifiers from Stage 1. You can follow the games at the official website
