Computer Chess Championship: Stockfish Leads After Stage 1
Stockfish, which has never lost a Chess.com computer tournament, is once again the leader at the end of stage one of the CCC 3: Rapid Redux tournament.
CCC 3: Rapid Redux stage two is now live:
- Watch and chat on Chess.com/CCC—features the all-new Chess.com user interface
- Watch and chat on Twitch.tv/computerchess—includes AI-generated background music
The Houdini engine made a surprisingly strong move in the first stage to trail Stockfish by just a half-point. Komodo and the machine-learning engine Lc0 round out the top four.
Komodo Monte Carlo, which uses a Monte Carlo tree search instead of the traditional alpha-beta search, also put on a strong showing in the first stage, surging to seventh place, solidly in the chase group behind the "big four" engines.
The top eight engines have advanced to stage two of the tournament.
Full standings and crosstable after stage one:
Standings after stage one of CCC 3. Click on the image for a larger version.
CCC infrastructure and rules update:
In big news for the Computer Chess Championship infrastructure, Chess.com developers have completed a move to Linux from Windows. The tournament now runs on a system developed in-house and based on Cutechess and other open source projects.
With the update, the Computer Chess Championship added a new draw adjudication rule to eliminate the most tedious draws from the viewing experience. If a game is beyond move 50, and the score is +/- 0.09 for 10 successive moves, and no pawns are moved or pieces captured, the game is declared a draw and ended.
Chess.com also purchased a new machine for Lc0 and future neural network engines. The computer has four Nvidia RTX 2080ti GPU cards specially designed for machine-learning projects. With these improvements, Lc0 should run better than ever in the Computer Chess Championship, said the developers.
Finally, all of the engines that made it to stage two have been updated to their latest versions.
Stage two engine, version and specs list:
- Andscacs 0.95 (90 threads, 16384 MB hash)
- Ethereal 11.14 (90 threads, 16384 MB hash)
- Fire 7.1 (64 threads, 16384 MB hash)
- Houdini 6.03 (64 threads, 16384 MB hash)
- Komodo 2227.00 (46 threads, 6188 MB hash)
- Komodo MC 2227.00 (46 threads, 6188 MB hash)
- Lc0 v0.21.0-dev (network 11248, 2 threads , minibatch_size 640, encache 20000000)
- Stockfish 18122318 (90 threads, 16384 MB hash)
Stage two of the tournament is now running live with the top eight engines from stage one.
Stage two format and rules:
- Round robin
- Top eight engines from stage one
- 12xRR: Each engine plays every other engine 12 times (six as White, six as Black)
- 336 games
- Ponder: off
- Opening book: six-ply book selected from top master and popular Chess.com games; all openings chosen by Chess.com tournament staff
- Openings reversed the second time each engine plays each other.
- Expected duration: 17 days
- Time control: rapid (30+5)
- 6-man Syzygy and 5-man Gaviota TBs
- All other UCI options set to default
- Games will be played to completion (mate or draw) except for adjudication in the cases of threefold repetition, 50-move rule, and 10-moves <0.09 with no pawn moves or captures.
- Tiebreaks will be determined utilizing the Sonneborn-Berger score
- For crashes and unfinished games, see the official adjudication rules here
- Engine versions may be updated between stages
Stage-one sample games and PGN:
Stockfish seized the initiative from Houdini in a French Defense that quickly got out of hand. This beautiful win (featuring a bonus underpromotion) turned out to be critical for Stockfish's half-game lead.
Lc0 continued to show its ingenuity and strength by quickly destroying Nemorino from the black side of the board. Lc0 checkmated its opponent in just 45 moves after advancing a pawn all the way to pester the enemy king, in a style similar to AlphaZero that may be a hallmark of neural-network engines.
Be sure to tune in to watch CCC 3: Rapid Redux as stage two heats up.
CCC 3: Rapid Redux stage two viewing options:
- Watch and chat on Chess.com/CCC—features the all-new Chess.com user interface
- Watch and chat on Twitch.tv/computerchess—includes AI-generated background music
Who are you rooting for in the Computer Chess Championship? Let us know in the comments.
