Fire 021819 is surprisingly strong

[Jouni]

It's currently at 2. place at TCEC and CCC ! I have not installed it as being too weak engine.

[Gary Internet]

The current CCC filler games are played at short time control (1+1) which suits Fire and basically cripples Komodo. We all know Komodo is far stronger than Fire. Plus the version of Ethereal being used is 11.80 which is far from the current 11.99 (soon to be formally released when one more patch takes it to version 12.00).

The current TCEC League One games shouldn’t be taken too seriously as the sample size is even smaller than CCC and most of the field is significantly weaker than Fire. Its performance is not at all surprising if you look at where Fire 7.1 ranks on ratings lists compared with the likes of Winter, Nemorino, Vajolet and Arasan.

In the next round of TCEC and the upcoming CCC13, Fire will play against a much smaller selection of opponents in both tournaments where the weakest engine it will face will be Xiphos 0.6.1. It will be a much better indication of how strong it is.

I wasn’t aware that version 021819 was publicly available. The only places I have seen it are TCEC and CCC. I’ve not actually seen that version appear on rating lists so I have no idea how much stronger it is compared with Fire 7.1. I did hear at one time that it might only be 5 Elo stronger.

[Jouni]

May be Fire needs minimum 90 cores to be competitive? In TCEC it uses 128 cores and now has rating +331 [3944]. Can't be totally sss.

[Gary Internet]

I quite often wonder about the effects of small sample size and if they’re ever exaggerated.

In TCEC Cup 2 (the old 43 core setup)

Fire 011819 (which is only 1 month younger than the version you’re talking about)

Played 8 games against Jonny 8.1. The score was +1=7-0 in favour of Fire. Hardly an astounding show of strength against a much older and weaker engine. The rules state that all 8 games will be played, so if Fire was actually strong it surely would have won something like +5=3-0

In the next round Fire 011819 played against Houdini 6.03. The score was +1=9-0 in favour of Houdini. Although Fire lost it was an impressive performance holding out for so long against a much stronger engine. Again, the score could have been much worse. If you look at FastGM’s 10+6 rating list with a sample of 300 games, Houdini 6.03 beats Fire 7.1 over 300 games by a score of +110=186-4

In the next round Houdini 6.03 beat Stockfish 141019 (a version about 6 weeks out from the release of Stockfish 10) by a score of +1=11-0. If we go back to FastGMs 10+6 rating list, Stockfish 051019 (near enough the same version) beats Houdini 6.03 by a score of +90=204-6.

In TCEC Cup3 Fire 021819 (the version you’re talking about) beat Xiphos 0.5.3 by a score of +1=7-0. Pretty close.

Then is TCEC Cup 4 Xiphos 0.5.6 (only 3 more patches over 0.5.3) beat Fire 021819 by a score of +1=7-0.

The score between Fire 7.1 and Xiphos 0.6 on FastGMs 10+6 list is +40=221-39 in favour of Xiphos.

If you look at the small sample sizes from the TCEC Cup, you could make the leap that both Fire 011819 and Houdini 6.03 were pretty much the same strength as Stockfish from October 2019.

I think Fire 021819 is going to have a fight on its hands at both TCEC and CCC in the near future.

[RubiChess]

May be Fire needs minimum 90 cores to be competitive? In TCEC it uses 128 cores and now has rating +331 [3944]. Can't be totally sss.

The +331 Elo at TCEC is compared to FireNN which played (badly) last season and is a completely different engine.

[Alayan]

The TCEC live elo is broken and useless.

After a game, it uses the ratings of both engines at the start of the league to compute an elo gain/loss for each. This means that underrated engines end up with an inflated live elo, and overrated engines with a too low live elo.

[Fuddur]

Fire must be available for Android ARM64.
Android chess lover waiting for it.

[Jouni]

Still going strong https://tcec-chess.com/!

[Jouni]

[pgn]
[Event "TCEC Season 17 - Playoff for DivP"]
[Site "https://tcec-chess.com"]
[Date "2020.03.12"]
[Round "20.2"]
[White "Fire 021819"]
[Black "KomodoMCTS 2499.00"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C06"]
[WhiteElo "3734"]
[BlackElo "3816"]
[PlyCount "166"]
[EventDate "2020.??.??"]

1. d4 e6 2. e4 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. Bd3 c5 6. c3 Nc6 7. Ne2 cxd4 8. cxd4
Qb6 9. Nf3 Bb4+ 10. Bd2 f6 11. exf6 Nxf6 12. Bc3 O-O 13. O-O Bd7 14. Ng3 Bd6
15. a3 g6 16. Qc2 Rae8 17. Rfe1 Qc7 18. b4 a6 19. Ne5 Re7 20. h3 Na7 21. a4 b5
22. a5 Rc8 23. Rec1 Qd8 24. Qb2 Be8 25. Bd2 Rxc1+ 26. Rxc1 Rc7 27. Re1 Nc6 28.
Ne2 Bf8 29. Nf4 Qe7 30. Nxe6 Qxe6 31. Ng4 Qf7 32. Nxf6+ Qxf6 33. Rxe8 Qf7 34.
Ra8 Ra7 35. Rxa7 Qxa7 36. Bc3 Bg7 37. Be2 h5 38. Qd2 Qc7 39. Qe3 Qf7 40. g4
hxg4 41. Bxg4 Kh7 42. Kg2 Bf8 43. Be6 Qf6 44. Bd2 Nxb4 45. Qe5 Qxe5 46. dxe5
Nd3 47. Bc8 b4 48. Bxa6 Nxe5 49. Bb7 Nc4 50. a6 b3 51. Bc3 Bb4 52. Bxd5 Bxc3
53. Bxc4 b2 54. Bd3 Bd4 55. f4 Kh6 56. Kf3 Ba7 57. Ke4 Bb8 58. Kd5 Ba7 59. Ke6
Kg7 60. Bc2 Bb8 61. Be4 Ba7 62. Bd3 Bb8 63. Kd5 Kh6 64. Kc6 Ba7 65. Kd7 Kg7 66.
Bc2 Bc5 67. Ke8 Bf2 68. Bb1 Be3 69. Bd3 Bg1 70. Be4 Be3 71. Bb1 Bd4 72. Kd8 Be3
73. Kd7 Kh6 74. Ke6 Kg7 75. Kd5 Kh6 76. Ke5 Kg7 77. Ke4 Bf2 78. Kd3 Bb6 79. Kc3
Kh6 80. Kxb2 g5 81. f5 Bd8 82. a7 Bb6 83. a8=Q Kh7 1-0
[/pgn]

In the move 76. Fire has M69 and and Komodo 1,35