TCEC Season 7 - Main Thread

[Martin Thoresen]

Hi all,

I will make one thread for TCEC Season 7 instead of creating new ones for each Stage.
So the start date is Friday 19th of September at 18:00 CEST (16:00 UTC).
There are 4 Stages plus the Superfinal.

All action can be viewed here:
http://tcec.chessdom.com/

All news will be posted here (you don't need to be a Facebook member to read it):
https://www.facebook.com/tcec.chess

At the bottom of this list you can find the list of participants with version numbers.

The top 7 from each of Stage 1a/1b will qualify for Stage 2.
The top 7 from Stage 2 will qualify for Stage 3.
The top 4 from Stage 3 will qualify for Stage 4.
The top 2 from Stage 4 will qualify for the Superfinal.
The winner of the Superfinal will be the new TCEC Grand Champion.

All book openings are again handled by Nelson Hernandez (except Stage 2 which will be run without books).

The same hardware like previous Season is available, meaning 16 cores per engine (ponder off) and up to 16 GB hash table.
Time control is the same at 120' + 30" per move, but for this Season all use of tablebases for the engines is not allowed (except for GUI adjudication of 5-men or less positions).

STAGE 1A:
Alfil 14.1
Arasan 17.3
Cheng4 0.36c+
Chiron 2
Critter 1.6a
Gaviota 1
Gull 3
Hannibal 1.5x5
Octochess 5374
Protector 1.7b
Spike 1.4
Stockfish 160914
Toga II 010214
Tornado 5

STAGE 1B:
Arminius 090314
Crafty 24
Exchess 7.31b
Houdini 4
Jonny 6
Junior 13.3
Komodo 8
Naum 4.6
Nightmare 7.8
Scorpio 2.77
Senpai 1
Spark 1.1
Texel 1.05a7
The Baron 3.36

[Jouni]

What is the reason for no tablebases this time?

[FriedmannC]

Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results

A good one....

[Martin Thoresen]

What is the reason for no tablebases this time?

Basically to please those that do not want tablebases.

TCEC has given tablebase access to the engine in all events so far, so now the time had come to disable them (except for GUI adjudication, as mentioned).

[Martin Thoresen]

Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results

If Houdart wanted to provide a development/beta version of Houdini 5 he could have simply replied to one of my 4-5 emails sent to him the last few months. I have not had a single reply from him, which is sort of unprofessional. And besides, TCEC will not wait for engines to be released - there will always be new versions released.

Mark did not want to provide a beta version of Hiarcs 15, he said it was "far from finished".

The Fritz team also did not want to provide Fritz/Pandix as a UCI engine for TCEC, same as last Season.

Zappa has problems with 16 cores and is too unstable to include (unfortunately).

[FriedmannC]

Thank you, Martin for your reply. I'm deeply sorry mr. Houdart didn't answer your emails... at least his silence is still an answer for Houdini's end. Kind regards!

[Henk]

Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results

If Houdart wanted to provide a development/beta version of Houdini 5 he could have simply replied to one of my 4-5 emails sent to him the last few months. I have not had a single reply from him, which is sort of unprofessional. And besides, TCEC will not wait for engines to be released - there will always be new versions released.

Mark did not want to provide a beta version of Hiarcs 15, he said it was "far from finished".

The Fritz team also did not want to provide Fritz/Pandix as a UCI engine for TCEC, same as last Season.

Zappa has problems with 16 cores and is too unstable to include (unfortunately).

If I would be busy with repairing bugs or new developments in my chess program I also would not be interested in playing tournaments. And sometimes it's difficult to predict when a new version is ready.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results

If Houdart wanted to provide a development/beta version of Houdini 5 he could have simply replied to one of my 4-5 emails sent to him the last few months. I have not had a single reply from him, which is sort of unprofessional. And besides, TCEC will not wait for engines to be released - there will always be new versions released.

Mark did not want to provide a beta version of Hiarcs 15, he said it was "far from finished".

The Fritz team also did not want to provide Fritz/Pandix as a UCI engine for TCEC, same as last Season.

Zappa has problems with 16 cores and is too unstable to include (unfortunately).

If I would be busy with repairing bugs or new developments in my chess program I also would not be interested in playing tournaments. And sometimes it's difficult to predict when a new version is ready.

But you would reply to the e-mails sent to you by a person who somehow helped you in promoting your chess engine as a commercial product,won't you
Dr.D

[Henk]

Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results

If Houdart wanted to provide a development/beta version of Houdini 5 he could have simply replied to one of my 4-5 emails sent to him the last few months. I have not had a single reply from him, which is sort of unprofessional. And besides, TCEC will not wait for engines to be released - there will always be new versions released.

Mark did not want to provide a beta version of Hiarcs 15, he said it was "far from finished".

The Fritz team also did not want to provide Fritz/Pandix as a UCI engine for TCEC, same as last Season.

Zappa has problems with 16 cores and is too unstable to include (unfortunately).

If I would be busy with repairing bugs or new developments in my chess program I also would not be interested in playing tournaments. And sometimes it's difficult to predict when a new version is ready.

But you would reply to the e-mails sent to you by a person who somehow helped you in promoting your chess engine as a commercial product,won't you
Dr.D

What would you answer? You can't say "My engine is at this moment in a terrible condition. I have major bugs and I don't know if I will ever be able to fix them. " That doesn't sell. Developers are not salesmen.

Or "I was busy with some major improvements in my engine, but it looks like they are total crap. So forget about the next new version this year".

Or what about " My engine is getting too complex I don't see any impossible improvements anymore".

Maybe he has found another job and he has no time for chess related topics anymore. Or he took a sabbatical year.