What Happened to TCEC Season 8? Where is Martin?

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

I am surprised that there has been little discussion as to what happened to TCEC Season 8. Martin had stated in mid February of 2015 that Season 8 would begin in the middle of March (2015); yet that of course failed to happen. In conjunction with that Nelson Hernandez has tried to contact Martin in March, but no response had been made. This is said to be strange as Martin is usually quite prompt in his responses, especially to Nelson. As stated by Nelson on the Rybka forum:

"You may be right! I sent Martin an email asking about next season some days ago and have gotten no response. There is definitely some cause for concern as he almost always responds within hours and there was no hint in his last communication (February 13) that anything was amiss. He said at that time that he'd "get back to me" on the tournament which of course he hasn't."

If one does a little bit of research on the Internet he or she will find that he has not actually written anything in quite sometime. This should be somewhat concerning.

Does anyone here have any information as to what is going on?

PS I am not looking to be of a bother to Martin; this is simply strange.

Take care

[mjlef]

I received a notification via LinkedIn that Martin got a new job. Setting up and running a TCEC Tournament is a lot of work, so perhaps he does not have time right now to set one up. I bet when he has more time, we will do the next season.

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

I received a notification via LinkedIn that Martin got a new job. Setting up and running a TCEC Tournament is a lot of work, so perhaps he does not have time right now to set one up. I bet when he has more time, we will do the next season.

Ah yes, that makes sense. Thank you Mark for the info.

[Modern Times]

Yes, according to LinkedIn, he got a new job back in January.

[brtzsnr]

TCEC Season 8 was just announced on facebook:

[Modern Times]

Sounds like he is looking to an upgrade to at least 24 cores is my guess.

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

Sounds like he is looking to an upgrade to at least 24 cores is my guess.

Good. This will "force" engine authors who haven't done so and who want to be in the next season to make sure that his or her SMP code supports greater than 16 cores. This should be most interesting.

[Modern Times]

They may be able to make sure the code allows > 16 threads, but without a machine to test on, they won't know how well it runs.

[S.Taylor]

I received a notification via LinkedIn that Martin got a new job. Setting up and running a TCEC Tournament is a lot of work, so perhaps he does not have time right now to set one up. I bet when he has more time, we will do the next season.

Also, there is not much point in doing it on time, if in a few weeks there will be stronger participants which will only then be available to join.

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

They may be able to make sure the code allows > 16 threads, but without a machine to test on, they won't know how well it runs.

That is a good point. But I think that you are correct that the new TCEC machine will have something like 24 cores, so I do not think that some of these authors will have a choice if they want their engine in the tournament. This is the interesting dynamic that I can see occurring here anyways. Obviously the authors of engines like Stockfish, Komodo and Gull have nothing to worry about.