32 engines, 5 rounds, every place from 1 to 32 decided over the board
The idea
In a normal knockout cup half of the field goes home after the first round, and we never learn who was really 9th or 23rd.
In this cup nobody is eliminated. Every engine plays all 5 rounds:
- the winners of each round go on to play for the upper half of their places, the losers for the lower half;
- after round 1 there are two groups (places 1-16 and 17-32), after round 2 four groups, and so on;
- in round 5 every pair plays its own "final" for two places: 1-2, 3-4 ... 31-32.
Format
- Fixed bracket, tennis style: seeds 1 and 2 can only meet in the final for 1st place.
- The matches get longer every round, because the engines get closer to each other:
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--------------------+-------------+---------+-------+----------+---------------------------------------------------
Round | Games/match | Matches | Games | Openings | Opening family (Carlsen)
--------------------+-------------+---------+-------+----------+---------------------------------------------------
R1 (Last 32) | 16 | 16 | 256 | 8 | Nimzo-Indian Defense
R2 (Last 16) | 24 | 16 | 384 | 12 | Ruy Lopez
R3 (Quarter-finals) | 32 | 16 | 512 | 16 | Queen's Gambit Declined
R4 (Semi-finals) | 50 | 16 | 800 | 25 | English Opening
R5 (Finals) | 100 | 16 | 1600 | 50 | Sicilian Defense (20) + 30 lines of other families
Total | 222 | 16 | 3552 | 111 | 5 main families + 30 lines of other families
--------------------+-------------+---------+-------+----------+---------------------------------------------------
- Each opening is played twice, colours reversed (opening k = games 2k-1 and 2k).
- The higher seed has White in game 1, then the colours alternate.
- A new round starts only when the whole previous round is finished.
- Tiebreak: 10 games at 2s + 0.02s, with openings 1-5 of the round.
- Penalties: pairs of 2 games at 2s + 0.02s (openings 6, 7 ... and then again from 1), until one engine wins a pair (2-0 or 1.5-0.5).
Time forfeits, illegal moves and quick draws all count as they are: the best one wins.
Only a game that did not really happen (no result) is played again, up to 3 times.
Openings: the classical games of Magnus Carlsen
- Source: Carlsen's classical games from 2001 to July 2026 (rapid and blitz games filtered out).
- Each round uses one opening family, from his most played families. Round 5 adds lines from the families not used in any other round.
- All openings are 8 moves (16 plies) long, and every line is Carlsen's own most played line in that group.
- No position and no line is repeated in two rounds.
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Time control : 9s + 0.09s (tiebreak and penalties: 2s + 0.02s)
GUI : cutechess-cli, run fully automatic by my tournament manager (CTM 3.1)
Hardware : Intel i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB RAM, Windows 11
Concurrency : 1 game at a time
Hash : 16 MB
Adjudication : resign at 9.00 for 6 moves, draw from move 120, maximum 150 moves
The 32 engines are the 20 engines of the Premier Division (Season 16) plus the engines ranked 9-20 in the First Division (the top 8 of the
First Division were promoted and are already seeds 13-20).
Seeds follow the final league table, not the Elo.
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Seed | Engine | League (Season 16) | Elo
-----+--------------------+--------------------+-----
1 | Reckless 0.9.0 | Premier 1 | 2847
2 | Berserk 14.0 | Premier 2 | 2806
3 | Alexandria 9.1.0 | Premier 3 | 2820
4 | Integral 8.0 | Premier 4 | 2782
5 | PlentyChess 8.0.0 | Premier 5 | 2844
6 | Pawnocchio 2.0.1 | Premier 6 | 2810
7 | Viridithas 20.0.0 | Premier 7 | 2817
8 | Obsidian 16.0 | Premier 8 | 2798
9 | Cinder 0.6.1 | Premier 9 | 2790
10 | Hobbes 3.0.0 | Premier 10 | 2787
11 | Caissa 2.0.0 | Premier 11 | 2820
12 | Astra 7.0.0 | Premier 12 | 2780
13 | Clover 9.1 | Premier 13 | 2768
14 | Komodo Dragon 3.3 | Premier 14 | 2771
15 | Stormphrax 8.0.0 | Premier 15 | 2775
16 | Raphael 4.2.0 | Premier 16 | 2778
17 | RubiChess 20240817 | Premier 17 | 2779
18 | Devre 7.0 | Premier 18 | 2780
19 | Renegade 1.3.1 | Premier 19 | 2761
20 | Starzix 6.0 | Premier 20 | 2757
21 | Igel 3.8.0 | First Div. 9 | 2775
22 | Horsie 1.1 | First Div. 10 | 2749
23 | Minke 7.0.0 | First Div. 11 | 2750
24 | Motor 0.9.0 | First Div. 12 | 2756
25 | Halogen 16.0 | First Div. 13 | 2719
26 | Quanticade 3.0c | First Div. 14 | 2760
27 | Tarnished 6.0 | First Div. 15 | 2720
28 | PZChessBot 7.1 | First Div. 16 | 2750
29 | Tcheran 13.0 | First Div. 17 | 2730
30 | Uralochka 3.42a | First Div. 18 | 2709
31 | Zangdar 7.0 | First Div. 19 | 2715
32 | Koivisto 9.0 | First Div. 20 | 2713
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+------+------+-------------------+------+--------------------+
|Match | Seed | White in game 1 | Seed | Black in game 1 |
+------+------+-------------------+------+--------------------+
| M1 | 1 | Reckless 0.9.0 | 32 | Koivisto 9.0 |
| M2 | 16 | Raphael 4.2.0 | 17 | RubiChess 20240817 |
| M3 | 8 | Obsidian 16.0 | 25 | Halogen 16.0 |
| M4 | 9 | Cinder 0.6.1 | 24 | Motor 0.9.0 |
| M5 | 4 | Integral 8.0 | 29 | Tcheran 13.0 |
| M6 | 13 | Clover 9.1 | 20 | Starzix 6.0 |
| M7 | 5 | PlentyChess 8.0.0 | 28 | PZChessBot 7.1 |
| M8 | 12 | Astra 7.0.0 | 21 | Igel 3.8.0 |
+------+------+-------------------+------+--------------------+
| M9 | 2 | Berserk 14.0 | 31 | Zangdar 7.0 |
| M10 | 15 | Stormphrax 8.0.0 | 18 | Devre 7.0 |
| M11 | 7 | Viridithas 20.0.0 | 26 | Quanticade 3.0c |
| M12 | 10 | Hobbes 3.0.0 | 23 | Minke 7.0.0 |
| M13 | 3 | Alexandria 9.1.0 | 30 | Uralochka 3.42a |
| M14 | 14 | Komodo Dragon 3.3 | 19 | Renegade 1.3.1 |
| M15 | 6 | Pawnocchio 2.0.1 | 27 | Tarnished 6.0 |
| M16 | 11 | Caissa 2.0.0 | 22 | Horsie 1.1 |
+------+------+-------------------+------+--------------------+