Top Chess Engine Championship#Notable games

The TCEC competition is divided into seasons, where each season happens over a course of a few months, with matches played round-the-clock and broadcast live over the internet. Each season is divided into several tournaments: a Leagues Season, a Cup, a Swiss tournament, a Fischer Random Chess tournament. Additionally, seasons contain various bonus contests, like the 'Viewer Submitted Opening Bonus'.

Prior to season 21, there was originally one tournament in each season. This tournament consisted of several qualifying stages and one "superfinal", and the winner of the superfinal is called the "TCEC Grand Champion" until the next season. Prior to season 11, the tournament used a cup format, while starting in Season 11, the tournament used a division system. Starting in season 13, there was also a cup tournament consisting of the top 32 engines in the main tournament, resulting in a 5-round single elimination tournament.{{Cite web|url=http://www.chessdom.com/announcing-tcec-cup-2018/|title=Announcing TCEC Cup 2018 | Chessdom|date=30 August 2018 }}

Pondering is set to off. All engines run on Linux on the same hardware and use the same opening book, which is set by the organizers and changed in every stage. Large pages are enabled, and access to endgame tablebases including Syzygy 7-men is permitted.{{cite web|url=https://wiki.chessdom.org/TCEC_Season_Further_information#TCEC_Hardware|title=TCEC Season Further information / TCEC Hardware|access-date=11 March 2025}} Engines are allowed updates between stages; if there is a critical play-limiting bug, they are also allowed to be updated once during the stage. In previous seasons, if an engine crashes 3 times in one event, it is disqualified to avoid distorting the results for the other engines; however, starting in TCEC Season 20, an engine is allowed to crash any number of times without being disqualified from the current event, although the engine will still be disqualified from future events unless the crash is fixed.{{cite web|url=https://wiki.chessdom.org/TCEC_Leagues_Season_Rules#15._Crashes|title=TCEC Leagues Season Rules, 15.Crashes}} TCEC generates an Elo rating list from the matches played during the tournament. An initial rating is given to any new participant based on its rating in other chess engine rating lists.

There is no definite criterion for entering into the competition, other than inviting the top participants under active development from various rating lists which can run on their Linux platform. Originally, TCEC used Windows instead of Linux. In addition, either XBoard or UCI protocol are required to participate. {{cite web |url=https://wiki.chessdom.org/Rules |title=Rules |website=TCEC Wiki}}

Usually chess engines that support multiprocessor mode are preferred (8-cores or higher), and engines in active development are given preference. Since TCEC 12, engines like LCZero which use GPUs for neural processing were supported.

Initially, the list of participants was personally chosen by Thoresen before the start of a season. His stated goal was to include "every major engine that is not a direct clone".{{Cite web|url=http://blog.chabris.com/2015/01/martin-thoresens-world-chess.html|title=Martin Thoresen's World Chess Championship|first=Christopher|last=Chabris}} In TCEC 13, DeusX was banned due to being a clone of Leela, and in TCEC 20, Houdini, Fire, Rybka (engine in Fritz up to TCEC 16), and Critter were banned due to allegations of plagiarism.

The number within the brackets () denote the number of times the engine has won the particular competition.

{{notelist|group=Season}}

===TCEC FRC (Fischer Random Chess) ===

In DFRC, the start positions of the pieces are randomized independently for both players.

In FRD, which has superseded both FRC and DFRC, the qualifying rounds are played in the Fischer Random System and the finals in the double Fischer Random System.

Engines are limited to {{Bytes|4|Ki}} in program size.

{{notelist|group=OtherTourney}}

• Chess engine
• Computer chess
• Chess.com Computer Chess Championship
• World Computer Chess Championship
• World Computer Speed Chess Championship
• Dutch Open Computer Chess Championship
• North American Computer Chess Championship

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4640212584288527521#editor/target=post;postID=7114974255114907519;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=4;src=postname Additional information for Season 4]
• [http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4640212584288527521#editor/target=post;postID=1231662505313802107;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=3;src=postname Additional information for Season 5]
• {{cite web | url=http://www.chessdom.com/tcec-season-8-complete-information/ | title=TCEC Season 8 – complete information | work=chessdom.com | date=August 18, 2015 | access-date=October 9, 2015}}
• {{cite journal|url=http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N62/chess.html|title=DIGITAL CHESS REVIEW: One chess champion per laptop|journal=The Tech|volume=133|issue=62|date=January 15, 2014|last=Perez-Franco|first=Roberto|access-date=February 2, 2014}}
• [http://www.chessdom.com/tcec-season-12-the-12th-top-chess-engine-championship/ TCEC Season 12 report], by Guy Haworth and Nelson Hernandez
• [http://www.chessdom.com/tcec-season-13-the-13th-top-chess-engine-championship/ TCEC Season 13 report], by Guy Haworth and Nelson Hernandez
• {{cite journal|url=https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg190116|title=The TCEC14 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=7 November 2019|volume=41|issue=3|page=152|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-190116|s2cid=208114100 }}
• {{cite journal|url=https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg190112|title=The TCEC15 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=7 November 2019|volume=41|issue=3|page=164-167|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-190112|s2cid=208122943 }}
• {{cite journal|url=https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg190123|title=The TCEC16 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=6 February 2020|volume=41|issue=4|page=253-258|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-190123|s2cid=212564356 }}
• {{cite journal|url=https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg200153|title=The TCEC17 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=10 November 2020|volume=42|issue=2–3|page=192-206|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-200153|s2cid=226548340 }}
• {{cite journal|url=https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg200161|title=The TCEC18 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=10 November 2020|volume=42|issue=2–3|page=223-236|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-200161|s2cid=226551192 }}
• {{cite journal|title=The TCEC19 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=11 January 2021|volume=42|issue=4|page=306-320|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-200173|s2cid=231947849 |doi-access=free}}
• {{cite journal|url=https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg210184|title=The TCEC20 Computer Chess Superfinal: a perspective|journal=ICGA Journal|date=26 May 2021|volume=43|issue=1|page=74-87|last=Sadler|first=Matthew|doi=10.3233/ICG-210184|s2cid=235453638 }}
• {{cite journal|title=TCEC15: The 15th Top Chess Engine Championship|last1=Hernandez|first1=Nelson|last2=Haworth|first2=Guy|date=October 2019|journal=ICGA Journal|volume=41|issue=314|pages=153–163|doi=10.3233/ICG-190115|s2cid=208643228|url=http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/83156/1/TCEC15.pdf}}

• [https://tcec-chess.com/ TCEC Live Games Page]
• {{facebook|tcec.chess}}
• [https://tcec-chess.com/#x=archive TCEC games archive] - Scroll down and click on Seasons.
• [https://chessdom.org/ chessdom.org] with an overview of TCEC's websites

{{Top Chess Engine Championship|state=expanded}}

{{Chess|state=collapsed}}

Category:Computer chess competitions

Category:World championships in chess

Category:Recurring events established in 2010