CCC23 Blitz

The first event of the CCC23 series is the Blitz event. Rapid and Bullet will follow after, as well as a Classical Cup #3 between the Rapid and Bullet events.

This season removes PlentyChess and Carp from the roster of engines. CCC is always looking to include more engines that are interesting, or whose authors are deeply involved in the computer chess community. Decisions as to which engines are included are subjective, and are at the discretion of the tournament director. If you are interested in having your engine compete, please contact me through chesscom, or the OpenBench discord server.

!! Watch the Computer Chess Championship Here !!

The Blitz cycle of the CCC23 event will feature the following bonus matches...

Alt-Finals: The engine which loses the Challenger match will play in an alternate finals against the engine that ultimately wins the event. This is done to ensure statistics between the top engines are kept for each event.

Small vs Big: Torch and Stockfish will compete against Berserk and Obsidian, using their smallest available networks. An L1=256 Stockfish network, that is sometimes used in the browser on Lichess, will be used. Torch will use its own L1=256 network, which also runs here in the browser. Neither the Stockfish nor the Torch projects are primarily focused on the strength of their L1=256 networks. These nets are ~1/12th the size that would normally play.

Net Swap: Torch and Stockfish will compete in a head-to-head event, using the other engine's networks. This means that Torch will play using Stockfish's current best network. And Stockfish will play using Torch's current best network. 

Net Originality: An event will be played, featuring only the top engines whose Neural Networks are trained exclusively on data produced by the team behind the engine. Torch will be using an older network, which does not contain any Lc0 data. Caissa, while once using Stockfish data and nets, has since replaced all of that with home-grown data. The remainder of the engines appear to strictly use their own data.

Always a Bigger Fish: For the final bonus event of the CCC23 Blitz tournament, Stockfish's standard sized Neural Network will play against MiniFish. MiniFish's network is 1/12th the size, will analyze far more positions per second, but do so with less accuracy.

This event will feature the following matches. As the matches are played, this blog will be updated to link to the match, as well as indicate which engines are advancing further into the event. All engine placements are the results of seeding from the CCC22 Bullet.

Match 1: Entry League, will feature Smallbrain, Tucano, Winter, Marvin, Weiss, Stash, Wasp, and Midnight. The top-6 of these 8 will advance to the next set of games. The match will include a 4x DRR, spanning 224 games.

Match 2: Qualifier #1, will feature Equisetum, Minic, Booot, Arasan, BlackMarlin, Willow, and the qualifiers from Match 1. The top-6 of these 12 will advance to the next set of games. The match will include a 3x DRR, spanning 396 games.

Match 3: Qualifier #2, will feature Uralochka, Igel, Revenge, Stormphrax, Altair, Akimbo, and the qualifiers from Match 2. The top-6 of these 12 will advance to the next set of games. The match will include a 3x DRR, spanning 396 games.

Match 4: Qualifier #3, will feature Obsidian, Seer, Clover, Rofchade, Viridithas, Velvet, and the qualifiers from Match 3. The top-4 of these 12 will advance to the next set of games. The match will include a 3x DRR, spanning 396 games. 

Match 5: Main, will feature Stockfish, Torch, Berserk, Leela, Dragon, Ethereal, Caissa, Rubi, and the qualifiers from Match 4. The top-6 of these 12 will advance to the next set of games. The match will include a 5x DRR, spanning 660 games.

Match 6: Semifinals, will feature the top-6 engines from Match 5. The winner will be seeded directly into the Finals. The 2nd and 3rd place engines will compete in a head-to-head for the final spot in the finals. The match will include a 30x DRR, spanning 900 games.

Match 7: Challenger Match, will be a direct head-to-head of the 2nd and 3rd place engines from the Semifinals. The match will include a 250x DRR, spanning 500 games.

Match 8: Finals, will be a direct head-to-head between the winner of the Semifinals, and the winner of the Challenger Match. The match will include a 250x DRR, spanning 500 games.

Results:

Weiss wins the Entry League, and will be promoted to the Qualifier #1, alongside Winter, Tucano, Smallbrain, Marvin, and Midnight.

BlackMarlin wins the Qualifier #1, and will be promoted to the Qualifier #2, alongside Minic, Equisteum, Booot, Arasan, and Willow.

Igel wins the Qualifier #2, and will be promoted to the Qualifier #3, alongside Uralochka, Revenge, BlackMarlin, and Stormphrax. After a tiebreaker, Altair secures the final spot, beating out Akimbo in a head-to-head mini-match.

Obsidian wins the Qualifier #3, and will be promoted to the Main Event, alongside Seer, Rofchade, Viridithas, Clover, and Uralochka.

Stockfish wins the Main Event, and will be promoted to the Semifinals alongside Torch, Leela, Berserk, and Obsidian. After a tiebreaker that lasted 3 mini-matches, Caissa will advance, beating out Rubi, to secure the final spot.

Stockfish wins the Semifinals, and will be seeded directly into the Finals. Torch and Leela came in 2nd and 3rd place respectively, and will advance to a head-to-head in the Challenger Match, to earn a spot in the Finals. 

Torch wins the Challenger Match against Leela, with a score of 261.0/500.0, and will advance to the finals to play a head-to-head match against Stockfish.

Stockfish wins the Finals against Torch, with a score of 294.5/500.0, and wins the CCC23 Blitz tournament. 

Bonus Results:

Stockfish wins the Alt-Finals against Leela, with a score of 299.5/500.0. 

Minifish wins the Small vs Big bonus, with Berserk, MiniTorch, and Obsidian taking 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place within a less than 2-point gap. 

StockTorch (Stockfish, using Torch's Networks) wins Net Swap bonus, with a score of 161.0/300.0, against TorchFish (Torch, using Stockfish's Network)

Torch wins the Net Originality bonus, with Leela, Dragon, Berserk, Ethereal, Caissa, Rubi, and Seer taking the remaining 2nd-8th places respectively. 

Stockfish wins the Always a Bigger Fish bonus, with a score of 147.5/250.0 against MiniFish.