Computer Chess Championship Returns For Blitz Battle
Computer chess fans, get ready for some faster games between your favorite engines.
The Chess.com Computer Chess Championship returns with a greatly expanded field and thousands of games to determine the best blitz chess engines in the world.
CCC 2: Blitz Battle is now live:
- Watch and chat on Chess.com/CCC
- Watch and chat on Twitch.tv/computerchess—includes AI-generated background music
Stockfish easily won the first Computer Chess Championship rapid event, but it will have to fend off some new engines and updated networks from its biggest rival, the machine-learning engine Lc0 ("Leela").
Leela returns to the show with new neural networks, representing untold hours of self-directed learning and training. Lc0 also adds support for the event's six-man endgame tablebases, which may improve the engine's understanding of which endgames to select.
The Computer Chess Championship Blitz Battle will consist of three stages, all held at the blitz time control of five minutes plus two seconds increment.
Stage one will begin with 33 competitors before the field is winnowed down to 10 engines for stage two and a final four engines for stage three.
The following 33 engines will play in CCC 2: Blitz Battle. Click on the image for a larger version.
Rules:
- Time control: Blitz (5+2)
- 46 threads per engine
- 8192 MB hash
- 6-man Syzygy and 5-man Gaviota TBs
- All other UCI options set to default
- Games will be played to completion (mate or draw) with no adjudication except for threefold repetition and the 50-move rule.
- Tiebreaks will be determined utilizing the Sonneborn-Berger score.
- For crashes and unfinished games, see the official adjudication rules here.
Stage 1:
- Start date: Oct. 8
- Round robin
- 33 engines
- Each engine plays every other engine four times (twice as White, twice as Black)
- 2,112 games
- Ponder: off
- No opening book
- Expected duration: 22 days
Stage 2:
- Starts after stage 1
- Round robin
- Top 10 engines from stage 1
- Each engine plays every other engine 20 times (10 as White, 10 as Black)
- 900 games
- Ponder: off
- Opening book: 6-ply book selected from top master and popular Chess.com games; all openings chosen by Chess.com tournament staff.
- Openings reversed the second time each engine plays each other.
- Expected duration: 9 days
Stage 3 (Finals):
- Starts after stage 2
- Round robin
- Top four engines from stage 2
- Each engine plays every other engine 100 times (50 as White, 50 as Black)
- 600 games
- Ponder: off
- Opening book: 6-ply book selected from top master and popular Chess.com games; all openings chosen by Chess.com tournament staff.
- Openings reversed the second time each engine plays each other.
- Expected duration: 6 days
The CCC will run on cutting-edge technology.
CPU Engines:
- CPUs: 2 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8168 @ 2.70 GHz 33 MB L3
- Cores: 48 physical (96 logical)
- RAM: 256GB DDR4-2666 ECC Registered RDIMM
- SSD: 2x Crucial MX300 (1TB) in RAID1
- OS: Windows Server 2016
GPU Engines:
- GPU: 4x Tesla V100 (64 GB GPU memory)
- CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2686 v4 @ 2.30 GHz
- Cores: 16 physical (32 virtual)
- RAM: 256 GB
Who are you rooting for in the Computer Championship Blitz Battle? Can Leela be the first neural network to win a major computer tournament?
Let us know in the comments and watch at www.Chess.com/CCCC.
