The Top Chess Engine Championship TCEC Stage 3 is past the halfway point and Gull still is in the lead. “The Bird” has 10,5/16 , ahead of Komodo with 10,0/16 and Stockfish with 9,5/16. The other three engines – Houdini at 6,5/16, Protector at 6,0/16, and Hannibal at 5,5/16 have lost chances to qualify, but they can be essential in the final standings of the stage. Read on to find out why this can turn out to be one of the most exciting TCEC stages ever!
Live games with graphs and analysis
The previous article titled In the big battle Stockfish vs Komodo leads… Gull! triggered multiple discussions on internet forums regarding the surprising lead of Gull. One of the more interesting debates happened in this Talkchess thread:
S.Taylor, “Indeed, if the engines which get the constant updates lose what they earned earlier vs an older engine […] Perhaps better leave things as they were a year ago and don’t tamper anymore with the good things of yesterday.”
Graham Banks, “Amazing how many people can make judgements based on less than 10 games.”
Nuno Sousa, “Seems like Gull scales wonderfully, making it particularly fit for current TCEC conditions. Halfway up the competition and it leads by a full point. Will be very hard to kick it out of the finals.”
Leto Atreides, “Stockfish of course was hurt by the tc bug that caused it to lose in a completely winning position against Protector and to Gull in a drawn endgame. Komodo got dealt the unlucky card scoring only 1 point against Houdini in three games. […] Just by looking at the scoreboard you might conclude that Gull is outplaying Komodo and Stockfish but that would be incorrect, it’s wiser to wait until more games are played.”
Now six rounds and eighteen games later, Stockfish and Komodo have indeed shortened the distance. Komodo even managed to win a direct game vs Gull. However, the standings are still the same and Gull is still on top. At the same time, fewer and fewer games remain and chances for Komodo and Stockfish to qualify do not increase. The Chess Forecaster released calculations where Komodo, Gull, and Stockfish have practically equal chances at this moment, meaning every single point matters. There comes the role of Protector, Houdini and Hannibal – every single move they make can be essential for the final standings of TCEC Stage 3.
No matter what the final outcome will be, one thing is sure – we are ahead of the best TCEC Stage 3 ever and the games until its end will be full of excitement! Join us for live coverage and chat with the experts at the official website .