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Stockfish, the open source chess engine by Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, and Gary Linscott, is the winner of the 2016 edition of the Top Chess Engine Championship. Stockfish 8 won the 100 games Superfinal match against Houdini 5 with a total score of 54,5 – 45,5. This is the second TCEC gold medal for Stockfish and it comes after the title in Season 6 and two runner up positions in Seasons 7 and 8. The third position in 2016 is for the ex-champion Komodo.

Stockfish dominated all the season by winning Stages 1 and 3, finishing shared first in Stage 2 and storming through the Superfinal. Houdini upgraded its version to Houdini 5 dev to take the rapid section of the event, but even the upgrade to the official Houdini 5 did not help in the Superfinal against the new Stockfish engine.

The Superfinal match was the strongest chess encounter in history. Both engines played at about 3300+ ELO, thanks to the solid 44 cores server provided by the massive support of the community and a final push form the organizers of the event.

Congratulations to the winner Stockfish, the runner-up Houdini, and the bronze medalist Komodo! Certainly more amazing chess is coming from them in the next Season 10 of the Top Chess Engine Championship in the first months of 2017.

TCEC Season 9 final standings

1. Stockfish
2. Houdini
3. Komodo
4. Fire
5. Andscacs
6. Jonny
7. Gull
8. Rybka
9. Ginkgo
10. Hannibal
11. Nirvana
12. Protector
13. Naum
14. Chiron
15. Raptor
16. Vajolet

(total 32 participants)

Official site of the Top Chess Engine Championship / Replay all games of Season 9

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