nTCEC Season 2 information + changes

[Martin Thoresen]

*Only engines that are SMP capable with minimum 8 core support are participating.
*Engine updates are not allowed during a Season.
*The time control has been reduced from 150' + 60" to 120' + 30".
*6-men Nalimov has been removed since several engines have shown some strange behavior during the testing.
*The GUI will now adjudicate tablebase positions.
*The win/loss adjudication rule has been extended to 4 moves instead of 3. Still +/- 6.50 pawns.
*Stage 2a/2b has been merged into Stage 2, which is a single round robin.
*All openings will now be from recent human high rated tournaments to reflect the format of each Stage and there will not be any computer analysis of these positions, except to remove duplicates.
*The length of the openings have been reduced from 8 moves to 6 moves.

In addition, there have been some changes to the website etc:
*All games playing will be shown at http://tcec.chessdom.com/
*The chess board now has coordinates.
*The engines will now show distance to mate instead of very high evals.
*The chat has been moved to the top menu (will open in a new window).
*The widescreen option has been removed.

nTCEC Season 2 starts August 26th.

The list of participants is still not finalized, and will be published as soon as possible.

[BB+]

I think in general these are all positive rule changes. I especially found 150+60 to drag at times. But then, most people are perhaps there for the chat... (well, at least of those who do chat, though OTOH most watchers are probably silent). The openings will never find anyone happy, of course (though simply not having the Grob should make some less irate). Are there any engines that support say 4 cores but not 8?

[Martin Thoresen]

I think in general these are all positive rule changes. I especially found 150+60 to drag at times. But then, most people are perhaps there for the chat... (well, at least of those who do chat, though OTOH most watchers are probably silent). The openings will never find anyone happy, of course (though simply not having the Grob should make some less irate). Are there any engines that support say 4 cores but not 8?

Hi BB+,

As for the openings, yes I expect people to complain as usual. But at least I doubt anyone has played Grob on elite level.
Some engines support 4 but not 8 cores, that's correct. They aren't many though.

Best,
Martin

[Martin Thoresen]

Start times for Season 2:

Stockholm (Sweden) Monday, 26 August 2013, 16:00:00 CEST UTC+2 hours
New York (U.S.A. - New York) Monday, 26 August 2013, 10:00:00 EDT UTC-4 hours
Los Angeles (U.S.A. - California) Monday, 26 August 2013, 07:00:00 PDT UTC-7 hours
Auckland (New Zealand) Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 02:00:00 NZST UTC+12 hours

[Martin Thoresen]

Now live!

http://tcec.chessdom.com/live.php