22nd World Computer Championship

I added the PGN and crosstable for the 21st World Computer Championship (WCCC) held in Leiden (Netherlands) to my page on the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess. Just like the two previous events (see my post on the 21st World Computer Championship, November 2015), both files are packed into a single ZIP file. For more about the event, see

• WCCC 2016 [ICGA; 'From Monday 27 June until Friday 1 July the WCCC will be held in Leiden at the Leiden University, Snellius Building, Turing Room.'], and
• WCCC 2016 [chessprogramming.wikispaces.com]

The ICGA page links to a report that starts,

The 22nd World Computer Chess Championship started on June 27, 2016. Six programs participate in a double round robin tournament of ten rounds. The tournament takes place at the Leiden University and is organized by the ICGA, LIACS and LCDS. The sponsors are Google, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the municipality of Leiden, Leiden University, Faculty of Science, ICGA, iSSC, SurfSara, Digital Game Technology and NWO Exact Sciences. It is held in conjunction with the 19th Computer Olympiad and the 15th Advances in Computer Games conference.

The page also informs about the tiebreak,

Play-off between Komodo and Jonny: Two games 45 minutes + 16 seconds: 1-1. Two games with 5 min. + 5 seconds. 1-1. Two games with 3 min. + 5 seconds 1½-½ for Komodo

Chessbase.com published a commercial puff piece, Komodo is World Computer Chess Champion (July 2016), that started,

[Komodo's] stiffest competition came from the German program Jonny, running on a giant 2400-core machine. With only 48 cores the US program Komodo finished the computer tournament in Leiden, Netherlands, equal first with Jonny, then went on to win a hard-fought tiebreak, making it the 22nd World Computer Chess Champion. It may interest you to know that the latest version of our flagship chess engine, Komodo 10, was released just a month ago.

It received some pointed comments from skeptical readers, like

'Why didn’t Stockfish compete?' • 'I thought the TCEC tournament determines the World Computer Chess Champion? ' • 'Please explain how did these engines qualify to this competition, and how does this compare to TCEC.' • etc. etc.

Another resource that once documented the WCCC events but is now little more than a stub, is Leiden 2016 [game-ai-forum.org; formerly www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr]. For more about the computer chess world, see my main blog, e.g.:-

• Houdini, Komodo, Stockfish (February 2015)
• What Ticks Off Engine Users? (Part III; May 2015)
• Chess Engine Summary (January 2016)

How much longer will tradition continue to accept the ICGA events as World Championships?