24th World Computer Championship

Last week, while working on Battles of the Chess NNs, a post about TCEC S13, I was reminded that the 2018 edition of the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) had taken place in July. From the Leela blog (archived version):-

• 2018-07-11: Leela Accepted in 2018 WCCC
• 2018-07-13: More Info on 2018 WCCC

That second link took a not-so-subtle swipe at the WCCC:-

WCCC still has a human operator make moves on a board. It's all very punchcard and mainframe and has one expecting to play against Belle and Cray Blitz. Hopefully the remote connection and special ASCII interface won’t lead to any snafus.

As someone who actually worked with punchcards and mainframes, I can say with certainty that they were 1960's technology, while the WCCC references in the rest of the quote were 1980's technology. But point taken, the WCCC is badly in need of a complete makeover.

What about the outcome? Relevant pages from the WCCC organizers are:-

• Undated: WCCC 2018 (icga.org) • List of competitors and their technical characteristics.
• 2018-07-19: Komodo is World Computer Chess Champion 2018

This was Komodo's third straight WCCC title, but the engine has not been as successful in the TCEC against Stockfish. The message is clear: the TCEC is the World Computer Championship in all but name only; the ICGA's WCCC is the World Championship only in name. On my page about the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess, I decided to stop including details (PGN and crosstable) about new ICGA events. From now on, the page will only list the winner.

[For my post on the previous WCCC event, see 23rd World Computer Championship (January 2018).]