About KCEC

Introduction

KCEC stands for "Kirr's Chess Engine Comparison". It is a tournament of free single-CPU chess engines. KCEC time control and conditions are compatible with CCRL 40/4, so all KCEC games are also submitted to CCRL 40/4 database. KCEC ratings are calibrated to CCRL 40/4 rating list from 2008-07-25 using all shared engines.

Participation

Participation is by invitation only, although I appreciate information about any notable engines that I am still missing. Any participating engine has to be freeware, reasonably stable, and contain significant amount of original work. It has to support UCI (preferred) or Winboard protocol and be able to play under KCEC conditions (1 core, repeated time control, ponder off, no own book).

Tournament Format

• Each newly introduced engine has to play matches with at least 16 nearest higher rated opponents and at least 16 nearest lower rated opponents (if exist). A match consists of 32 games usually.
• Only one engine from each author may enter.
• At most two versions of an engine may participate, but only the latest one will be ranked.
• Engines are added one by one. After an engine has played all the necessary matches with nearby opponents, the next engine can be introduced.

Testing Conditions

• Time Control: Equivalent to 40 moves in 4 minutes on AMD X2 4600+ at 2.4GHz. Crafty 19.17 BH (Brian Hoffman's compile) is used as a benchmark to determine the equivalent time control for particular machine. Time control is perpetually repeating: An engine receives another 4 minutes on move 41, on move 81, and so on.

• Pondering: OFF.
• Number of threads (or cores): 1 for all engines.
• Hash tables size: 128 MB or the nearest possible smaller size.
• Opening book: Any neutral book (not tuned to any particular engine), limited to 8 moves for each side. The same book is used for both sides in any game. Engine's own books are disabled.
• Book learning: OFF.
• Position learning: OFF.
• Endgame tablebases: Eugene Nalimov's tablebases and all engine's own format tablebases are provided, for up to 5-piece endgames. EGTB hash size is set to 32 MB where applicable.
• Adjudication by winning evaluation: OFF.
• Adjudication by EGTB: OFF.
• Adjudication by drawing evaluation: OFF.