TCEC Swiss 7 – confirmed as the strongest chess event ever
The new season of the Top Chess Engine Championship – the premier computer chess competition – is going to start this Saturday 7, at 17:00 UTC / 19:00 CEST / 13:00 EST
TCEC Swiss 7 will be the first event of the season and will be the strongest chess event (ever!). A total of 44 participants, including the Swiss 6 champion LcZero, the top rated Stockfish and exciting newcomers Ceres, PlentyChess, and Patricia, will battle it out for the title in this record breaking Swiss.
Swiss 7 will be daily live on the official website of TCEC, in video format on TCEC Twitch TV, a broadcast on our favorite game server Lichess, and news reports on Chessdom.
Breaking the ELO record
ELO records depend on multiple factors. They include, but are not limited to, the formula used, the field, the sample size (number of games), and even the configuration (when talking about computer chess). Luckily, TCEC has the precise measurements to detect rating jumps in chess software. And the jump in Swiss 7 is huge! With high confidence we can claim that this is by far the strongest chess event in history.
Putting the record into perspective and “human terms”: imagine a classical tournament at a time where Carlsen and Kasparov close to 3000 ELO and Caruana, Aronian, Firouzja, Topalov, Anand, So, Nakamura, Kramnik, and Giri are all above and around 2900 ELO. Now this is what we are viewing in computer chess at TCEC Swiss 7!
Here is a comparison of the top 10 participants in Swiss 1 and Swiss 7 events. The difference of rating jumps is even bigger among the rest of the participants.
| TCEC Swiss 1 | Rating | TCEC Swiss 7 | Rating | |||||
| 1 | Stockfish | 3604 | 1 | Stockfish | 3668 | |||
| 2 | Lc0 | 3586 | 2 | Lc0 | 3629 | |||
| 3 | KomodoDragon | 3549 | 3 | Ceres | 3628 | |||
| 4 | AllieStein | 3520 | 4 | KomodoDragon | 3569 | |||
| 5 | Stoofvlees | 3515 | 5 | Berserk | 3567 | |||
| 6 | ScorpioNN | 3477 | 6 | Rubichess | 3530 | |||
| 7 | Igel | 3465 | 7 | Ethereal | 3529 | |||
| 8 | Ethereal | 3464 | 8 | Seer | 3515 | |||
| 9 | Slowchess | 3452 | 9 | Caissa | 3510 | |||
| 10 | Rubichess | 3426 | 10 | Obsidian | 3502 | |||
| Average rating | 3505.8 | 3565.5 |
Breaking the participation record
The state of computer chess – thriving! The sector has experienced a recent !boom with the development of new technology and ideas. For the first time ever TCEC had more applications than the event can accommodate. As a result, various engines had to undergo qualifications tournaments, raising the average ELO of the field even more.
TCEC Swiss 7 seeding and participants
This is the full participants list of TCEC Swiss 7 according to seeding. The seed number is determined according to the season rules, starting with the previous champion of TCEC – LcZero
- LCZero (defending champion of TCEC Swiss 6)
- Stockfish (Season 26 league champion)
- Berserk
- KomodoDragon
- Ethereal
- Seer
- Ceres
- RubiChess
- Stoofvlees
- Caissa
- Obsidian
- rofChade
- Viridithas
- Igel
- Revenge
- Arasan
- Clover
- Lizard
- Velvet
- PlentyChess
- Minic
- Uralochka
- Stormphrax
- Ginkgo
- DeepSjeng
- BlackMarlin
- Marvin
- Altair
- Equisetum
- Booot
- Weiss
- Tucano
- Halogen
- Renegade
- akimbo
- Texel
- Winter
- Devre
- ChessFighter
- Patricia
- Princhess
- ice4
- 4ku
- Heimdall
Which record is not broken?
TCEC Swiss 7 is part of the 27th edition of TCEC. It is one of the four titles that the engines can compete for, namely the Swiss, FRC, Leagues, and Cup titles. Inherently, every season is stronger than the previous one. Engine chess is booming, authors are more active than ever, technology is developing, ideas are growing. This season and the TCEC Swiss 7 event seems to break all records, but one. It is the TCEC Leagues S11 record, where the Premier Division average rating grew by 150+ ELO points. The average ELO of top 10 engines then was 3351 points, a full 150 points jump.
Another record in sight is the audience. The most viewed season of TCEC was 2 million people audience. Back then it was fueled by Carlsen’s World Chess Championships success. Since then TCEC seasons have crossed 1 million viewers several times, but has never been close to this record.