Noomen TCEC S25 books available

Hi chess engine fans,

Below you can download the TCEC 25 Premier Division book and the TCEC 25 superfinal book made by Jeroen Noomen.

TCEC 25 Premier Division

Noomen S25 DivP book


TCEC 25 Superfinal

Noomen S25 sufibook

TCEC 25 superfinal book: chess classics from the past!

The TCEC 25 superfinal book was made by Jeroen Noomen and will be something completely different from what you were used to. Inspired by GM Matthew Sadler's excellent book 'Re-engineering the chess classics' - a book that I can recommend to every chess enthousiast! - I decided that it was time for a change.

The TCEC 25 superfinal book consists of:

• 5 own picks that were never selected before in one of my previous TCEC books
• 45 chess classics, i.e. 45 opening lines taken from games of the Great Masters of the past; also including a couple of lines from human world championship matches

What famous players are part of this superfinal book:

• Boris Spassky
• Bobby Fischer
• William Steinitz
• Anatoly Karpov
• Max Euwe
• Alexander Alekhine
• Paul Morphy
• Savielly Tartakower
• Siegbert Tarrasch
• Mikhail Botvinnik
• David Bronstein
• Carl Schlechter
• Emmanuel Lasker
• Mikhail Tal
• and several other well know chess masters from the past

Average length of the lines is 8.9 moves, which is considerably higher than previous superfinal books. Including chess classics comes with a small price, i.e. lines are longer. As usual the great majority of the lines have a very high bias.

The main selection criterions were: evaluation roughly between 40% and 60% winning chance & the position should be complex enough. I skipped the 'no mass exchanges' criterion. There are also a couple of lower book exits, if I thought the line was still interesting enough to give it a try. The S24 superfinal clearly showed that lower exits also can lead to wins.

I relied on Leela evaluations for the book exits, as Stockfish's evaluation is volatile and might go up or down by as much as 0.3 within a short period of time, making the estimation of the book exit (too) uncertain. Leela's evaluations for the superfinal openings are between +0.70 and +1.10, for the Leela version I used.

Black advantage: the are six lines that start with a black advantage, increasing the chance of a black win.

Highest/lowest book exits: the highest and lowest book exits are paired together and will be played in the first half of the superfinal. 

My expectations: Everything is possible: strings of draws, many wins, many lines leading to double wins. The finalists will be very strong and rather close in playing strength, so it's getting even harder to find lines that lead to a decisive result. So I just want exciting games, lots of fun and interesting takes by the engines on very well known games by the masters of the past. 

ECO code distribution

ECO A: 9 lines

ECO B: 11 lines

ECO C: 13 lines

ECO D: 9 lines

ECO E: 8 lines

Move length distribution

3 moves: 2 lines

4 moves: 1 line

5 moves: 2 lines

6 moves: 7 lines

7 moves: 5 lines

8 moves: 3 lines

9 moves: 8 lines

10 moves: 7 lines
11 moves: 7 lines

12 moves: 6 lines
> 12 moves: 2 lines

Source games
Line 1: Spassky - Polugaevsky, USSR Ch 1961
Line 2: Pachman - Fischer, Portoroz 1958
Line 3: Based on Steinitz-Paulsen, Baden Baden 1870 
Line 4: Karpov - Spassky, Moscow 1973

Line 5: Euwe - Alekhine, World championship match 1935 (g30)

Line 6: Byrne - Fischer, New York 1966

Line 7: Own pick, taken from a theoretical article on Chesspublishing.com

Line 8: Fischer - Geller, Skopje 1967

Line 9: Own pick, taken from my Rebel openingbook

Line 10: Morphy - Consultants, 1858

Line 11: Own pick, theme: if black can get away with 2... c6, then 1. e4 d5 must be a draw

Line 12: Karpov-Dorfman, Moscow 1976

Line 13: Kopylov - Koroliov, correspondence USSR 1981-83

Line 14: Alekhine - Capablanca, AVRO tournament Holland 1938

Line 15: Euwe - Alekhine, World championship match 1935 (g10)

Line 16: Alekhine - Levenfish, Karlsbad 1911

Line 17: Tartakower - Bogoljubow, London 1927

Line 18: Tarrasch - Mieses, Baden Baden 1925

Line 19: Karpov - Korchnoi, Candidates final 1974 (g2)

Line 20: Euwe - Alekhine, World championship match 1935 (g8)

Line 21: Fischer - Seidman, New York 1959

Line 22: Alekhine - Yates, Hamburg 1910

Line 23: Fischer - Evans, New York 1963

Line 24: Sultan Khan - Menchik, Hastings 1932

Line 25: Own pick, taken from a GM Sadler video

Line 26: Botvinnik - Bronstein, World championship match 1951 (g21)

Line 27: Euwe - Yates, Hastings 1931

Line 28: Euwe - Alekhine, World championship match 1937 (g19)

Line 29: Capablanca - Dus Khotimirsky, St Petersburg 1913 

Line 30: Alekhine - Grigoriev, Moscow 1919

Line 31: Burn - Tarrasch, Vienna 1898

Line 32: Tarrasch - Tartakower, Berlin 1920

Line 33: Fischer - Najdorf, Santa Monica 1966

Line 34: Englisch - Tarrasch, Hamburg 1885

Line 35: Fischer - Udovcic, Bled 1961

Line 36: Euwe - Alekhine, World championship match 1935 (g26, the pearl of Zandvoort)

Line 37: Schlechter - Tarrasch, Monte Carlo 1903

Line 38: Lasker - Napier, Cambridge Springs 1904 (with a little twist) 

Line 39: Karpov - Tseshkovsky, Moscow 1976

Line 40: Kasparov - Andersson, Tilburg 1981

Line 41: Tal - Fischer, Candidates tournament, Zagreb 1959

Line 42: Euwe - Najdorf, Candidates tournament, Zürich 1953

Line 43: Own pick

Line 44: Korchnoi - Karpov, Moscow 1971

Line 45: Spassky - Fischer, World championship match 1972 (g3)

Line 46: Zinner - Alekhine, Podebrady 1936

Line 47: Fischer - Tal, Candidates tournament, Curacao 1962

Line 48: Reshevsky - Botvinnik, Moscow 1946

Line 49: Alekhine - Nimzowitsch, Vilnius 1912

Line 50: Karpov - Hort, Malta 1980

Update: new version of openingbook Rebel.bin

Hi all,

Here is an update of Rebel.bin, the polyglot openingbook I made for Rebel in 2022. With lots of improvements, additions and new stuff. For more information visit my previous posting about the Rebel book:

https://blogchess2016.blogspot.com/2022/10/a-new-noomen-openingbook-for-rebel.html

Download link:

Openingbook Rebel.bin

To browse through the book you need a GUI that supports polyglot books. An example is SCID:

SCID

Enjoy the new book!

TCEC 24 superfinal opening PGN available

Here you can download the TCEC 24 superfinal book, made by International Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and Jeroen Noomen. Both selected 25 lines for this book. The odd numbered lines are by GM Sadler, the even numbered ones by Jeroen.

Stockfish held it's title by beating Leela Chess Zero in the superfinal. The margin was small, though. It has been a while since there was such a close superfinal, we have to go back to season 14, when Stockfish also beat Leela, but with only a one point difference.

TCEC 24 superfinal book

Opening PGN TCEC S24 Premier Division

Here you can download Jeroen Noomen's TCEC season 24 Premier Division book:

Noomen S24 DivP book

This PGN contains 112 lines with a high-very high bias. Each round of four lines has a specific theme. F.e. round 1 = King's Indian, round 2 = Sicilian and so forth.

Also available: the TCEC season 24 Premier Division Playoff book and all the games of the Premier Division without comments:

Noomen S24 DivP playoff book

Games Premier Division S24 in PGN

Enjoy testing!

TCEC 24 superfinal book, by GM Matthew Sadler and Jeroen Noomen

The TCEC 24 superfinal book was again developed in cooperation between international chess Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and myself (Jeroen Noomen). 

Here is the most important information about our book:

• The TCEC 24 superfinal book was completed on December 5th, 2022. Both Matthew and I have chosen 25 lines, which will be played alternately. Matthew's lines are #1, #3, #5 and so forth, my lines are #2, #4, #6 and so forth. 
• The lines are ordered in such a way that the lower book exits will be followed by much higher book exits. Furthermore the highest exits are played randomly through the superfinal, to avoid long strings of draws.
• All important openings will be played; just like in the previous TCEC superfinals the opening lines are risky and have a high - very high bias. This is necessary to avoid an excessive number of uninteresting draws. Lines with a low bias won't work in a TCEC superfinal, such lines will inevitably lead to two draws.
• In my opinion the S24 superfinal book is - on average - the riskiest Matthew and I have made. Thus it wouldn't surprise me if we might see a record number of wins. And maybe also a record number of 'busted' lines (i.e. a 1-0 1-0 or 0-1 0-1 result), but that is the price of high risk.
• Although this superfinal book has the highest average bias, we still used a wide variety of exits. I.e. not all exits are very high bias. We like to see engines fighting for wins, also from lower biased openings.
• The chosen lines typically have a length between 2 moves and 14 moves; there is one line which is 2 moves (4 ply) long and there is one line which is 14 moves long. 
• Four opening lines have a black advantage, to increase the chance of a black win.
• Average move length is 6.76, which is a bit higher compared to the previous superfinal.
• We have avoided positions that could lead to many exchanges, as well as positions with a symmetrical pawn structure and positions that could lead to easy wins for the side with an advantage. It's becoming more and more difficult to pick suitable lines for TCEC superfinals, with strong hardware, a long time control, 7-men tablebases and engines being so strong. As our book is the riskiest we have made, it's very well possible a couple of our picks might lead to easy wins.
• Our main goal is to have openings that will lead to interesting play with a reasonable chance of a decisive result. An opening result of 1.5-0.5 is the preferred outcome. Enjoy the TCEC 24 superfinal!

 

ECO code distribution

ECO A: 9 lines

ECO B: 13 lines

ECO C: 12 lines

ECO D: 7 lines

ECO E: 9 lines

Move length distribution

2 moves: 1 line

3 moves: 2 lines

4 moves: 5 lines

5 moves: 11 lines

6 moves: 5 lines

7 moves: 9 lines

8 moves: 5 lines

9 moves: 3 lines

10 moves: 4 lines

>10 moves: 5 lines