Noomen TCEC 26 books available

 Hi chess engine fans,

Below you can download the TCEC 26 Premier Division book and the TCEC 26 superfinal book made by Jeroen Noomen.

TCEC 26 Premier Division

Noomen S26 DivP book


TCEC 26 Superfinal

Noomen S26 superfinal book

TCEC 26 superfinal book: 50 chess classics

The TCEC 26 superfinal book was made by Jeroen Noomen in cooperation with Windfishballad. It will be a continuation of the trend I started in season 25: the selected 50 opening lines are from famous Grandmasters of the past. In the list below you can see which famous grandmaster features in which line. The TCEC 26 superfinal will be a kind of tribute to ex-worldchampion Mikhail Tal: 18 of the lines were taken from Tal's games.

In the TCEC 25 superfinal it became clear to me that my usual method wasn't working anymore. Around half of the lines gave a much higher or much lower exit than I anticipated, which made me conclude that it is impossible on my own hardware to estimate the book exit correctly. Hence I asked for help and Windfishballad kindly helped me to analyse several hundredths of chess classics on his very fast hardware, using Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero. From these lines I selected the ones that had the best exits, or the most interesting main lines, or where there was a big difference in exit evaluation, or where engines diverged quite quickly, or a combination of these factors.

Average length of the lines is 8.5 moves, which is slightly lower than the S25 superfinal book, but still quite high. 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.

Exits: 43 lines have a Stockfish exit evaluation between +0.82 and +1.01. 1 line is below +0.82 and 7 lines are above +1.01. Thus we have a nice mix of different exits. Note: this are the exits on Windfishballad's machine, the real exits in TCEC might be different due to a different Stockfish version, longer or shorter thinking time, contempt etc. 

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

Personal favourites: my all time favourite lines of this superfinal are #3, #20 and #38.

Higher/lower book exits: the lines were randomly put into the book, but in general a lower exit will be followed by a higher exit.

ECO code distribution

ECO A: 12 lines

ECO B: 14 lines

ECO C: 9 lines

ECO D: 7 lines

ECO E: 8 lines

Move length distribution

3 moves: 1 line

4 moves: 1 line

5 moves: 4 lines

6 moves: 4 lines

7 moves: 9 lines

8 moves: 8 lines

9 moves: 3 lines

10 moves: 9 lines
11 moves: 4 lines

12 moves: 5 lines
> 12 moves: 2 lines

Featured games:
1: Tal - Moran, WCh U26, Upsala 1956
2: Fischer - Tal, Candidates tournament 1959
3: Bobotsov - Tal, WCh U26, Varna 1958
4: Dobropistsev - Botvinnik, Leningrad 1926
5: Borisenko - Tal, USSR Ch 1964
6: Fischer - Rossolimo, New York 1965
7: Stern - Anderssen, Frankfurt 1878
8: Fischer - Perez Perez, Capablanca Memorial 1965
9: Tal - Larichev, Latvian Ch 1954
10: Anand - Karpov, Candidates 1991
11: Tal - Krogius, USSR Ch 1956
12: Tal - Adamski, Lublin 1974
13: Lasker - Chigorin, Hastings 1895
14: Mason - Anderssen, Paris 1878
15: Botvinnik - Lombardy, Olympiad Leipzig 1960

16: Prins - Tartakower, Hastings 1945/46
17: Korchnoi - Tal, Candidates Moscow 1968
18: Belavenets - Botvinnik, USSR Ch 1939
19: Euwe - Alekhine, Worldchampionship 1935, game 14
20: Deep Blue - Kasparov, 6th matchgame New York 1997
21: Alekhine - Euwe, Amsterdam m 1926
22: Savon - Tal, Moscow 1971
23: Kasparov - Short, London 1987
24: Aronson - Tal, USSR Ch 1957
25: Kmoch - Alekhine, Amsterdam 1936
26: Anderssen - Zukertort, Aachen 1868
27: Benko - Fischer, Portoroz 1958
28: Tal - Hort, Moscow 1975
29: Botvinnik - Ragozin, Moscow 1947
30: Tal - Padevsky, Moscow 1963
31: Nimzowitsch - Alekhine, New York 1927
32: Keres - Botvinnik, Moscow 1956
33: Timman - Spassky, Hamburg TV 1982
34: Morphy - Loewenthal, London 1858
35: Yudovich - Botvinnik, Leningrad 1934
36: Botvinnik - Panov, Leningrad 1939
37: Darga - Tal, Bled 1961
38: Timman - Karpov, Belfort 1988
39: Euwe - Alekhine, Worldchampionship 1935, game 20
40: Tal - Pohla, Parnu 1971 
41: Karpov - Timman, Amsterdam 1988
42: Anand - Koshy, India Ch 1988
43: Appel - Tartakower, Lodz 1938
44: Bondarevsky - Botvinnik, USSR Ch 1940
45: Tal - Taimanov, USSR Ch 1954
46: Taimanov - Tal, USSR Ch 1969
47: Tal - Bronstein, USSR Ch 1959
48: Nimzowitsch - Tartakower, Karlsbad 1929
49: Tal - Andersson, Wijk aan Zee 1976
50: Karpov - Seirawan, Roquebrune 1992