In December 2017 Google subsidiary DeepMind shocked the chess world when it announced that its neural network AlphaZero had soundly defeated the then-champion Stockfish 8 in internal tests. While many pointed out that Stockfish 8′s play settings were far from optimal, DeepMind had certainly demonstrated that traditional chess programs could be challenged by deep learning algorithms. It was clear that a new and powerful class of chess-playing software had emerged – the Neural Network (NN) chess engines.
Season 13 of TCEC with two NN engines
For the first time ever the TCEC competition is going to see two NN engines competing. This will be Leela Chess Zero and DeusX (see the full participants list here)
Deus X, the chess engine by Albert Silver, is a new neural network that will be debuting this season. This is the first version of the engine, yet the author believes his chess engine is ready to compete with the strongest in the field. Deus X starts its participation in TCEC this August 3rd and you can watch it live on the official website and the Twitch TV channel
Interview with Albert Silver, author of Deus X
Bonus question – guess the name of the intro track, the artist, and the year of release