ICGA Tournament Rules

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The ICGA Tournament Rules apply to World Computer Chess Championship and slightly adapted to World Chess Software Championship.

=WCCC 2007= Excerpt from the WCCC 2007 Tournament Rules
 * 1) Each entry is a computing system and one or more humans who programmed it. At least one of the program developers should attend the WCCC to operate the program, otherwise the entry fee for the program is doubled.
 * 2) Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details. Programs which are discovered to be close derivatives of others (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice. For this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must be available on demand to the Tournament Director.
 * 3) Participants are required to attend an organizational meeting on June 11, 2007 prior to the start of the tournament for the purpose of officially registering for the tournament. Operational rules will be finalized at that meeting.
 * 4) The format of each tournament and the rate of play will generally be determined by the Tournament Director according to the number of programs entered and any other relevant factors. The 15th World Computer-Chess Championship (WCCC) will be a Swiss-system event with 11 rounds in which the rate of play will be 60 moves in 2 hours followed by the rest of the game in 30 minutes.
 * 5) An operator error made when starting a game or in the middle of a game can be corrected only with the approval of the Tournament Director. If an operator enters an incorrect move, the Tournament Director must be notified immediately. Both clocks will be stopped. The game must then be backed up to where the error occurred. Clocks will be corrected and the settings at the time when the error occurred will be reinstated using whatever information is available. Both sides may then adjust their program parameters with the approval of the Tournament Director. The Tournament Director may allow certain program parameters to be changed.
 * 6) All monitors must be positioned so that the operator’s activities are clearly visible to the opponent. An operator may only: [a] enter moves, [b] respond to a request from the computer for clock information, and [c] synchronize the computer clock to the normal chess clock. Misuse of this rule will be punished by the Tournament Director. If an operator needs to enter other information, it must be approved ahead of time by the Tournament Director. The operator may not query the system to see if it is alive without the permission of the Tournament Director.
 * 7) A team must receive permission from the Tournament Director to change from one computing system to another.
 * 8) Tie-breaking: (a) if precisely two participants are tied for first place, two play-off games of one hour per side are to be played. At the longest, such a match may take four hours. Should that match be drawn, then one sudden death game should be played (White 12 minutes, Black 10 minutes); (b) whenever two or more teams have an equal number of points, a tie-ranking order is defined as follows. The dominant ranking is by the sum of the opponents’ scores. If there is still a tie, the sum of the respective programs’ cumulative scores after each round (i.e., score after round-1 + score after round-2 + …. + score after last-round) will be used; (c) if three or more participants are tied for first place, then the two participants ranked most highly are to be determined by the tie-ranking order in (b). This pair of participants then play off as in (a).
 * 9) For the play-off procedure for the first place as given in rule 8, the colour assignment is as follows. In the first match game the colours are reversed with respect to the game played in the tournament. In the sudden-death game the following rules apply: (1) if possible, the colour division in the tournament (play-off match inclusive) will be settled at 7 – 7; if this is impossible then (2) the colours of the game played in the tournament will be reversed.

=WCCC 2019= Excerpt from the WCCC 2019 Tournament Rules
 * 1) Each entry is a computing system and one or more humans who programmed it. In the computer system there is no restriction on the hardware. At least one of the program developers should attend the WCCC to operate the program, otherwise (i.e., for operators who are not developers of the program they are operating) the entry fee for the program is doubled.
 * 2) Each program must be the original work of the entering developers, possibly with the inclusion of game playing code and/or data from other sources for which the entering developers have a legal right of use. Developers whose code is derived from or includes (1) game-playing code; and/or (2) data written by others, must name (a) all the other developers of whom they are aware; and (b) the source of such code and/or data, in their tournament registration details.  Programs which are discovered to be undeclared derivatives of others may be designated invalid by the Tournament Director if he is convinced, after seeking advice if he feels that to be necessary, that the closeness of derivation is of such a level as to constitute unfair competition. A listing and an executable version of all game-related code and data running on the system must be available on demand to the Tournament Director prior to the start of and during the tournament. The Tournament Director has the right to submit the executable version of a program for testing for similarity with other known programs, and/or to submit the listing to an expert or experts of his choosing for examination, also to determine similarity. Under all circumstances the Tournament Director will take all reasonable steps to ensure that any such listingand/or executable are treated as being strictly confidential.  The entering developers must keep a copy of the source code of their entry until at least one year following the date of conclusion of the tournament, in order to be able to respond accurately to any questions about the source code that might be raised after the event by the Tournament Director. In case you are using neural networks in any form, we request participants to inform the organisation about the way the neural networks are being used in the program.
 * 3) Participants are required to attend an organizational meeting on August 10, 2019 prior to the start of the tournament for the purpose of officially participating in the tournament. Operational rules (such as members of the Committee of Appeal) will be finalized at that meeting
 * 4) The format of the tournament follows from rule 2 of the General Rules (WCCC). The rate of play will generally be determined by the Tournament Director according to the number of programs entered and any other relevant factors. The 25th World Computer-Chess Championship (WCCC) is assumed to be an all-play-all tournament in which the rate of play will be all moves in 1 hour 45 minutes plus an increment of 15 seconds per move. The increment starts at move 1, i.e., the clock should be used during opening-book play.
 * 5) An operator may ask the Tournament Director to stop clocks at most twice during a game because of hardware problems or network problems. The operator can ask the Tournament Director for permission to restart the program. When restarting after a failure of any kind, the operator must reset all parameters as closely as possible to their values at the time the game was interrupted. Play must resume after at most a fifteen-minute delay. If operators using a remote computer can clearly establish that the network problems are not in their own computing system, but in the communication network, the Tournament Director can permit additional delay.
 * 6) An operator error made when starting a game or in the middle of a game can be corrected only with the approval of the Tournament Director. If an operator enters an incorrect move, the Tournament Director must be notified immediately. Both clocks will be stopped. The game must then be backed up to where the error occurred. Clocks will be corrected and the settings at the time when the error occurred will be reinstated using whatever information is available. Both sides may then adjust their program parameters with the approval of the Tournament Director. The Tournament Director may allow certain program parameters to be changed.
 * 7) All monitors must be positioned so that the operator’s activities are clearly visible to the opponent. An operator may only: [a] enter moves, [b] respond to a request from the computer for clock information, and [c] under supervision of the (assistant) Tournament Director synchronize the computer clock to the normal chess clock. Misuse of this rule will be punished by the Tournament Director. If an operator needs to enter other information, it must be approved ahead of time by the Tournament Director. The operator may not query the system to see if it is alive without the permission of the Tournament Director.
 * 8) A team must receive permission from the Tournament Director to change from one computing system to another.
 * 9) Tie-breaking: (a) if precisely two participants are tied for first place, two play-off games of 30minutes plus 15 seconds per move per side are to be played. At the longest, such a match may take four hours. Should that match be drawn, then another two play-off games are to be played as given in the table below until there is a winner; (b) if more than two participants have an equal number of points, a tie-ranking order is defined as follows. The dominant ranking is by the Sonnenborn-Berger scores; (c) the two participants ranked most highly by the tie-ranking order in (b) will then play off as in (a). An analogous tie-breaking procedure applies for establishing the second place and, if necessary, the third place.
 * 10) For the play-off procedure for the first place as given in rule 9, the colour assignment is drawn by lots before each of the matches played.

=On Original Work= There have been discussions and expansions of the Tournament Rules periodically in the ICGA Journal. In particular, in his explanation of the 2006 Lion++ case Jaap van den Herik notes that the latter clauses in the above are not to be construed as the totality of the notion of "original":


 * (Ad 1) “original work of the entering developers”. If they had included Fabien Letouzey (with his permission) in the list of authors, there would have been no concerns. Since they had not done so, the discussion was on “original work”. Clearly, the main part of the program LION++ 1.5 was not their original work. However, rule 2 had five more lines, which the team perceived as an explanation of the notion “original” (see ad 2 and ad 3).

=Publications=
 * The Board of ICGA (2013). Rules for the 20th World Computer-Chess Championship. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1, pdf

=Forum Posts=
 * ICGA Rule 2 discussion by Robert Hyatt, CCC, February 21, 2014

=References= Up one level