Editing Chess engine (section)

===Tournaments===
The results of computer tournaments give one view of the relative strengths of chess engines. However, tournaments do not play a statistically significant number of games for accurate strength determination. In fact, the number of games that need to be played between fairly evenly matched engines, in order to achieve significance, runs into the thousands and is, therefore, impractical within the framework of a tournament.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mizarchessengine.com/columns/testing-a-chess-engine/|title=mizarchessengine.com<!-- Bot generated title -->|access-date=25 September 2016|archive-date=29 January 2013|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130129173958/http://www.mizarchessengine.com/columns/testing-a-chess-engine/|url-status=usurped}}</ref> Most tournaments also allow any types of hardware, so only engine/hardware combinations are being compared.

Historically, commercial programs have been the strongest engines. If an amateur engine wins a tournament or otherwise performs well (for example, [[Zappa (chess)|Zappa]] in 2005), then it is quickly commercialized. Titles gained in these tournaments garner much prestige for the winning programs, and are thus used for marketing purposes. However, after the rise of [[Volunteer computing|volunteer]] [[distributed computing]] projects such as [[Leela Chess Zero]] and [[Stockfish (chess)|Stockfish]] and testing frameworks such as FishTest and OpenBench in the late 2010s, [[free and open source]] programs have largely displaced commercial programs as the strongest engines in tournaments.

====List of tournaments====
Current tournaments include:
* [[Top Chess Engine Championship]] (TCEC)
* [[Chess.com#Chess.com Computer Chess Championship|Chess.com Computer Chess Championship]] (CCC)

Historic tournaments include:
* [[Dutch Open Computer Chess Championship]]
* [[Internet Chess Club#Internet Computer Chess Tournament|Internet Computer Chess Tournament]] (CCT)
* [[International Paderborn Computer Chess Championship]]
* [[North American Computer Chess Championship]]
* [[World Computer Chess Championship]] (WCCC and WCSC)
** [[World Computer Speed Chess Championship]]