Ethereal and ChessBrain promote to division 1, Arasan and Vajolet are relegated to division 3.
The final draw rate was 64.3%.
ChessBrain dominated the division from the start, consistently beating the weaker engines and almost never losing a game. This was quite a surprise, in season 12 ChessBrain was not so strong in division 2. The fact that ChessBrain is written in Visual Basic also makes it unique. Ethereal had a slow first half with only two wins. Then in RR3 it scored an outstanding 6.5/7 points and reached first place. Ethereal completed the division with no loss, similar to its result in division 3.
The race against relegation was much closer. After RR3 the bottom of the table was Texel -1, Gull -2, Arasan -3, Vajolet -4, Nirvana -6. Vajolet also had 2 early crashes, restricting the number of threads stopped it from being disqualified but this made it an automatic loser in tiebreaks. In round 22 Vajolet beat Nirvana in black, with the help of tablebase support that Nirvana didn't have. In the following rounds Vajolet lost twice to Ethereal and Xiphos while Gull blundered late in the game against ChessBrain in what should have been a draw. With 3 rounds left the scores were Texel -1, Gull -3, Arasan -3, Vajolet -5, Nirvana -7. In round 26 Nirvana converted an early pawn advantage against Arasan and opened up the race. Then in round 27 Nirvana beat Texel in black and Arasan lost again with a blunder against Xiphos. The scores before the last round were Texel -2, Gull -3, Arasan -5, Vajolet -5, Nirvana -5. Texel was safe, and after Nirvana and Arasan drew their games Gull was also safe, despite its loss to Ethereal. Vajolet needed a win in the last game against Texel, but after a long struggle it lost. The second relegation was decided by a tiebreaker, Arasan had one less win than Nirvana.
Division 1 will start soon with the engines Jonny, Chiron, Fizbo, Booot, Laser, Fritz, Ethereal and ChessBrainVB. Chiron crashed out of the premier division in season 12, if this problem has been fixed it will be very difficult to beat. Ethereal is still aiming higher, it will be interesting to see if it can promote for a third time this season.
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