Division 2 is being played, the engines are stronger and the competition is harder. After 10 rounds it seems that Leela is going to win this division, but the second engine to promote could be any of KomodoMCTS, ChessBrain or Xiphos. The other 4 engines (Gull, Nirvana, Booot and Texel) are all in danger of relegation.
We follow the round 11 game Xiphos - KomodoMCTS, the reverse game was a draw. The book sequence is a QGD semi Slav defense, a popular opening line.
move 10: KomodoMCTS diverges from the reverse game in its first move out of book, choosing a less popular line. Its second move takes the game to a very rare line in human games.
move 15: Xiphos castled long, opposite direction castling may result in a fighting game, evals are low so far. KomodoMCTS opened the center, no pawn pushes so far by both engines.
move 24: Xiphos' eval increased a little, but it doesn't seem to have a plan so far. The engines exchanged all bishops and opened the position. There are many open files and the rooks are in danger of being exchanged soon.
move 31: Xiphos gave a pawn for some initiative on the king side. One pair of rooks was exchanged and only QRN vs QRN remain. I think the game is heading for a draw.
move 40: Now the queens are off, Xiphos is still a pawn down yet its eval is still around 0.4. The engines cleared more pawns and Xiphos is a pawn up, with two pawns on the queen side while KomodoMCTS has one pawn on the king side. KomodoMCTS captures one of the white pawns, Xiphos' eval jumps to around 1, I think it is delusional.
move 47: Xiphos' eval jumps over 2, KomodoMCTS reduces to a tablebase draw.
This result keeps the tension at the top of the table, the race for 2nd place is very close.
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