It is often regarded as the Unofficial World Computer Chess Championship because of its strong participant line-up and long time-control matches on high-end hardware, giving rise to very high-class chess.
[1][2] The tournament has attracted nearly all the top engines compared to the World Computer Chess Championship.
All engines run on mostly the same hardware[8] and use the same opening book, which is set by the organizers and changed in every stage.
[9] TCEC generates an Elo rating list from the matches played during the tournament.
There is no definite criterion for entering into the competition, other than inviting the top participants under active development from various rating lists which can run on their Linux platform.
Initially, the list of participants was personally chosen by Thoresen before the start of a season.