The Real #2 Chess Engine

Discussion of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines.

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jorose
Posts: 388
Joined: Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:21 pm
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Full name: Jonathan Rosenthal

Re: The Real #2 Chess Engine

Post by jorose »

I think a lot of things on that website stem from nothing but somebody's imagination. If you want some entertainment, you can check the past competition tab, where you will see that Torch v4 won the first two editions of the event back in 2014. It won this event ahead of Reckless, Integral v7, Caissa v1.24, and Plentychess v7.0.

Easily the most stacked event to ever take place in 2014. Poor Stockfish was relegated to 7th place. That event was truly ahead of its time.
-Jonathan
Damir
Posts: 2924
Joined: Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:53 pm
Location: Denmark
Full name: Damir Desevac

Re: The Real #2 Chess Engine

Post by Damir »

AndrewGrant wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:22 am
Mark Tang wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:27 am I happened to come across a ranking list that I had never seen before, which is called ICCRL (https://www.iccrl.org/rankings). And on the rank, I noticed an engine called Gillespie is #2, stronger than Torch and is only 1 elo behind Stockfish 17.1. Checking its official website(https://gillespie.alexdukas.dev/), The author Alexander Dukas wrote Gillespie employs a Mixture of Experts (MoE) NNUE architecture with five specialized neural networks, each trained on billions of positions from specific game phases,(seems like Cerberus on SPCC)which interests me a lot. Can anyone get this chess engine from the author and send it to me please?
I imagine the list is fake, because I have not provided Torch to any such list.

So it probably only exists to promote "Gillespie". Which itself sounds like its not an actual original work, just running 5 engines at once, and at that point you're basically just running Stockfish with extra steps.

A shame though, the site has a nice layout to it.
Hi Andrew

There is an engine called Torch on github. Maybe he was using that one?

https://github.com/0wwafa/torch-v2/releases/tag/v1
AndrewGrant
Posts: 1976
Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:08 am
Location: U.S.A
Full name: Andrew Grant

Re: The Real #2 Chess Engine

Post by AndrewGrant »

Damir wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:13 pm
AndrewGrant wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:22 am
Mark Tang wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:27 am I happened to come across a ranking list that I had never seen before, which is called ICCRL (https://www.iccrl.org/rankings). And on the rank, I noticed an engine called Gillespie is #2, stronger than Torch and is only 1 elo behind Stockfish 17.1. Checking its official website(https://gillespie.alexdukas.dev/), The author Alexander Dukas wrote Gillespie employs a Mixture of Experts (MoE) NNUE architecture with five specialized neural networks, each trained on billions of positions from specific game phases,(seems like Cerberus on SPCC)which interests me a lot. Can anyone get this chess engine from the author and send it to me please?
I imagine the list is fake, because I have not provided Torch to any such list.

So it probably only exists to promote "Gillespie". Which itself sounds like its not an actual original work, just running 5 engines at once, and at that point you're basically just running Stockfish with extra steps.

A shame though, the site has a nice layout to it.
Hi Andrew

There is an engine called Torch on github. Maybe he was using that one?

https://github.com/0wwafa/torch-v2/releases/tag/v1
Firstly: Clearly not, since the entire list is fabricated.
Secondly: That is not Torch, that is a watered down WASM build you get on chesscom analysis in 2024
Thirdly: Him hosting that is an unauthorized reproduction and redistribution of chesscom assets, infringing our copyright. If it mattered, I would send the legal team over to him.