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.
The Real #2 Chess Engine
Moderator: Ras
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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
-Jonathan
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Damir
- Posts: 2924
- Joined: Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:53 pm
- Location: Denmark
- Full name: Damir Desevac
Re: The Real #2 Chess Engine
Hi AndrewAndrewGrant wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:22 amI imagine the list is fake, because I have not provided Torch to any such list.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?
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.
There is an engine called Torch on github. Maybe he was using that one?
https://github.com/0wwafa/torch-v2/releases/tag/v1
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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
Firstly: Clearly not, since the entire list is fabricated.Damir wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 3:13 pmHi AndrewAndrewGrant wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 4:22 amI imagine the list is fake, because I have not provided Torch to any such list.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?
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.
There is an engine called Torch on github. Maybe he was using that one?
https://github.com/0wwafa/torch-v2/releases/tag/v1
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.