| --- |
| license: apache-2.0 |
| datasets: |
| - mlabonne/chessllm |
| library_name: transformers |
| tags: |
| - chess |
| pipeline_tag: text-generation |
| base_model: |
| - FlameF0X/ChessSLM |
| --- |
| |
| <div align="center"> |
| <img src="https://cdn-uploads.huggingface.co/production/uploads/6615494716917dfdc645c44e/IEb4W62mlcCFKom7Fd4qi.jpeg" alt="NanoRS Banner" style="width: 100%; max-width: 100%; height: auto; display: inline-block; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em; reading-order: 20px; border-radius: 20px;"/> |
| </div> |
| <br> |
| |
| # ChessSLM |
|
|
| **ChessSLM-PM** is a small language model build on top of **ChessSLM**, designed to play chess using natural language move generation. |
| Despite having only **30M parameters**, it is capable of competing with and occasionally outperforming larger language models in chess-playing tasks. |
|
|
| The model is based on the **ChessSLM** and was *fine-tuned* on **441,000 chess games** rated over 2000 elo from the `mlabonne/chessllm` dataset using **SAN (Standard Algebraic Notation)**. |
|
|
| Play against ChessSLM [here](https://flamef0x.github.io/other/chess). |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Overview |
|
|
| - **Architecture:** GPT-2 |
| - **Parameters:** ~30M |
| - **Training data:** 441k chess games rated over 2000 elo |
| - **Notation:** SAN (Standard Algebraic Notation) |
| - **Task:** Autoregressive chess move generation |
|
|
| ChessSLM demonstrates that **specialized small language models can perform competitively in narrow domains** such as chess. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Capabilities |
|
|
| ChessSLM can play chess by generating moves sequentially in SAN notation. |
| It has been evaluated in matches against several language models, including: |
|
|
| - Claude [Won against it] |
| - Gemini [Lost again it] |
| - Qwen |
| - GPT-2 |
| - GPT-Neo |
| - Pythia |
| - LLaMA |
| - Mistral |
| - other small chess-oriented models |
|
|
| The model achieves an averaging rating of **around {tba} Elo** against other language models despite its small size. |
|
|
| --- |
| | Model | Elo Rating | |
| | ------------------------------ | ---------- | |
| | **FlameF0X/ChessSLM** | 1154 | |
| | DedeProGames/mini-chennus | 1114 | |
| | EleutherAI/pythia-70m-deduped | 1099 | |
| | nlpguy/smolchess-v2 | 1092 | |
| | DedeProGames/dialochess | 1078 | |
| | nlpguy/amdchess-v9 | 1073 | |
| | mlabonne/grandpythia-200k-70m | 1065 | |
| | **FlameF0X/ChessSLM-PM** | 1055 | |
| | DedeProGames/Chesser-248K-Mini | 1050 | |
| | bharathrajcl/chess_llama_68m | 1048 | |
| | **FlameF0X/ChessSLM-RL** | 1047 | |
| | distilbert/distilgpt2 | 1047 | |
| | Mattimax/EliaChess-70m | 1047 | |
| | HuggingFaceTB/SmolLM2-135M | 1042 | |
| | nlpguy/amdchess-v5 | 1041 | |
| | facebook/opt-125m | 1041 | |
| | EleutherAI/pythia-14m | 1037 | |
| | DedeProGames/chennus | 1034 | |
| | Smilyai-labs/Smily-ultra-1 | 1034 | |
| | huyvux3005/chessllm_FPT | 1034 | |
| --- |
| |
| ## Limitations |
| |
| Like many language-model-based chess systems, ChessSLM has several limitations: |
| |
| - **Illegal move hallucinations:** The model may occasionally generate moves that violate chess rules. |
| - **No board-state verification:** Moves are generated purely from learned patterns rather than a validated game state. |
| - **Limited strategic depth:** While competitive at lower Elo levels, it cannot match dedicated chess engines. |
| |
| These limitations are common for **pure language-model chess agents** that do not use external rule engines. |
| |
| ## Summary |
| |
| ChessSLM shows that **very small language models can achieve meaningful chess performance** when trained on domain-specific data. |
| It serves as a lightweight baseline for exploring **LLM-based chess agents** and **specialized small language models (SLMs)**. |
