8B Model Beats Frontier LLMs: Replit CEO's Chess Engine Hits 1500 Elo

amasad · x · 2026-08-02

Replit CEO Amjad Masad developed an LLM chess engine powered by an 8B parameter model, now autonomously playing against humans and bots on Lichess.

The engine has reached a 1500 Elo rating, consistently beating Stockfish level 0 and frontier models using high reasoning and response chaining. Notably, the smaller model spends only 1-2 seconds per move, significantly outperforming larger models' 30-second thinking time.

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