In the organizer’s account of Chess Machines Cup II, 30 of 37 games ended in threefold repetition, meaning the same position appeared three times and the game was drawn. The organizer, Evgenii, writes that weak models shuffle pieces back and forth when they have no plan. That is his interpretation of one event. It is not a demonstrated cause, and it does not show how small language models play chess in general.
How the games were run
- The models played through API calls. They had no chess engine and no tools available during play.
- Each move had a 60-second limit.
- Stockfish was used after the games to measure average centipawn loss per move. The organizer treats a lower figure as better.
Those conditions matter for reading the repetition figure. A model that has to produce a legal move from text alone, inside a clock, has a narrower path to a varied game than one with a board engine doing the checking.
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Cup II standings
Ten models took part. The standings below are as the organizer published them.
| Model | Points |
|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Flash (0423) | 6 |
| Ministral 3B | 5.5 |
| Gemma 4 31B | 5.5 |
| Mistral Small 3.2 24B | 5.5 |
| Solar Pro 4 | 5 |
| Hy3 | 4.5 |
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | 4.5 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 4.5 |
| Granite 4.2 8B | 4 |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 0 (after disqualification) |
The field mixes model families and names that suggest sizes from 3B to 31B. “Small” in the title is the organizer’s label for the event, not a strict parameter cutoff.
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Cup II compared with Cup I
The organizer also compares Cup II with Cup I, which he describes as the event with larger models. Both sets of figures are his own.
| Measure | Cup II | Cup I |
|---|---|---|
| Decisive games | 19% | 67% |
| Checkmates | 4 | 19 |
| Threefold-repetition draws | 30 | 15 |
| Average centipawn loss per move (lower is better) | 321 | 236 |
| Moves costing at least three pawns (share of moves) | 36% | 27% |
| Illegal first-try moves | 53% | 42% |
On the organizer’s metric, Cup II move quality was worse on average. The same event produced far fewer decisive results and far more repetition draws. The organizer gives one further comparison: Gemini 3.6 Flash averaged 37 centipawns lost in Cup I, while Gemma 4 31B, the best Cup II figure on that measure, averaged 247.
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Why the organizer thinks models repeat moves
The organizer’s explanation is one sentence: “When a weak model has no plan, it shuffles.” The mechanism he describes is simple. A model without a coherent goal moves a piece out and then back again, and the position recurs. Repeat that a few times with the same side to move and the game is drawn under the threefold rule.
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Latency and reasoning settings
The 60-second clock and one disqualification
The organizer reports that some reasoning models repeatedly came close to the 60-second limit. In one game, one model was disqualified after five moves without answering. That model is the one listed at zero points above.
Reasoning effort, token budgets and disabled reasoning
The organizer also reports that providers sometimes ignored reasoning-effort settings or a token budget. When reasoning was turned off entirely, responses came back in one to two seconds, and move quality stayed mid-table. These are observations from the event. The article does not present them as controlled latency tests.
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The 45-second retry rule from Cup III
For Cup III onward, the organizer describes a 45-second “kick.” If no move has arrived by then, the same attempt is resent with reasoning disabled, so a move can still land inside the 60-second limit. The organizer says such a retry would not count as a failure. This rule is described for later events, not for Cup II.
Games annulled after a provider rate limit
Three games were annulled after an inference provider rate-limited the event. The organizer describes replaying those games under the event’s rules. This shows that provider availability affected how the live event ran. It says nothing about the models’ chess ability.
What the figures can and cannot support
- Source. The article is a first-party account by the event organizer, published on DEV Community on September 23, 2026. Its counts have not been independently verified.
- Comparability. Cup I and Cup II had different model sets, and the article gives too little protocol detail to treat the two events as a controlled experiment. Cross-event figures such as the 37 and 247 centipawn comparison should be read as the organizer’s own numbers.
- Causation. The repetition pattern is reported for one event. Nothing here shows that the same thing happens with other models, other prompts or other clock settings.
- Dates. The event schedule in the organizer’s article is time-sensitive. Check that article for current dates before acting on any listed schedule.
The honest reading is narrow: in this event, most games were drawn by repetition, decisive results were scarce, and the organizer attributes that to models without a plan. Whether that pattern holds beyond Cup II is a question the published material does not answer.
Quick Recap
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