Checkmate: Fine-tune your own small language model for real-time chess reasoning and gameplay on AWS Trainium
About the Event
What happens when you combine the power of AWS Trainium with the creativity of chess reasoning?
Join us at NeurIPS 2025 for Checkmate: Fine-tune Your Own Small Language Model for Real-Time Chess Gameplay, a hands-on workshop that brings model fine-tuning, inference, and competition together in one immersive experience.
You’ll learn how to fine-tune your own chess-playing language model using AWS Trainium, visualize real-time gameplay, and even compete on a live leaderboard hosted by AIcrowd and AGI House. Whether you’re a researcher, developer, or AI enthusiast, this session will challenge you to think strategically, both in code and on the chessboard.
What to Expect
🧠 Hands-on Fine-Tuning Experience
Access your own AWS environment via a QR code and fine-tune a small LLM (Qwen-based) to play chess in real time.
🧩 Live Demos & Deep Dives
Watch how AWS Trainium accelerates model training and inference, with a focus on reasoning and gameplay optimization.
🏆 Real-Time Chess Competition
Submit your model to the AIcrowd leaderboard, see it compete against others, and track your ELO score live.
🤝 Networking Opportunity
Meet AI builders, researchers, and engineers exploring reasoning models and fine-tuning on AWS.
Agenda
Time (PST) Session
12:00 PM Welcome and Setup (access to AWS Workshop Studio)
12:10 PM Introduction: AWS Trainium & the Power of Post-Training
12:30 PM Workshop: Fine-Tune Your Chess Model on AWS Trainium
1:00 PM Chess Model Submissions & Live Leaderboard Demo
1:15 PM Grandmaster Commentary + Closing Remarks
1:30 PM Workshop Ends
Speakers
Emily Webber - Principal Solutions Architect, AWS AI/ML
Yida Wang - Principal Applied Scientist, AWS AI/ML
Jim Burtoft - Sr WW Specialist SA, AWS AI/ML
Nithin Vijeaswaran - WW Specialist SA, AWS AI/ML
Megan McKenzie - Associate SA, AWS AI/ML
SP Mohanty - Co-founder, AICrowd
Rocky Yu - AGI House
Notes
Please bring a physical, government-issued photo ID to access the conference. All participants must be registered with the NeurIPS conference to attend.
Attendees must be 18 or older.
Limited seating available — early registration is encouraged.
Wi-Fi and AWS access will be provided.
Co-hosted by
AWS | AIcrowd | AGI House | NeurIPS 2025