"I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do. This game contributed to changing my perspective."
---
Personally I don't think that's strong enough reason to convince me that Niemann is a cheat. However, I would love to see more evidence before I change my position on this issue.
I agree. But at the same time it's absolutely destructive for other players playing a known cheater, spending so much energy on "is he cheating against me now?"
With how Hans responded to Carlsen's unorthodox opening and his history, it made Carlsen unsure and wrecked the rest of his game. And given Hans couldn't even explain his moves later..
The somewhat-concrete evidence is that analyzers have now found many instances where Niemann's moves correlate highly with engine-suggested moves.
I don't know the details as to whether that claim is credible. Is this correlation really any more for Niemann than any other grandmaster of similar strength? Are the analyzers cherry-picking data points that fit the narrative? And of course it is possible that Niemann is legitimately that good.
Reddit's /r/chess has loads of viewpoints and speculation, if you want to read more there.
There is a guy named Ken Regan who is one of the leading experts in this question of whether the correlation with engine moves is at a normal or abnormal level. His statement is that he analyzed the last two years of Hans' games and found no evidence of cheating. So, yeah, the people on Reddit are probably cherry picking.
The counter to that is that it looks likely that a clever high-level player could probably use an engine once or twice in a game in a judicious way and not raise statistical alarm bells. But still, Ken's work tries to suss out things like that--e.g. does the player in question make good moves in 'key' positions. Plus, continued use of such techniques over time would leave a statistical trail.
Honestly, Magnus' statement of, "well, he beat me and it didn't look like he was thinking hard" is pretty thin. Magnus knows that Hans has a history of cheating in online games when he was younger and to me it feels like he's just seeing ghosts and deep into confirmation bias territory. Especially since the game in question took place at a high-level tournament with rigorous anti-cheating scanning, etc.
Fabi (for those that don’t know, he’s another one of the best chess players in the world) gave a statement along the lines of, “I know of at least one case where I was certain cheating happened, and Regan’s analysis missed it, so take any of his analysis with a huge grain of salt.”
So here we have a whole bunch of the world’s best chess players and chess.com believing that Niemann repeatedly cheats, in addition to Niemann’s own admission to cheating in the past, and Regan taking the opposite stance.
Fabi also said (during the same interview, I'm sure) that he doesn't think Hans cheated. Your last statement there is really misleading and even dishonest.
No, it is not dishonest. Fabi said don’t trust Regan’s analysis. He also said that he didn’t think Hans cheated in that one game given the moves played (before Magnus gave his reasoning, so perhaps Fabi’s opinion would change). Fabi never said “Hans is not a cheater.” Rather, he argued it’s possible to cheat, and detection methods FIDE uses are not sufficient. If Hans is cheating, Fabi implied that Regan’s analysis likely wouldn’t catch it.
Magnus, Ian, and Hikaru at the very least have pretty openly (given the legal threats flying around) said/implied they believe Hans cheats, and chess.com has very explicitly said this.
Maybe not all of their comments and beliefs focus on this particular OTB game, but that’s not how you catch a cheater, since it’s rare to find a smoking gun. You look at a pattern of behavior. Hans has cheated in the past, and many top players believe he is cheating in some way, in at least some games, on a continued basis… which is why Magnus refuses to play Hans, and why we’re even having this discussion.
> If Hans is cheating, Fabi implied that Regan’s analysis likely wouldn’t catch it.
He implied that maybe it would not catch it. I don't read it as a "likely", especially given the fact that he said he doesn't think Hans cheated in this case.
Yeah. All nuance is out the window with this drama. Either you're one side or the other. Fabi seems to have been trying to take a nuanced stance, but it is being interpreted as him saying he thinks Hans cheated, which is not true at all.
having a history of cheating in a game that is mostly otherwise honor bound is a very very very bad sign. Don't be fooled by the "when he was younger" bit. Everything that you did you did when you were younger, it has been less time since hans was last caught cheating than the interval between that time and the previous one.
Don't let the statisticians convince you that they know what they're doing either. Statistics, as a discipline, is essentially predicated on the principle that the objects of study do not know that they are being observed. Without this assumption, the domain is now more accurately described as game theory. Statisticians will happily and confidently ignore this and draw very wrong conclusions as a result.
> Statistics, as a discipline, is essentially predicated on the principle that the objects of study do not know that they are being observed.
There is no such "principle" in statistics. Statistics is based on statistical methodology, i.e. formulas, models, and techniques that are used in statistical analysis of raw research data, which is collected, organized, analyzed, interpreted and presented. The Hawthorne effect, "a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed,"[1] arose from analysis of a statistical study.
> Without this assumption, the domain is now more accurately described as game theory.
Game theory is utilized for decision-making in strategic environments where rational agents interact with each other. Statistics, on the other hand, is employed for reasoning in non-adversarial settings where the samples are assumed to be generated by some stationary and non-reactive source.
> Statisticians will happily and confidently ignore this and draw very wrong conclusions as a result.
Contradiction. You've already claimed that statistics is "essentially predicated on the principle that the objects of study do not know that they are being observed." Yet now you're claiming experts "confidently" ignore their discipline's "essentially predicated" principle.
There is a difference between a subject that changes with observation and a subject that changes adversarially with your statistical methods. A qualitative difference.
Statistical methods may include observation during the gathering of data. Whether or not change is measurably different from adversarial change depends on the variables chosen. It is clear that two distinct disciplines can approach the same problem with varying results without invalidating the entire other discipline. There is a difference between sound argument and a straw man employing equivocation. A qualitative difference.
Sorry for the late reply, I had to collect my thoughts a bit and I'm quite busy.
First, I have not invalidated the discipline, I have said not to trust statisticians who are clearly acting outside the bounds of the fundamental assumptions of statistics, and that statistical methods DO NOT function on adversaries. Consider the following two scenarios:
1) Alice and Bob are sending messages to each other in a lanugage I don't understand, and I, using statistical methods, wish to find out what they are saying.
2) Alice and Bob are sending messages to each other and don't want me to gain any information about this messages. I, using statistical methods, wish to find out what they are saying.
In scenario 1, I am likely to succeed. In scenario 2, the consensus is that I'm fucked. In just about every way. I can't tell what they're saying, I can't tell that any message that I have discerned is meant to mislead me, or doesn't carry some additional message hidden in the entropy of the message that was meant to mislead me. I can't tell if the communication is just noise meant to distract me, and if we want to talk practically, I can't even tell if they can communicate. Basically the only inference that I can draw is that they can't communicate faster than the speed of light.
Here's another example: Gerrymandering. The scenario is that one party has a clear advantage in terms of number of representatives vs proportion of population. We must establish whether that number was arrived at fairly, or by cheating. We assume that the party in charge of drawing the borders knows what tests we can perform, because that is always the assumption that you give to an adversary.
The adversary has a very simple (though potentially computationally expensive) algorithm to run. Check all possible border configurations for both advantage and your cheat detection. Pick the one which maximizes advantage which does not pass the cheat threshold, or just whatever your utility is.
Statistics needs the assumption of good faith in order to operate. Anyone who uses statistical methods when that assumption that cannot be made is at best a bad statistician.
> statistical methods DO NOT function on adversaries.
I think this is the essence of your argument. This can be defeated with counter-example. Test cheaters are adversarial to any detection of their cheating, yet statistical analysis can expose the cheater without much issue.
i believe that we are on the same page about this claim, but it does not salvage statistics. Originally i claimed that what happens is it becomes game theory. That was a bit of a simplification, but it is illustrated by your example.
In this case, statistical methods cannot positively identify no cheating, and the extent to which they can identify instances of cheating, it is because the observed party was not acting adversarially.
The algorithm i presented anove for gerrymandering is very general.
> i believe that we are on the same page about this claim,
I don't see how that is possible
> but it does not salvage statistics.
Statistics does not need salvaging.
> Originally i claimed that what happens is it becomes game theory. That was a bit of a simplification, but it is illustrated by your example.
My cheating statistics example is a counter-example that defeats your argument.
> In this case, statistical methods cannot positively identify no cheating,
That is the entire point of cheating statistical analysis, to determine if cheating occurred. If cheating is not statistically identified, then the analysis shows "positively" that cheating hasn't occurred.
> and the extent to which they can identify instances of cheating, it is because the observed party was not acting adversarially.
Statistical analysis of cheating does not involve direct observation, and any cheater is adversarial by definition.
> The algorithm i presented anove for gerrymandering is very general.
On the contrary, it is not only specific, it does not support your argument. Politicians are not statisticians, and the depth of statistical analysis is notably shallow and has a single factor, party affiliation.
Statistics is a very old and complex discipline. It is technically a branch of mathematics. In advancing the argument that a biased statistician can produce incorrect results, or that statistics can not accurately study adversarial subjects, the underlying fallacy to these arguments is hasty generalization. As laymen, we can not invalidate an entire discipline or even speculate the limits of such a discipline based on such very specific and synthetic circumstances.
Nobody knows how he was cheating. Without a strip search there's no way to be sure.
It is known that it's not technologically impossible. There are ways to do it, some of them rather outlandish but not infeasible.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it can go. Either you start doing something really extreme to ensure that players can't cheat (that aforementioned strip search, making them play in a Faraday cage, etc), you'll never really know.
Even worse than that, the cheating may not have gone on during the match. It could have been as simple as old-fashioned spying: studying what preparations Carlsen had made, and learning their weaknesses before the match even starts.
You can't really prevent that. The best you can hope for is for a chess expert to opine that this move seems like an unlikely thing for a human to play without the assistance of a computer. Carlsen is just such an expert, but obviously his opinion alone is much too biased.
> Even worse than that, the cheating may not have gone on during the match. It could have been as simple as old-fashioned spying: studying what preparations Carlsen had made, and learning their weaknesses before the match even starts.
If your opponent is playing white and someone from their team tells you "He's going to open with X move", so that's the only one you have to prepare against, that goes a long way to eliminating white's advantage.
I am very sorry to see this position being posted. Niemann has been caught cheating in chess twice before, less than three years ago. He should never have been allowed to play in the cup. It was FIDE's decision not to collect the concrete evidence that would have caught him in the first place, and we must make do with the circumstantial evidence. As it stands, Niemann is a demonstrated cheater, and has more to gain by cheating in a game against the world champion than at any other time. It is very unlikey that Hans only cheated exactly the two times he was caught, and his failure to produce other instances than the times when he was caught are a mark against him.
Remember that we are not giving him the death penalty, we are just trying to establish which scenario is more likely. It is important to be able to render most likely judgments based on incomplete information. Its not a courtroom.
Niemann has admitted cheating, but only in online chess, not over the board.
That's not to say he should be allowed to play, but only to note that live play is kind of a different ball game compared to doing it online. Online, it's you alone in a room (with a second computer). Similar cheating over the board would require some kind of hidden communications device, and probably an assistant.
Wrong. I've stolen things (I'm sure you have too - theft can be really small!) does that mean I should be labeled a thief in perpetuity? Beyond that, does it mean that I should be publicly shamed for it?
If you have a criminal record, you will not be hired into certain jobs. Try getting a job in a cloud vendor such as AWS, Azure or GCP. They do background checks for a reason — you will have access to customer data of banks, the CIA, and other high-risk data. These cloud vendors have controls, and one of the controls is to not hire people who don't pass background checks.
So yes, if you have admitted to cheating in chess in the past, you lose certain privileges, such as competing in world chess championship.
It is not possible to prove unless the Chess Federation subjects players to cavity search. I don't think the Chess Federation wants to set such an extreme precedent. So, the alternative is to exclude people who have admitted to cheating in the past. That's not wrong or immoral. Cheating is immoral. Losing some privileges goes with the territory and should be expected.
Correct, it is not possible to prove. If Magnus had anything - anything - other than "I felt this way" and "he seems too chill" I would suspect something. Those things could be:
- Hans was walking weird (something in his shoe)
- He was making weird movements
- He was distracted, or similar, indicating he's messing with some device
etc... then sure.
Magnus did not say these things, and that is telling.
What I believe happened is Magnus (someone who has presented a lot of anxiety in the past - see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR-4_ouXUV4 but easy to find other examples) was really nervous that Hans may be cheating, and that impacted Magnus's play (he played a very poor game).
The largest state that we have successfully managed to isolate from communication with the rest of the universe is on the order of 15 qubits. I think you do not appreciate just how easy it is to get information through a channel. Or rather how difficult it would be to prove that such a channel was used.
This is, however, irrelevant. Hans Niemann is a chess cheat. Allowing him to set the narrative to "I've only cheated online" is the same as allowing him to set the narrative to "I've only ever cheated while wearing green clothes".
Edit: you've been breaking the HN guidelines a ton lately. If you keep that up, we're going to have to ban you. Please review the rules and stick to them so we don't have to do that.
I know the feeling, believe me, but from a mod perspective I can tell you that everyone always feels that way (myself included). It seems to be a hard-wired bias we all have. Therefore, everyone needs to make a conscious effort to follow the site guidelines despite that feeling (myself included). I appreciate your response!
We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. Your account is rate limited because it has done a ton of that.
All is not lost; if you use the site as intended for a while, i.e. posting substantive, thoughtful comments that follow the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), you'd be welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we can take a look and hopefully drop the rate limit.
Yeah, but imagine if the CEO of the store goes on twitter and talks about you when you try and visit the store at 19, and your name and face is in the news for the rest of your life!
I'm actually curious what the Chess.com statement would be - they seem to have some bombshell that's coming soon. Also curious how Hans' will react to all of this.
I am disappointed with Magnus. He is misusing the weight of his reputation even if cheating is a big deal in chess.
The first mistake was still choosing to play when he had reservations once Hans was invited. The second mistake was quitting the tournament and messing up the standings once he lost. The third mistake was making an insinuation through a tweet. The fourth mistake was resigning in two moves his next game with Hans.
Even though Hans is suspicious and untrustworthy, Magnus is taking on himself the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. If he is concerned about cheating being an issue, proactively bring up the issue, don't do it re-actively.
Yeah, the tone I'm getting from reading this basically boils down to "I was uncomfortable with how he played so I quit". Isn't that part of the metagaming in chess? Poker has always been about unnerving your opponent through stoicism or deception. I don't see why chess can't have the same layer of subtlety, and if it really concerns him then he should be able to wear a visor to block everything but the game board. Otherwise, just take your loss and stand your ground.
I want more of this metagaming in chess. That's one of the things I find interesting about Hans. His interviews suggest he's taking a sort of meta game approach. He suggested once a move of his against Alireza was a bluff because Alireza doesn't like attacking chess.
This is extremely common in high level chess. Every chess player will study their opponents history and recent play patterns and practice against that.
Hans claimed he studied against Magnus' opening because Magnus had played it a few months ago. It turns out Magnus has never used that opening in a recorded game. The dialog has now changed to "well by move 20 the board state became identical to a previous Magnus game" but Hans didn't say he spotted the similarities at move 20, he said he studied that specific opening.
So what? What does that matter? 20 moves of prep is not unusual. Also opening/midgame/endgame is not defined by # of moves. This was still very much in the opening, and it was still very much "known theory" as in games have been played in that same line.
If he didn't want to play against him, he shouldn't have already done it weeks ago and then proceed to agree to a rematch, which he doesn't cancel until the last minute. I find it very hard to believe that Magnus only found out about Hans' history after the first move... unless he had someone assisting him in realtime.
Withdrawing attendance is also an option, which Carlsen himself says is a possibility he acknowledged.
If he wants to follow through on this, we better see some damning evidence. If this entire hubbub was for nothing, the chess community as a whole is going to have egg on their face.
I think the statement is a little bit more nuanced than that:
"His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do."
This isn't just "I got weird vibes" or something, this is the professional analysis of someone who has spent a lifetime analysing particular board states, the overall flow of the game, and the psychology of his opponents. He may have his hands tied in terms of what exactly he can say at this time, but the telegraph here is that he suspects cheating because of specific, observable factors in how the prior game(s) went down.
And those factors may ultimately be too subtle to be judged by anyone other than a jury of other top-tier professional chess players, but ultimately that doesn't matter, if it's enough to trigger a more thorough investigation then concrete evidence will emerge one way or the other and show Carlsen to be right or wrong on his hunch.
Basketball, hockey, and football players are expected to perform under the roar of tens of thousands of fans AND those that hate them.
Tennis players and Chess players are expected to be granted absolute silence.
Is that an inconsistency? I don't think so. It's part of the expectation of the sport. Sport is in general a weird type of impure competition. Sponsorships, TV contracts, etc, all contribute to mixed priorities.
So no, I don't think it's appropriate to equate Poker and Chess in this regard. Their best practices can be evaluated on their own measures.
>Poker has always been about unnerving your opponent through stoicism or deception
As much as TV would make you think so that's mostly a myth. It was probably more so the case in the past but now it's at most a very minor part of the game, and most (typically all) of your edge comes from better card playing.
A huge river bluff is viewed in the lens of 'I've represented a range which includes strong hands, and I make money if I get a fold X% of the time while increasing the call chance by Y% when I do have a good hand in this spot' and not 'I'm going to unnerve him by throwing money to make a bad decision'.
Yeah, I think Magnus is making a mistake conflating two things. It is totally fine to think that Nieman should have been punished more for online cheating, but combining it with his accusation of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup come off as sour grapes. Watching the Crypto Cup there was obviously no love lost between the two of them but they played each other, it's not until Magnus losses to Hans (which based on their rating had about a 5% chance of happening) that this refusal to play happens.
They are pretty accurate, though of course when you are dealing with the person at the very top it's going to be hard to say how accurate it is. I think broadly though most experts agree that Hans beating Magnus was an unlikely but possible ting to happen. For comparison a 1400 rated player, which is someone who plays and studies a decent amount of chess but isn't devoted, would have a 0.0000014% chance of beating Magnus.
I think as the skill differential becomes greater you have a better chance of identifying where the "master" screwed up allowing the neophyte to win. But it sounds like Hans and Carlsen are too close in skill (at least in this game) to identify a flaw in Carlsen's play that was able to be exploited.
And perhaps Hans went in expecting to lose and played loose and free and surprised himself with a win.
I doubt they are very predictive in those rating bands. Based on a quick Google, since 2011, Magnus has lost a total of 20 games as white, mostly against much higher rated opponents than Hans. It had been almost 2 years since he lost as white, against Levon.
In what sense is he trying to be judge, jury, and executioner? It seems to me that he is resigning games and not trying to get those results changed. Do you mean the fact that he is arguably using his position in the chess world to influence organizing bodies to change their rules? That might be the case, but I don’t think that’s bad or wrong in principle.
The fact that Magnus fully understand all the implications of such a statement and still went forward with this speaks to how sure he is of his intuition. He will forever tarnish his reputation if ultimately it's proven that he was simply flat out wrong. He is basically saying that Hans is playing impossibly well and that he does not exhibit the same behavioral patterns as any other player. And that he also has access to some other incriminating info that he can't yet share.
Magnus basically cannot be proven wrong - but time will tell. If Hans continues to perform well in OTB tournaments, and he's not caught cheating, eventually I think the suspicion will die down.
The issue is that will he get that chance at all?
Also, Hans has won some great games in short time controls.
If he can't provide the evidence, he should stay quiet or tell people to stop bothering Niemann until he is able to. I mean, his intuition is obviously very good, but in the end a serious league can't go by the intuition of the best player and secret info.
> I am disappointed with Magnus. He is misusing the weight of his reputation even if cheating is a big deal in chess.
I think the unspoken truth but also the thing both chess.com and Magnus are hinting at is that Niemann has cheated a lot more than he lets on, perhaps his entire stream was built on cheating, who knows. But chess.com can't just start sharing information like that, and they are walking a fine line just with their public statement where they affirmatively assert that Niemann is underplaying the reality of his cheating. Magnus probably has insider information from chess.com but is bound by NDA and this is also why he's now challenging Niemann to give him permission to speak on the matter.
>- MAGNUS has NOT seen chesscom cheat detection algorithms
>- MAGNUS was NOT given or told a list of “cheaters”
>- and he is and has completely acted 100% on his own knowledge (not sure where he got it!) and desires to this time
>I will also address a comment made to this post about Ben’s (Perp Chess) podcast and say that, yes, some top players (not Magnus!) have been invited at times, under NDA, to see what we do… and by extension, they also saw some reports of confessed cheaters (there were many more cheaters - but we only share those who confessed in writing, and only privately under the NDA). Magnus and the team from C24 are not on that list.
It is possible to have a device in your shoe that will not trip metal detectors that can feed moves from the outside.
It doesn't even have to be that complex, for a super GM even just a simple signal that indicates "this position has a crushing move, spend extra time thinking on this move" is enough to significantly improve their performance
Unless you catch the method of cheating directly, it's basically impossible to definitively determine if someone was cheating from a small number of games, they could just have gotten lucky or have been especially prepared in a given line like Niemann claims to have been
If that's a big concern, why would you even allow audiences to spectate in real-time? If the integrity of the game takes precedent over the spectacle of the match, why do we care about anything but the results?
This reductive approach to looking at cheating will just end with both of these shmucks sitting naked in an empty room, surrounded by an audience of a single referee who's job is to stop them from physically attacking one another. If he wants to accuse someone of cheating, he should do it - otherwise, dragging someone in public and refusing to make public statements doesn't reflect well on his professional integrity.
The extent that anti-cheating measures in Contract Bridge have gone to is hilariously insane. The players are effectively in telephone booths and cannot say or do anything except mark a bid indicator or slide a card, and at regulated intervals, too.
Then by all means, I'd encourage Carlsen to start the XFL of chess tournaments! The XCL?
Whatever the case is, I don't think a public crusade is the right option. If he had conclusive evidence of him cheating during the match, he wouldn't have made such a protracted statement on it weeks afterwards.
Yeah, some of it seems like regret that he didn't withdraw from the tournament before the match, and some of it doubling down.
Still could be correct, however. I suspect that Carlsen has certain knowledge of Hans cheating at games later than 16 but not the one he lost that hasn't been revealed yet.
Honestly, at the level these guys are at, compared to the engines, chess is an imperfect knowledge game also.
In Magnus' statement he specifically spoke of how he felt, Hans felt. This shows how much information beyond the 64 squares that chess players take in.
I'd argue the opportunities are larger in chess, because "what to do" is much more concretely correct.
Bridge has its own problems... and people will cheat as long as there are physical devices. (Fantunes / Fisher-Schwartz) Imagine if they used any simple encryption algorithm, they'd be fishy, but impossible to catch at that time.
BBO is the future for bridge IMHO.
Chess, will become an in person game with nobody else but the arbiter, players, and cameras in the room.
Makes me wonder if they ever point nonlinear junction detectors[0] at people that aren't supposed to have electronics on them in these kinds of events. I think it would be pretty hard to cheat then. Or would something like The Thing[1] escape that?
- "Such a technique was used in the 1980s construction of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Thousands of diodes were mixed into the building's structural concrete making detection and removal of the true listening devices nearly impossible."
There are a lot of possibilities, mainly if the cheater has help from someone outside who has information about the game. It's enough to transmit a signal in critical position that something is there.In past, player refused to take off his shoes. Other one has friends who sit in particular order. From other discussions
* a hair of defined length placed in a bowl or glass of water and vibrations at the resonant frequency of that hair would produce visible ripples around the hair.
* distant noise such as car horns honking, bass from a passing vehicle blasting dubstep, construction noise, etc.
* laser beam through the window visible only with particular contact lenses
* a bone-induction speaker or thumper (vibrating device) embedded in them or replacing a tooth
* thumpers that can be put inside the soles of shoes that would not be detectable with a regular metal detector
My impression is that the technology is there. If the incentives are high enough, someone can find the way.
It's very remarkable that Carlsen is suspicious of Niemann's game against him in Sinquefield, since there's a clear consensus among other top chess players that there was absolutely nothing unusual about it (or at least about the moves played).
And he wasn’t suspicious about his game when he beat Hans a few weeks earlier itself.
If Hans did go to all those extremes to cheat OTB it’s really surprising he would do so while playing black against Magnus Carlsen in an otherwise kind of pointless game.
When Robert Fischer achieved an unprecedented scores in the pretenders matches prior to winning the champion title, I believe that the biggest factor was not the quality of the play of Fischer, but the way he mentally unbalanced and broke his opponents, who absolutely did not give a performance they were capable of.
In this case it seems most of the unusual behavior occurred after the match, where (I've seen claimed) Niemann gave obviously wrong reasons why he had played so well on such an uncommon line, and was also not able to explain why he made particular choices he did playing it.
Not only did he fail to explain his reasoning in any satisfactory way, but the suggestions he gave as responses to alternative lines from his opponent were outright losing which showed that he had a poor grasp of the position. This is extremely suspicious behaviour from a player who had just defeated the world champion while using the black pieces.
The consensus among the top GMs was that Hans’s postgame analysis was way below the level you would expect from a player of his rating, never mind a player near Carlsen’s rating (which is much higher)!
No it can't and it is damning evidence. When you wipe the world champion off the board as black (which he did), you need to be able to show you understand how the game progressed in a post-game analysis. Neimann's understanding of his own remarkable performance was seriously deficient.
Being unable to explain your own work is how a lot of academic cheating is confirmed. It doesn't matter if they don't know who you copied from, if you can't understand your own work right after you supposedly made it, they will fail you.
It's like when you get the correct answer on a math test, but then when the math teacher asks you to show your work you bumble around and can't reproduce the thought process required to arrive at the correct answer.
No, it’s more like someone come to see you after a four hours exam while you are tired and want to go home and ask you how you did the very tricky and somewhat open question 4 while suggesting different approaches and asking for your opinion.
The quality of players post-game interview varies widely. Some clearly don’t put much thoughts into them because they would rather go home. Niemann is in good company here. That was nothing particularly exceptional.
If you aced question 4, and most of the rest of the test also, yes, it would be easy to explain. Especially right after it happened, even if you're tired. If an answer is obviously correct to you, you should be able to explain how.
And if you don't want to and just would like to go home, fair enough, but then you really shouldn't give an explanation which is wrong!
It's a pattern with Niemann too, he's infamous for saying only "The chess speaks for itself" after beating Carlsen with black once before.
I think the parallel with academic cheating is accurate.
> If you aced question 4, and most of the rest of the test also, yes, it would be easy to explain. Especially right after it happened, even if you're tired. If an answer is obviously correct to you, you should be able to explain how.
You clearly have never been through a four hours math exam with open questions.
There is no obviously correct answer. There is the way you tackled the problem and the myriad of other ways you could have done which might be more or less obvious, easy or correct.
It’s the same with chess. There is the line you played, the line your opponent played, the other lines you could have played which you did or didn’t consider, same with your opponent. Some of them you considered seriously, other you didn’t. Plus all the things you missed but didn’t matter because your opponent didn’t go there.
Also, you seem to believe chess players are doing post-game interviews because they want to. It’s not the case. It’s a mandatory part of participating in the tournament. Most of them would decline them if they could.
And yes Niemann is infamous for hating post-game interviews and always giving poor answers which is why I’m surprised people actually base their argument on this.
I have, in fact, sat through many, many all days math exams. Not with open ended questions exactly as that wasn't the fashion in math at the time, but in other topics, sure. And yes, I was prepared to explain what I answered and why.
It's an exaggeration to say everyone hates post game discussion. Magnus used to dislike it somewhat, possibly - it was hilarious how Norwegian newspapers tried to turn him into a celebrity in those days because hey! Chess superstar! And it all fell flat because he was so unbelievably boring at the time, lol. He got more social confidence as he got older (and the media got better too, getting people who actually had a clue about chess to talk to him).
But these days, the young GMs are on twitch for heaven's sake. From a social and media standpoint, Niemann is perfectly competent, a lot more so than Magnus was at his age. It's explaining his play he avoids. So yes, it's suspicious. I'm equally surprised at why you would think people would just overlook this.
We can be reasonably sure that Fischer has not been cheating above and beyond unusual conduct. There hasn't been a way to meaningfully cheat. In our times however there are computers which can materially help, and there are technologies allowing someone to receive it, use of which is very difficult to detect without an unacceptably invasive search
The unnerving, unbalancing effect Fischer had in the 1971 Candidate's tournament was absolutely due to his play. He put up immense resistance against lines prepared by teams of Soviet GMs (example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-90cPf61M), which was the sort of thing that broke their nerve. He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board; if there were any outside-chess forces at play, it was the pressure from Soviet higher-ups embarrassed to lose to a lone American. Also, I don't recall that his opponents played worse than they would have been expected to against an opponent so much stronger than them — maybe after their fifth loss in a six game match, they'd become demoralized.
> He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board
They absolutely were blundering much more than they did vs other opponents, showing a far lower quality off play than usual. Also I believe you didn't read much about his championship match. Remember how the games were moved to a different room, and why?
Arjun blundered against Magnus far more than usual last weekend. That's what stronger players tend to do to you.
I thought you were talking about the Candidate's tournament. As for the championship match, it's not generally believed that Spassky severely underperformed anyway. He won several games and put up good fights in the draws and losses.
>I believe you didn't read much about his championship match
I am quite familiar with the surrounding circumstances, including the pre-match negotiations. I do not see how any of this "mentally unbalanced" or "broke" Spassky, unlike (arguably) Larsen and Taimonov. Furthermore, he's generally been commended for his behavior as a consummate professional and a "gentleman" in the circumstances.
I wonder if you are as familiar with chess (the game, professional play, and its history) as you lead on to be, posting all over this thread.
Well, I only visited the chess school for maybe 6 or 7 years in my childhood, and my peak lichess rapid rating was slightly below 2600, so I believe I'm definitely not the best expert on these matters.
Which are totally subjective. And they dont really make sense. He thought he was too relaxed? How would cheating OTB against Carlsen be relaxing? Carlsen is being really unprofessional here, even if he turns out to be correct. But the window has closed - we will never have evidence that he was cheating at this tourney.
If you think about it: Magnus, is Magnus. He has an aura about him. People make blunders playing against him they wouldn't against others. This is known. Magnus is ALSO very good. But that "aura"... doesn't hurt him.
If for whatever reason, Hans saw far enough ahead, to not be worried... and Magnus hadn't, what does that say about Magnus?
He mentioned Hans wasn't nervous, in comparison to Magnus he had nothing to lose.
I won't defend his prior cheating. I will say: Prove it Magnus.
---
I'll draw a parallel to a game I have played at the national / international level. Bridge.
Bridge has had a TON of cheating scandals. People knew something was fishy. But they took the time, watched the videos, and figured out what happened.
Bridge cheating is a bit different, because you can find the smoking gun from video reviews, etc.
I wonder if "bridge supercomputers" as a cheating method has been tried. I assume the percentages on finesses working, etc, are easy enough for the experts to learn that they're not very worthwhile.
Well, remember, you don't have full information. Especially in an "all pass" auction from opponents.
Interestingly, the computers would to MUCH better on defense. Because as you bid, you speak about the distribution of your hand, and your partner does the same about theirs. (Even in negative inferences.)
And trust me: Good opponents will use that information, already.
So far, bridge has found the smoking guns because honestly: The cheaters have sucked at cheating.
If they bothered to actually encrypt their signals at all, they would have been suspected, but not caught.
---
To answer the question: Even today. Good players will know the answer to when to take which finesses. Where good, is probably around Life Master and a bit under.
2. Chess is full of VERY smart people. One of the most common ways to insult a smart person is to call into question their sexuality; hence why we have to have entire movements related to calling out anti-lgbtq+ statements like "that's so gay". [https://welcomingschools.org/resources/stop-thats-so-gay-ant...]
Anyway, combine those two things, and you get your answer. It's because the world hasn't really evolved at all in the last 30-40 years, outside of what we have been forced to do by law. It's easy and socially acceptable to call a man gay as an insult, so in a roundabout way, that's what we're getting with the anal beads talk.
I sort of laser focused on this last week when I heard this theory for the first time. It just struck me as so. . . odd. Why would that be a thing? That's what I came up with.
The contrast of the paranoid grievance you're responding to, with a sibling comment which does an excellent job of explaining "why anal beads", is remarkable.
The key takeaway is that if you have someone assisting you (entering the information into the computer) they only need a very simple way of sending a signal - which could be a "do something unexpected" or "this move is crucial". And you'd only need a time or two in a game to get the edge, assuming you're already skilled at the game.
I don’t think the “vibrating anal beads” theory is important because people actually expect it to be true in this instance. It is more about the chrisis if a mind sport where computers defeated humans soundly and througly.
The simple fact is that computers vastly outcompete human chess players. And not just big and expensive purpose built machines but the kind of computers everyone has access to.
Furthermore at the skill levels these players are you don’t even need constant handholding from a computer. A few hints at key moments would be enough to basically shift the balance in someones favour.
So if someone wants to cheat all they have to do is to receive a few bits of information from an accomplice. The question is not even if someone cheated in that particular game, but if cheating is possible.
We can imagine all kind of spy gadgetry one could use to communicate those few bits. People have two hangups with many of them: they can be found in a security screening, or they sound too sci-fy.
The vibrating anal beads combine three properties:
- they could transfer the few bits of information needed to tilt the game in favour of a cheat.
- they are not too far fetched. You can buy them right now commercially.
- they would be very hard to detect by security arrangements. It feels very unlikely that players would agree to the kind of invasive probing which would be necessary to detect one.
So it is not that people think that this particular player in this particular game actually used vibrating anal beads. It is more about the idea that someone could cheat at chess with covert communication methods.
It started out as a silly, obviously joking comment in the twitch chat of a GM chess streamer (Eric Hansen). Then he jokingly overreacted to it, and explained how it's possible, as an obvious joke. Then Elon tweeted about it as an obvious joke. But news websites don't care to make that distinction, and write about it.
Some of them seem small enough that they won't trigger a metal detector. Currently they don't constantly scan the playing hall for wireless activity, which is what you'd need to detect this in use. I bet they start scanning for wireless transmissions soon, though.
You missed a large part. Some of his moves were "somewhat suspect". However, he was interviewed after the game with Magnus and he really could not explain why he was making the moves he made. Even the interviewers were almost laughing as he gave his "analysis" for his own moves. He played off his top engine moves as just getting lucky, while at the same time stating he didn't make other moves because they would have weakened his position (when in fact it was the other way around), while also stating he made other moves to strengthen his position (when in fact it was weakening).
Nothing he said made sense. He is playing against the top players in the entire world, and he can't really describe his games. This is super genius territory, and yet he just claims his skills to mostly just be based on luck.
You should see the sequence. He was totally unable to explain any lines he had in mind, stating some positions were « obviously winning » (where it was absolutely not obvious, and in fact the engine marked it as loosing), etc. A total disaster.
I agree, but as I tried to state, there is simply more to it. Giving bad interviews doesn't mean anything. Accidentally beating the world champion doesn't mean anything. Spending all night studying a rarely played chess line that just happens to be the exact line played the next day doesn't really mean anything either. Not really being able to analyze like a GM doesn't mean anything too.
But when you have all these factors happening during one game, statistically it is not probable.
And that one just happens to be a kid who was caught cheating online twice (unlike any of his other opponents) and was an unremarkable player until the age of 17 but has since attained 2700+ level (unlike any of the current young 2700+ players who all reached GM level before the age of 15).
This is not true at all. For instance Nepominatchi commented on game saying Niemann's play was "more than impressive"[1]. Not commenting on the situation per se, merely your "clear consensus among other top chess players" comment.
You are hung up on the wrong thing. Parent writes: "[clear consensus that] there was absolutely nothing unusual about it", I quote one of the greats saying the game is "more than impressive", which, at least we should agree, is the exact opposite of claiming there is "nothing unusual about this game". Onus is on parent to come up with a list of grandmasters claiming the game was "usual", at least I provided one refutation but there are many.
Correct. They will not come up with a list of GMs saying Hans cheated. Many GMs have said that it doesn't seem like he did (at least during the game with Magnus).
Alireza, Ian, Magnus, Fabi, Wesley, and Levon have since made statements that imply they believe Hans cheated, or at least that they were suspicious of his play, as well as Yasser and Hikaru.
That's the majority of the players in the Sinquefield cup. Even Levon, who was initially skeptical, has since reversed his position.
As is tradition in chess, no one says "He cheated" they say things like "his moves were better than one would have expected" or "superhuman" or "I felt like I should trust my opponent over my calculation".
I watched them on stream. I don't do anything chess related on Reddit. You should perhaps actually engage with criticism and disagreement if you want to post here.
It's a bit misleading to say that there was absolutely nothing unusual about the game. The Sinquefield game in question showed a very high correlation between engine optimal moves and the moves played by Niemann. His gameplay accuracy here is within the bounds of what the very top players can achieve in individual games, but high enough to raise some suspicion.
The next step is to place that mild suspicion in the context of both his history of admitted cheating, his unwillingness/inability to explain his remarkable moves post-game, and the additional context of many other games played in the last few years with _extraordinary_ accuracy. Now something that could be explained by just a very strong game appears very suspicious.
Some other top chess players voiced strong suspicions regarding his post-match interview (including the interviewer), because he could not suggest basic lines in the post-match analysis, lines that even the interviewer could find without an engine (and for example Hikaru while watching the interview, being able to say the line instantly).
My read is that people believe it's very possible (even likely) he cheated, but are also frustrated that Magnus has brought a lot of other players into this without making (prior to this) any actual statement. Even with this statement, he hasn't formally accused him or presented any proof.
I'd say the vibe of the community seems to be a general distaste for drama, rather than taking a particular side.
I'm not a strong enough player/analyst to have a meaningful opinion on whether or not Niemann cheated. It's possible he cheated.
I'm taken aback at the manner in which these accusations have been made. I guess that Magnus felt that the only way he could force FIDE and tournament organizers into action was with a big, public, shocking act.
It feels like a black eye for chess no matter the outcome. Either Niemann is proven guilty and professional chess has to grapple with that hit to its integrity, or the situation isn't resolved and the question of Niemann's (and pro chess') integrity is left open indefinitely.
I don't know to what extent Magnus has pushed for anti-cheating measures or increased scrutiny of Niemann behind closed doors, but I'll be very disappointed if it turns out that this public spectacle could've been avoided.
Chess and FIDE are already the source of massive amounts of drama. This story got some mainstream traction but this is not going to impact the sport. On the contrary there are probably future champions who just turned to the game because of the latest nonsense.
At the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I made the unprecedented professional decision to withdraw from the tournament after my round three game against Hans Niemann. A week later during the Champions Chess Tour, I resigned against Hans Niemann after playing only one move.
I know that my actions have frustrated many in the chess community. I'm frustrated. I want to play chess. I want to continue to play chess at the highest level in the best events. I believe that cheating in chess is a big deal and an existential threat to the game. I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over the board chess. When Niemann was invited last minute to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event. I ultimately chose to play.
I believe that Niemann has cheated more - and more recently - than he has publicly admitted. His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup
I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do. This
game contributed to changing my perspective.
We must do something about cheating, and for my part going forward, I don't want to play against people that have cheated repeatedly in the past, because I don't know what they are capable of doing in the future.
There is more that I would like to say. Unfortunately, at this time I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann to speak openly. So far I have only been able to speak with my actions, and those actions have stated clearly that I am not willing to play chess with Niemann. I hope that the truth on this matter comes out, whatever it may be.
"I'm not saying Hans Niemann cheated in this very specific instance against me. I'm just saying he's a professional cheater, and that fact may or may not be related to my withdrawal in a game against him after just one move."
Carlsen is all but accusing Niemann of having cheated against him. Why can't he go the extra step? Is this something his lawyers have advised him to do? (I don't have a dog in this fight)
In a carefully worded statement like this (clearly it has been reviewed by legal council) you will say things that cannot be charged as defamation in the appropriate courts.
It's also a gambit to get Hans to say something like "sure, Carlsen, say whatever you want" which could be used as a defense in a defamation case.
There's even a hint that Carlsen has evidence of cheating that has yet to be revealed (but not this game).
Yes. Niemann has admitted to cheating in the past, and has apparently been banned from some past events for cheating. So Carlsen can safely relate to the public that he believes Niemann to be a "cheater". But to say for a fact that Niemann cheated in a specific match, he'd be communicating a statement of fact. If that statement is false, or could colorably be argued as false, then Niemann can take him to court for defamation, and even if Carlsen prevailed, it would still be painful and expensive.
Remember that statements of opinions, including opinions that are analyses of previously disclosed facts, are protected from defamation claims. Defamation can only consist of a damaging false statement of fact, or the allegation that you're aware of specific undisclosed facts like that to support your opinion.
You could call out Lord St. Buggering-Little-Boys, complete with films, DNA evidence, and witness testimony, and still lose (and be on the hook for legal fees).
You're allowed to make "very strong implications". The other word for that is "opinion". You're in trouble if you say "I've been given secret information that shows Neimann cheated at the Cup", but if all you're saying is "based on these factors, which by implication you yourself could evaluate, I believe he's cheating", you're offering an opinion based on disclosed facts, and that defamation claim won't survive dismissal.
(I'm not a lawyer, I just nerd out on this stuff, happy to be corrected).
If you're 49% sure someone cheated against you / would cheat against you, that's probably enough to make you never want to play against them, but also not enough to prevail in a court case.
I don’t like this. You can’t just imply someone is cheating without proof or some indication of proof. I understand we need to crack down on cheating but this is not the way.
For all the people defending Hans, he has admitted to cheating in real, official, prize money online tournaments, and chess.com believes that in his apology he still lied about the extent of his cheating.
Maybe Hans did cheat OTB, maybe he didn't, but the tough part about reputation is it is very hard to build and very easy to break. And Hans had proven to the world that he would cheat.
I personally don't think Hans did cheat in that particular tournament but at the same time I don't think he deserves too much sympathy. Cheaters literally destroy the game, and Hans at the very least was a cheater.
I could also decide to cheat when being in the top players in the world. Even better, because I would only need to use my cheats sometimes and hide it even better because my knowledge holds up enough.
All the history of doping in the Olympics would disagree.
It is possible that some people can reach quite a high level but top out in their natural abilities well below the absolute top of the game and be incentivized to cheat to break through their personal, natural ceiling.
Or even further, look at professional cycling in the 90s and 2000s. It wasn't just people doping to break through their ceiling to reach the top, literally everyone at the top was doping and it was necessary to be able to keep up.
Even worse than "some people are cheating to make it to the elite level" would be "everyone at the elite level is cheating, you can't compete without cheating".
No, but once you’re there, it becomes an easier mental hurdle to jump over, because they’re already incredibly talented and skilled. They can justify it with phrases like “it’s just a small edge to help. I could easily do it myself with more training but this is easier/faster/more bulletproof”. you’ll find that at the top level morals can be corrupted easier because it’s such a small edge needed. Oh, i’ll only use the move generator once, i’ll only use it to catch obvious blunders, etc.
Yes and I think this is the real risk that Magnus or others who cares about chess are worried about. Not the 1200 player who plays like the world champion which is blatently obvious, but a 2700 player who selectively uses computer assistance to play like a 2800 and get into the elite circuit of the top players (which also is where all the money is).
To be fair to Hans, his claim is he cheated in a prize money tournament when he was 12. If he cheated in prize money games besides that it would be different, but I think most people are willing to forgive a 12 year old.
It's one thing to say an old man cheated when he was 12 years old, it's yet another to say a 19 year old did it just a handful of years ago. He's still a kid.
My intuition is that there's evidence out there that shows he cheated more, but people grow up a lot from age 12 to 19. That time period is basically the entirety of adolescence! I don't think it's fair to pin the actions of their 12 year old self on a 19 year old.
I did broadly equivalent stupid shit when I was 12, 16, 19... I don't think I mellowed out until I was 25-30. 19 is young, 19 year olds are generally still in their peak stupid teenager years. Crime stats back this up: https://pinkerton.com/our-insights/blog/age-crime-curve
The trust is broken and equating it to fractions of someones life is the wrong measure. What has he done since he cheated at 12? Oh, he cheated in random games at 16. Surefire way to rebuild trust...
That argument doesn’t make sense to me. If someone has acknowledged that they will cheat when there are NO stakes, why does that make it less likely they will cheat if something is on the line?
If anything someone who is already known to cheat “just because” is even more likely to cheat when there is something to gain.
The claim in the original comment that I replied to was that Hans had admitted to cheating in "real, official, prize money online tournaments", which was when he was 12.
As for cheating and stakes I think it all depends. His claim is he cheated when he was 16 to boost his rating so he could player higher level opponents on stream and boost his career. If you accept that claim it would make sense that he rationalized it that he was just cheating to get to his "true" Elo and stopped cheating once he got there. Now Chess.Com seems to believe that he cheated beyond that but they haven't specified more at this point.
Well steroids and doping are different because they effect your body but sure, if Armstrong had cheated during trials with something like a small motor but not during the actual tour it would have tarnished his legacy but I don't think it would have ruined it like his cheating did.
Yes, the maturity jump from 16 to 19 is marginal at best. If you generalize from crime statistics, a 19 year old is actually more likely to be dishonest than a 16 year old. Criminality peaks in the late teens and drops in the early 20s.
(Yes yes I know, Pinkerton are evil. they have the best plot of this correlation I could find. The crime-age correlation is the strongest that exists in the entire field of criminology.)
I wonder if you plotted "risk/reward" behavior during that same time if you'd get a similar curve, just going to show that adolescents are bad at risk/reward calculations.
And the worst part is that Chess.com released a statement saying they've suspended Niemann's account because they have evidence that his cheating was not limited to these two instances. They've invited him to look at the evidence and respond privately to their concerns but it is not publicly known if he has done so.
Just 3 years ago in that age is a lot. Also he said that he didn't cheat in prize money tournaments or tournaments at all at 16, he cheated because he wanted to boost his rating and play better players, not saying that is okay. I don't know if he cheated against Magnus or not, but to say that he cheated because something he did at twelve is stupid. Magnus saying that Hans wasn't tense and concentrated is far more important than this other stuff.
He only (recently) admitted to those two cases because he was publicly outed. It seems extremely unlikely that the only two times he was caught was also the only two times he cheated. I think it's very probable he has cheated dozens or hundreds of times and not been caught or not been publicly outed for it.
It is relevant to remember that he "admitted" to cheating on two different occasions only after he was caught and banned for doing so. He did not voluntarily come forward and confess of his own volition.
> He's admitted to cheating at 12 years old and at 16 years old (just 3 years ago)
I see the pattern forming. He clearly has improved his play since but he could also have improved the cheating technique, as others pointed out, just needing a hint or two in the most decisive moments of the game. Has he not cheated against Magnus it's a pity that he got accused with no proofs.
Look, maybe he did not cheat but it's hard to prove he didn't nor that he did. The fact that historically he's not blemish free makes it harder to celebrate his victory. Tough luck indeed..
Chess.com (Magnus is a 20% shareholder) did put out a public statement calling out Niemann for cheating more than the once or twice that Niemann admitted to. Chess.com forwarded evidence to Niemann. We're still waiting for a response.
If it's reasonable for a 12yo to be able to play in a for-money tourney, then I don't think it's unreasonable to think they should know the difference between right and wrong.
As a parent of a now 13 year old - it is not reasonable for a 12 year old to play a for money tournament. 12 year olds may "know right from wrong" in some sense, but they do not have adult brains. Expecting them to make decisions like an adult, or understand "right and wrong" the same way an adult does, is ludicrous.
Then why should they be able to win money off adults?
Classic "have your cake and eat it too". If you want to play in tournaments with adult prizes then you should expect adult consequences for misbehavior.
They shouldn't be able to. But either way, kids don't have adult brains, and there's nothing anyone can do about that. They are physically different. You can't expect a 12 year old to dunk a basketball, and you can't expect a 12 year old to think like an adult.
So you agree that Magnus is wrong and that Hans did not cheat in the OTB game.
And if you also agree with Magnus that cheating is a major problem then him singling out a single player who happened to beat him in OTB chess, as opposed to asking for wholesale changes for the past so many years to tackle cheating more seriously when he owns one of the top chess organizations and has partnerships with nearly every other chess organization, seems like him just being a sore loser.
I don’t need to defend Hans’s cheating to point out that Magnus’s response has been ridiculous because it’s entirely focused on 1 individual player as opposed to the actual large scale problem of cheating in chess. A guy who happened to beat him OTB in a game where he likely did not cheat at all.
> So you agree that Magnus is wrong and that Hans did not cheat in the OTB game.
There’s a world of difference between holding a personal opinion that X is probably true, and agreeing that X is an established fact.
> Magnus’s response has been ridiculous because it’s entirely focused on 1 individual player as opposed to the actual large scale problem of cheating in chess
From the letter: “I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over the board chess.”
As an outsider to the chess world, this all seems like a roundabout way of saying "we have no evidence that he cheated, but in lieu of evidence let's go with gut feelings".
This isn't a court, and it isn't criminal behavior. If it was a court and it was criminal behavior, we'd expect innocent until proven guilty and the benefit of the doubt. Which no one is giving Hans.
It certainly doesn't help his case. If you have had troubles with the law prior to a new crime, it gets taken into consideration negatively by the judge. Same with cheaters. It means he is a cheater by definition and has the moral compass to cheat again.
Nevermind have people shot down this dudes analysis, but he says in the post "But, if you will permit some editorializing, despite Niemann's claims that "it's impossible to play under these conditions," he gives every indication of quite enjoying the attention."
What fucking garbage that is a smear on the face of chess.
It kinda smacks of some deficit in the modern game. Consider a hypothetical chess player who does not cheat, never has cheated, but through some combination of the occasional atypical move or odd behavior, makes players think they are cheating.
They seem to be saying that such behavior can confer an advantage — that to seem to be cheating is itself cheating.
I say we carry on like normal. Either Niemann's success falls apart, he messes up and gets caught, or we find out he's actually onto something brilliant.
Not exactly. Chess GMs have a somewhat "over-fitted gut." On studies done on their memory, they could routinely recall a chess board after seeing that board for only a few moments provided that the layout the pieces could be reached in a regular game. When the board was laid out in an unlikely manner, they performed no better than the control group.[1]
Let's say you arrive home with your 2y/o child and are greeted with dog shit on the floor. If I asked the 2y/o who shat on the floor they wouldn't be able to answer, but you could easily deduce that the dog did it. Why? Because you have an immense bank of experience concerning everyday causality that the 2y/o doesn't have.
Magnus has a bank of human chess moves in his mind, that we don't. He knows that the dog shat on the floor.
And keep in mind that Magnus has not thrown this accusation around in the past, even in the face of defeat.
But cheating wouldn't explain a relaxed state. You could easily expect that he'd be nervous as fuck to cheat OTB against Carlsen. This is just wildly speculative and ultimately meaningless.
People just spewing their garbage everywhere around this. It is amazing. It is almost like politics. It is crazy how people are getting about this issue.
Except that you can't really call things a clue if you're just looking for things to confirm your existing opinion. Any stance Hans could have had during that game could be construed as indication of him cheating.
> Maybe Hans did cheat OTB, maybe he didn't, but the tough part about reputation is it is very hard to build and very easy to break.
The problem is this was true a month ago. And a year ago. And 2 years ago. If he should be banned by reputation then it should have already happened. If they do it now they just weaponize cheating accusations.
If FIDE or Chess.com or whoever wanted to ban him from events for his past behavior--or players simply wanted to ostracize him by refusing to play in tournaments with him--they needed to have banned/ostracized him for that behavior. I don't think anyone would complain if Niemann were caught cheating and then permanently banned. That's what Carlsen implies he's after and it's fine.
In contrast, this is "well, you cheated in the past, but we're going to let you play, unless you play really well, in which case we'll assume you cheated". This is just not a sane way to go about it, and creates the scenario in which Niemann is playing with a sort of externally-imposed skill cap. An accusation has to come with evidence specific to that accusation, not some hazy combination of past history + unease with his play. This all sounds like a slow-motion tantrum, which Carlsen can get away with because he's Magnus Carlsen.
These situations are never great.. there's no "best way to handle things" when the drama reaches a certain level.
Carlsen specifically mentions that there are Niemann details he can't or won't reveal. Niemann could release him from that confidence, but I think Carlsen's reputation is strong enough that doubting this doesn't seem reasonable.
Personally, I think shading Carlsen, in isolation, seems misguided to me.
> there's no "best way to handle things" when the drama reaches a certain level.
I agree, but that's mostly where my frustration with Carlsen is rooted. He had the choice with how to handle this - he went out of his way to choose the dramatic route.
He better have some conclusive evidence to back up the hurricane-sized shitstorm he's whipped up here. If it turns out the entire chess community got manipulated by a single rockstar and his badly-hurt ego, it would be hard to take the sport seriously again at a professional level.
Carlsen has an impeccable reputation for being principled and magnanimous in defeat, and always complimentary and respectful of his opponents after a loss, acknowledging their deserved win and well played game. Frankly, i'm shocked more people aren't being supportive of this single decision of his, that stands alone in his long and rather glorious career.
Being extremely competitive is not being a sore loser, and he is playful and spirited in trash-talk. But he ultimately always shows respect towards his opponent, even when he's extremely disappointed in himself.
Being upset at a loss, which you'll see in a few videos, is much different than disrespecting the person who beat him.
A few isolated shows of emotion in two decades is hardly a fair representation for people to judge a man overall. People who have watched this man grow up from a young child in the public eye, know he is a good person.
And even if you're not inclined to believe that, nobody has shown a clip where he has disrespected or accused an opponent of impropriety. This latest incident stands alone as a unique one time event.
I was just refuting the claim that Magnus is some perfect icon. He isn't. He doesn't seem like a bad guy. But he isn't a saint either. He can make mistakes.
He’s literally as close as you get though. His opponent once got disconnected in an online tournament, and magnums resigned the next game bc he didn’t want his opponent to be unfairly penalized.
Well, he is just a person. Under high level of stress, we all make bad decisions that lead to more drama. I can easily think of several worse ways he could have handled this -- at least he didn't go into any weird public rants.
I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann
What? I'd like him to explicitly state what rule/law/agreement prevents him from saying more. He explicitly accused him of cheating. I can't imagine what would prevent him from providing details.
FIDE already put out a statement saying they know nothing about this incident and want Carlsen to put forward initial evidence for them to start an investigation. Carlsen's statement shows that he has no evidence beyond his feelings over the board and Hans' history of cheating online.
Magnus owns 20% of Chess.com.
Chess.com put out a statement basically saying 'we have sent Hans evidence that he cheated more than the two times he admitted to'
Chess.com / Magnus is waiting for Niemann to respond.
I’m a Magnus fanboy. He’s been and continues to be a great champion. He’s up there in the pantheon with Kasparov, Anand and Fischer. We’re lucky to have him. That kinda settles this for me.
Enough with the fiction that cheating is a mistake, or that a 16 year old smart enough to be a chess grandmaster is simultaneously so underdeveloped that they have not learned the consequences of cheating.
Your comparison with murder is ridiculous. First of all, teenage murderers are regularly sentenced to life in prison. A murderer is deprived of fundamental human liberties--Niemann is deprived of being able to compete at the highest competitive level in a tabletop board game, without suspicion.
He cheated online on a second rate chess site. Nobody has any explanations how he could do it over the board.
(Considering that people become more or less aware about their responsibilities and consequences of their actions at about 15 yo, he is now 4 times the responsible age he was at 16.)
To concede that cheating took place would mean that they had failed in their responsibility to stop it happening, and that somehow their method of detection only worked after the cheating was happening, rather than during or before.
For those two reasons, I think that any such "pretty adamant" statement can be discounted.
They said no evidence was found, not that no cheating took place. (After all, it would most likely be very hard to detect.) And the anti cheating measures were upped after Carlsen quit; therefore they were not adequate in the first place.
If you decide to twist their statement this way, two can play the game. How about this: "No evidence was found that Magnus Carlsen was cheating. It does not mean no cheating took place in his championship matches."
Does that seem fair or reasonable to you? Sure no man can be as good as Magnus, he is clearly cheating in some clear undetected way, right?
People really start to mature and become aware of their responsibilities and consequences for their actions at 15. So 16 years old person has only about 1 year of adult life experience vs 4 years at 19.
I believe that your position is utterly immoral and cruel. Everyone deserves a path to redemption, and a kid cheating at chess in his childhood does not deserve an eternal punishment for the rest of his life because of it.
Imagine if he is a generational talent and one of the best in the world, are you really ready to deprive him any future just because he did stupid things as a kid?
Some things matter so little that the penalties can be extremely high; for example, nobody needs to play chess so the penalty for cheating at chess can be a lifetime ban from sanctioned tournaments.
Is it entirely fair to the actually repentant? No. But does it keep out the false-repentant? Yes.
Repeat offender, he's admitted to cheating at age 12 and once again at age 16. Let's not cast this into something melodramatic like a "path to redemption", it is just chess after all, and the right decision is probably for him to be perma-banned, otherwise you're just going to end up with more and more of these types of situations.
You're saying that (shouldn't walk into a Walmart and be searched) as it's a given. Doesn't sound that obvious to me. May be false, may be true, but regardless, it's definitely up for discussion.
He's saying it should be OK to be searched when leaving a store??? What universe do they live in? It barely makes sense to me and I said so. It obviously is not clear. No one is searched when they leave stores. That's insane.
If you robbed from a store at 12 and again at 16, I wouldn't blame that store for banning you for life. If they want to give you some lenience and allow you in only if you agree to a patdown and search of your bags, then they're being more forgiving than I would be.
> No one is searched when they leave stores.
In fact there are stores which will ask to search your bags and check your receipts as you walk out the door, and may ban you if you refuse. You probably realize this and are feigning ignorance.
Anyway, what's really insane is the way you're bouncing around this thread giving so many people such low quality replies, like the one directly above where you try to gaslight karamanolev by falsely claiming their comment was unintelligible. It really seems like you have some undisclosed stake in this matter, because you're not being fair or civil to many of those you respond to.
> In fact there are stores which will ask to search your bags and check your receipts as you walk out the door, and may ban you if you refuse. You probably realize this and are feigning ignorance.
In the US, they can ask - but no one can force you to do anything.
playing competitive Chess is a privilege, not a right like freedom. I'm totally fine with 0-tolerance, because the only penalty is you can't play in competitions. If you want to play chess with your mates, no one is going to stop you.
It's the dude's livelihood, though. There are laws about taking someone's tools if they owe a debt for similar reasons. I think it is a very similar thing.
I think there's little dispute that he's a very good chess player. He could perhaps earn a modest living as a chess tutor. That should be good enough, he's not entitled to riches.
Zero tolerance blacklisting of cheaters is probably the best way forward. If neither Niemann nor Carlsen recant, then I predict chess will fall into general disrepute like baseball or billiards. The way for the professional chess community to salvage this situation is with zero tolerance blacklisting of anybody caught cheating, even as a teenager.
It may not have stopped entirely, but there are much better safeguards in place, and it's pretty obvious based on power hitting statistics (home runs mainly) that it's not even close to as bad as it was in the 90's and early 2000's. The penalties for getting caught doping are quite high.
Most recently, superstar San Diego Padres player Fernando Tatis Jr. was suspended for 80 games after testing positive for steroid use. [1]
At one point in time they would literally fix the World Series. This was a long time ago, but yeah, baseball had big issues with integrity. The steroids thing is nothing compared to how bad it used to be.
I don't know about high-level billiards, but low level billiards is basically synonymous with hustling and cheating (aka sharking.) Pool sharking is so widespread and infamous, I think it casts the entire sport in a sleazy light.
With baseball, a lot of high level players have gotten caught or admitted it, and have said that it's widespread. Jose Canseco admitted to cheating and claimed as much as 80% of players use steroids. He specifically accused Alex Rodriquez, which was later proven true. Allegations like these from admitted/caught cheats might be attempts to justify themselves, but personally I think cheating is and has been rampant in baseball for a very long time. It's still fun to watch though.
In case anyone is curious, Canseco played in the MLB from 1985 to 2001. It is unclear when the MLB banned steroids, but some possible years include 1990--1991, 1997, or somewhere around 2003--2005.
Note, however, that steroid use was made effectively illegal on a federal level in the United States in 1990. The 1991 date above references a memo from the commissioner that states that illegal drugs are "strictly prohibited". Steroids are mentioned explicitly, though they do not have to be, seeing as how they were in fact illegal.
He cheated as a minor in online play. He has never been shown to have cheated as an adult or in OTB play. Someone needs to prove one of those things before he can be blacklisted for being a cheater.
For one thing, the fact that Carlsen is making this statement now and not weeks earlier is embarrassing.
For another, the evidence he presents is disappointingly weak. I can understand being suspicious of online games. Fair enough. But the evidence for cheating offline is:
1) Rapid progress in OTB chess. This rapid progress is still much less rapid than many other players and involved Hans quite clearly spending nearly 2 years only focused on chess during and after the pandemic.
2) Him competing as black in a way only a handful of players could. I’d argue there is almost no one who stands even a 10% chance of beating Magnus as black OTB. But, if all the GMs playing Magnus had a 0.1% chance, then there’s a 1/2000 chance he loses, and the loss is not likely to be to one of the top players simply because there are far more non top players.
3) Lack of nervousness. Well, it’s hard to see how Magnus would be beat by someone who was nervous. On 1 hand, Hans had nothing to lose and be nervous about. On the other hand Magnus had a ton of pressure on a quest for 2900.
At the end of the day, Hans didn’t play a brilliancy to beat Magnus. He simply played normal decent moves. The game itself presented no evidence of cheating.
With regards to his recent rating increase, Hans' rating increase is not completely unprecedented but it's still very rare. The issue isn't that he's a mid-2600s player, or even that he's increased by 200 points in two years, it's the shape of the ratings graph and the unusual staircase progress he's made at the GM level.
It took Hans about five years to go from 2300 to 2500 rating, and most of that was pre-pandemic. Increasing your rating gets exponentially more difficult as your rating increases, which is why there are so few players who ever make it to the 2700 level or even the 2600 level. Most players at this level who spend multiple years in a rating lull never significantly increase their playing ability (there are countless examples, but look at someone like MVL for a typical example). There are only a small number of cases of people who reach Hans' level who have staircase looking ratings progress graphs at the 2500+ level.
Hans' recent rating increase is far from proof that he's cheating, but it is definitely extremely unusual.
What's missing in that analysis is the sheer number of games Niemann has played recently, it's simply an enormous amount of OTB games - outside the norm. Furthermore, there's some consensus that a lot of the younger players are underrated as a result of the pandemic when a lack of rated OTB tournaments prevented a normal rating increase, and Hans' rapid improvement would partially be explained by his official rating quickly equalizing with his actual ability.
>I can understand being suspicious of online games. Fair enough. But the evidence for cheating offline is...
How can people act like the evidence of online cheating doesn't affect the likelihood that he cheated OTB? This is the exact same person playing both games.
But what is the circumstantial evidence here ? The argument essentially boils down to: "this guy cheated in the past, so I don't trust that he won't cheat in the future". This is fair: he should decide whom he wants to play with, but no proof was actually presented.
i agree that past cheating probably makes it more likely that someone would cheat in the future but i also see a relevant difference in the ease and risk of cheating online vs OTB, so i don't see them as perfect equivalents
Part of it is that he cheated on Chess.com which does not publicize bannings for cheating/punishments, so there wasn't really a reason for the tournament to not invite him since at that point from an organizers perspective it was just rumors.
He hasn't cheated in a FIDE event as far as FIDE knows. Banning him for cheating at 12 and 16 in an unrelated to them place (and not even OTB) without anything else would just be bizarre. Even more so, when players who have actually cheated in actual FIDE OTB games as adults start off with a temporary rather than permanent ban.
That's a frankly ridiculous point of view. You're talking about a literal child cheating at an online video game. It's not that big of a deal, kids do dumb stuff.
I don’t consider 16 year olds to be children. If they are, they shouldn’t be driving. Yes, all kids do dumb things. But, if you are still behaving stupidly or dishonestly at 16, well that’s a different issue. That it’s no big deal to the younger generation explains why the country is as messed up as it is.
It reminds me of the outcry from Trevor Bauer over the MLB not enforcing the illegal substance rule for pitchers. He had to take matters into his own hands until the league decided to enforce the rules.
Look at all the people who had their careers absolutely destroyed by the US Postal/Discovery Channel/Lance Armstrong/Trek business (including Greg LeMond!) in the era where they were accusing Armstrong of the world's largest ever coordinated doping program, in the era before Armstrong and team were stripped of all their titles.
Ultimately in the fullness of time they were all proven to be correct.
He played several games with 100% correlation with what chess engines considered to be the best move, and also played in 5 consecutive tournaments with such a high fraction of engine-preferred moves that his performance rivals the best players in history at the pinnacle of their careers.
Perfect when compared to the moves the top chess engines would make? Hikaru says he only scored 100% one time, and 70% is more typical for a GM, yet everyone does it?
Using an ultra-high ELO chess engine to score each possible move, then reversing through the players moves and seeing how often it would have been a positive move (one that shifts the balance of the game in your favor) - or perfect move (not sure which). It is extremely rare to make 100% perfect moves in a game, let alone a series of games. Typical gameplay for high level chess player doesn't peak over 72-75% for a given series of N games. Niemann has several tournaments over this and several games with 100% perfect moves. The inconsistency is also a concern since he goes from mid-60's to 78/79 in a span of one tournament.
yeah - if I pulled a random willing powerball ticket out of my massive pile of powerball tickets, that would be a really, really rare event. It would make me believe that it isn't such a rare thing, for sure.
It's also worth pointing out that a player's odds of making the perfect move are inverse to their opponent's ELO: as the level of play rises, finding the right play becomes exponentially harder. The data suggests he's sometimes playing other grandmasters as good as those grandmasters would play a rando on Lichess.
It would be nice to get an ELI5 on this too. I used to play chess and have an understanding of the significance... but I don't think I can fully appreciate it as well as someone with a solid background in both.
the gist seems to be that he has unrealistically high correlation with game-engine recommendations, often all the way up to 100%, but only when playing "tough" opponents, and far lower / realistic correlation scores (around 50%) in other games.
for reference, magnus carlsen's correlation score at his peak averages around 70% (according to the video)
FM Yosha puts forward a fairly convincing argument about odds and engine correlation, but another commenter rightly pointed out that these statistics are not seen as incriminating in and of themselves. Unfortunately, even when the preponderance of evidence seems to be against a player - best example is Sebastian Feller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9bastien_Feller) playing with superhuman accuracy at crucial moments, and whose team captain later admitted to helping him cheat - they can still cast enough doubt to be allowed to continue playing at the highest level.
Here is a blunder that Feller played on move 13 just over a month ago (https://new.chess24.com/wall/news/grandmaster-blunders-mate-...) - this same guy managed to draw against Magnus Carlsen in 2008, in a game where Carlsen also found the moves/mannerisms of his opponent highly unusual.
This is super cool! I tried it on a video I recorded a while ago that I completely forgot about and was like wait wow the summary came away with points that I'd be glad a viewer got.
One thing is it was a very long and rambling video and probably didn't do a great job of motivating examples rather than just getting bogged down in them for a while, so the summary doesn't really say how the examples support the central claim, but that may be the fault of the video honestly lol...
Also a few basic errors like writing "medium" where I'm pretty sure I said or at least meant "median" and in one case, I'd have to go back and watch this to be sure, but it seems like the summary says something is better in B than in A when I was saying it's better in A than B. The summary definitely touches the right content but I'm not sure it's correct.
Also funnily I have a tendency to sprinkle the word "like" liberally(for better or worse) and the summary copies some of the sentences verbatim, starting with "Like..."
(completely off the topic of cheating in chess, sorry...)
It's actually fairly easy to cheat statistics. It happens literally all the time in Academia. There's a thousand ways to make a statistical analysis believably say what you want in a way where even other professionals don't realize is the case unless an expert does a thorough analysis.
It's easy to cheat a statistic you create. It's quite hard to cheat a statistic where you don't know who will look when at which particular data points.
I did not intend to attack or defend Hans with that statement, I just wanted to point out that both you and the original comment could be right at the same time. That being said, it's quite funny that this case showed both sides.
Me, as a 1600 player, have played some 0-0-0 games on Lichess. I didn't cheat. I just play a lot of chess games and during those games, my opponent was really bad, so I had a perfect game (according to the engine).
So there are "really bad" opponents at the 1600 level, but is it reasonable to think there are "really bad" opponents at the 2600 level? It's a different world up there.
Right, op is making a mistake in thinking that a perfect game against a 1600 is the same as a perfect game against a GM. GMs will intentionally play less perfect moves to head towards complications where they will come out ahead. When I start to bang out 15 moves of theory against a IM/GM they will recognize it and play something I’m not familiar with and just win more quickly.
You're conflating accuracy with engine correlation. Having a perfectly accurate game means you didn't make any moves that caused a centipawn loss. Having 100% engine correlation means you're making the exact moves the engine would make.
I think I have on 3-4 occasions played a game where, after evaluating on chess.com, got a 100% accuracy (which is engine correlation). A couple times were all theory and then blundering a mate in 1, but...
I did have one game where I didn't know the theory except a very vague recollection in the beginning. I actually thought I had blundered in that game and was trying to figure out what I'd do if my opponent made a certain move — they didn't find it, I ended up winning material in a tactic and they resigned — I was in complete shock when it came back 100% accuracy (and I definitely did not see the engine response to the move I was worried about, which was the best move).
I'm only around 1600-1700 on chess.com.
Not taking a position either way on Hans, but I have no doubt he knows far more theory than I do (and I do know some lines 20+ moves deep), and correlating with an engine is not impossible even outside of book.
To repeat what was said above, accuracy is not the same as engine correlation.
Engines often play moves that are counterintuitive and weird, but nonetheless good. This is because they can evaluate large trees of tactics in a way that humans cannot.
If a human finds a natural move that is just as good as the engine move (in terms of evaluation), they are still playing accurately, but they are uncorrelated with the engine. Playing accurately is not a sign of cheating. Playing many engine moves is a sign of cheating.
The engine scores centipawn loss against the perfect move (according to the engine). The engine plays the move with the lowest centipawn loss itself. How are those two different?
This is complete garbage. Real statistical analysis has been done, and has been inconclusive so far. Cherry picking games is ridiculous - at the 2800 level, a GM will only deviate from the engine's top moves 0-3 times. It would be expected that an exceptional performance would remain within top engine moves if someone was able to play at that level.
Hans isn't at the 2800 level, but Magnus is almost 2900, and probably has good reason to be suspicious of someone playing way above their rating in tough matches.
In one of those games, Nieman was losing by 1.3 points in the first 10 moves despite being 100% according to this analysis so I'll take it with a grain of salt. This only looks at having moves within the top 3 engine moves done by one of the engines tested, and sometimes there's just 1-2 good moves so doing 1 out of 10 (or whatever) possible moves doesn't mean you did anything good. Further, it's unclear how cherry-picked it is. If it was that obvious I'd think the other analysis would've caught it which they didn't.
You can find more discussion of it on reddit, but the threads are generally all over the place.
A 1.3 difference out of an opening sideline is neither rare nor lost, and mostly simply comes down to the fact that the engine doesn't understand the opening. Even the mod pin in the link you posted clearly outlines that this is a misleading way to frame this. It would be better to read more into the discussion before helping misinformation spread.
I didn't describe it as lost like the poster did, I said 'losing by 1.3' which is accurate. At any rate, if you actually did read deeper you'd see that losing by 1.3 is plenty relevant, when claiming 100% engine play correlation, and that the mod is somewhat cherry-picking. Further, playing openings where you are -1.3 in 2000 blitz is fine, but in super GM games 1.3 points down is more often than not pretty bad.
"The engine doesn't understand the opening" might have applied 10 years ago but you'll have a very hard time finding a single opening in all of chess where it would be the case now.
While interesting, this does not seem very convincing to me. They successfully show that Niemann was playing many games with a high percentage of "engine perfect" moves, but they do not do enough to show that this is inconsistent with what top players usually do. A whole distribution of scores is shown for Niemann but only limited summary statistics are shown for other top players. A proper comparison would involve showing the same type of data for both.
Yes, that's the question that I wish she had tried to answer. What are the chances? Without checking for that pattern by other 2600+ GMs, we don't know the answer.
> They successfully show that Niemann was playing many games with a high percentage of "engine perfect" moves, but they do not do enough to show that this is inconsistent with what top players usually do.
I thought the video very much did make that case. A single known cheating game had a 98% correlation (Sebastien Feller Paris 2010), other GMs have generally at most 75% average correlation. The analysis had more than half a dozen games with Niemann at 100% correlation. If that's cherry picking, it seems like there are a lot of cherries to pick.
Yeah, because Carlsen's is only a sample of 426 games
The first 4 are the most interesting, having same sample size of 4000. But across the board players tend to have little distinction between choosing moves between 0.0 & 0.1, except one player
Yeah this is interesting … she shows that Hans had many tournaments where he shows record setting move accuracy as measured by correlation to Stockfish 15, and that 6 of these tournaments occurred in a row. She also shows that for those tournaments even by Reagans model, Hans results would be like a 1/70000 chance if legit.
The key point (in the end) seems to be that the odds for a streak like Niemann had are about 1 in 80k. Statistically speaking, I'd say that's a long shot from a smoking gun. Here's a good rundown of a case where a cheater is considered to have been exposed by statistical evidence, but those odds were on a completely different scale, 10^22:
Basically the mistake that is easy to make is that we shouldn't ask: "what is the probability that Hans plays five tournaments like that in a row?", but "what is the probability that someone will play five tournaments like that in a row?". Even if we correct for the fact that there are probably more Minecraft speedruns happening than GM tournaments, odds of 80k just seem a bit too low to call it evidence.
Since younger players are growing up and developing with these incredibly powerful chess engines, I wonder if that plays a role in their ability to play at such a level.
If this were the case, I think we'd see younger players more likely to get these 100s more often as they're learning from chess engines.
Does anyone familiarized with the topic know if this makes sense?
They often have that. But if you have an accomplice placed with the spectators that person could just discreetly signal stuff. Like scratching the nose or so. At least for the WC matches they also often sat behind one-way glass.
You'd need a full blown X-ray to catch implants. I don't think technical countermeasures are the solution; even this is technically and logistically feasible highest levels of play, it wouldn't be something you could practically apply to the mid/low levels of play.
Inexpensive technical countermeasures like the metal detecting wands are reasonable enough, but probably not enough to stop the reputational harm that cheating scandals do to the entire sport.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 524 ms ] thread"I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do. This game contributed to changing my perspective."
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Personally I don't think that's strong enough reason to convince me that Niemann is a cheat. However, I would love to see more evidence before I change my position on this issue.
Given he has admitted to cheating before, the "is a cheat" test is arguably satisfied. Whether he also cheated here is a different question.
With how Hans responded to Carlsen's unorthodox opening and his history, it made Carlsen unsure and wrecked the rest of his game. And given Hans couldn't even explain his moves later..
I don't know the details as to whether that claim is credible. Is this correlation really any more for Niemann than any other grandmaster of similar strength? Are the analyzers cherry-picking data points that fit the narrative? And of course it is possible that Niemann is legitimately that good.
Reddit's /r/chess has loads of viewpoints and speculation, if you want to read more there.
(https://en.chessbase.com/post/is-hans-niemann-cheating-world...)
The counter to that is that it looks likely that a clever high-level player could probably use an engine once or twice in a game in a judicious way and not raise statistical alarm bells. But still, Ken's work tries to suss out things like that--e.g. does the player in question make good moves in 'key' positions. Plus, continued use of such techniques over time would leave a statistical trail.
Honestly, Magnus' statement of, "well, he beat me and it didn't look like he was thinking hard" is pretty thin. Magnus knows that Hans has a history of cheating in online games when he was younger and to me it feels like he's just seeing ghosts and deep into confirmation bias territory. Especially since the game in question took place at a high-level tournament with rigorous anti-cheating scanning, etc.
So here we have a whole bunch of the world’s best chess players and chess.com believing that Niemann repeatedly cheats, in addition to Niemann’s own admission to cheating in the past, and Regan taking the opposite stance.
Magnus, Ian, and Hikaru at the very least have pretty openly (given the legal threats flying around) said/implied they believe Hans cheats, and chess.com has very explicitly said this.
Maybe not all of their comments and beliefs focus on this particular OTB game, but that’s not how you catch a cheater, since it’s rare to find a smoking gun. You look at a pattern of behavior. Hans has cheated in the past, and many top players believe he is cheating in some way, in at least some games, on a continued basis… which is why Magnus refuses to play Hans, and why we’re even having this discussion.
He implied that maybe it would not catch it. I don't read it as a "likely", especially given the fact that he said he doesn't think Hans cheated in this case.
Don't let the statisticians convince you that they know what they're doing either. Statistics, as a discipline, is essentially predicated on the principle that the objects of study do not know that they are being observed. Without this assumption, the domain is now more accurately described as game theory. Statisticians will happily and confidently ignore this and draw very wrong conclusions as a result.
There is no such "principle" in statistics. Statistics is based on statistical methodology, i.e. formulas, models, and techniques that are used in statistical analysis of raw research data, which is collected, organized, analyzed, interpreted and presented. The Hawthorne effect, "a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed,"[1] arose from analysis of a statistical study.
> Without this assumption, the domain is now more accurately described as game theory.
Game theory is utilized for decision-making in strategic environments where rational agents interact with each other. Statistics, on the other hand, is employed for reasoning in non-adversarial settings where the samples are assumed to be generated by some stationary and non-reactive source.
> Statisticians will happily and confidently ignore this and draw very wrong conclusions as a result.
Contradiction. You've already claimed that statistics is "essentially predicated on the principle that the objects of study do not know that they are being observed." Yet now you're claiming experts "confidently" ignore their discipline's "essentially predicated" principle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
First, I have not invalidated the discipline, I have said not to trust statisticians who are clearly acting outside the bounds of the fundamental assumptions of statistics, and that statistical methods DO NOT function on adversaries. Consider the following two scenarios:
1) Alice and Bob are sending messages to each other in a lanugage I don't understand, and I, using statistical methods, wish to find out what they are saying.
2) Alice and Bob are sending messages to each other and don't want me to gain any information about this messages. I, using statistical methods, wish to find out what they are saying.
In scenario 1, I am likely to succeed. In scenario 2, the consensus is that I'm fucked. In just about every way. I can't tell what they're saying, I can't tell that any message that I have discerned is meant to mislead me, or doesn't carry some additional message hidden in the entropy of the message that was meant to mislead me. I can't tell if the communication is just noise meant to distract me, and if we want to talk practically, I can't even tell if they can communicate. Basically the only inference that I can draw is that they can't communicate faster than the speed of light.
Here's another example: Gerrymandering. The scenario is that one party has a clear advantage in terms of number of representatives vs proportion of population. We must establish whether that number was arrived at fairly, or by cheating. We assume that the party in charge of drawing the borders knows what tests we can perform, because that is always the assumption that you give to an adversary.
The adversary has a very simple (though potentially computationally expensive) algorithm to run. Check all possible border configurations for both advantage and your cheat detection. Pick the one which maximizes advantage which does not pass the cheat threshold, or just whatever your utility is.
Statistics needs the assumption of good faith in order to operate. Anyone who uses statistical methods when that assumption that cannot be made is at best a bad statistician.
I think this is the essence of your argument. This can be defeated with counter-example. Test cheaters are adversarial to any detection of their cheating, yet statistical analysis can expose the cheater without much issue.
In this case, statistical methods cannot positively identify no cheating, and the extent to which they can identify instances of cheating, it is because the observed party was not acting adversarially.
The algorithm i presented anove for gerrymandering is very general.
I don't see how that is possible
> but it does not salvage statistics.
Statistics does not need salvaging.
> Originally i claimed that what happens is it becomes game theory. That was a bit of a simplification, but it is illustrated by your example.
My cheating statistics example is a counter-example that defeats your argument.
> In this case, statistical methods cannot positively identify no cheating,
That is the entire point of cheating statistical analysis, to determine if cheating occurred. If cheating is not statistically identified, then the analysis shows "positively" that cheating hasn't occurred.
> and the extent to which they can identify instances of cheating, it is because the observed party was not acting adversarially.
Statistical analysis of cheating does not involve direct observation, and any cheater is adversarial by definition.
> The algorithm i presented anove for gerrymandering is very general.
On the contrary, it is not only specific, it does not support your argument. Politicians are not statisticians, and the depth of statistical analysis is notably shallow and has a single factor, party affiliation.
Statistics is a very old and complex discipline. It is technically a branch of mathematics. In advancing the argument that a biased statistician can produce incorrect results, or that statistics can not accurately study adversarial subjects, the underlying fallacy to these arguments is hasty generalization. As laymen, we can not invalidate an entire discipline or even speculate the limits of such a discipline based on such very specific and synthetic circumstances.
It is known that it's not technologically impossible. There are ways to do it, some of them rather outlandish but not infeasible.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it can go. Either you start doing something really extreme to ensure that players can't cheat (that aforementioned strip search, making them play in a Faraday cage, etc), you'll never really know.
Even worse than that, the cheating may not have gone on during the match. It could have been as simple as old-fashioned spying: studying what preparations Carlsen had made, and learning their weaknesses before the match even starts.
You can't really prevent that. The best you can hope for is for a chess expert to opine that this move seems like an unlikely thing for a human to play without the assistance of a computer. Carlsen is just such an expert, but obviously his opinion alone is much too biased.
How is that even "cheating"?
I'm not saying it's likely. I'm just explaining what I meant. Those preparations are private, and getting inside intel is cheating.
Remember that we are not giving him the death penalty, we are just trying to establish which scenario is more likely. It is important to be able to render most likely judgments based on incomplete information. Its not a courtroom.
That's not to say he should be allowed to play, but only to note that live play is kind of a different ball game compared to doing it online. Online, it's you alone in a room (with a second computer). Similar cheating over the board would require some kind of hidden communications device, and probably an assistant.
That's a distinction without a difference.
Come on. You people need a heart.
So yes, if you have admitted to cheating in chess in the past, you lose certain privileges, such as competing in world chess championship.
Where is the proof?
There's a reason why things like this are in different categories.
I could have been an alcoholic for years, but I shouldn't be branded as one forever to everyone I meet, etc.. it's just wrong. Totally immoral.
- Hans was walking weird (something in his shoe)
- He was making weird movements
- He was distracted, or similar, indicating he's messing with some device
etc... then sure.
Magnus did not say these things, and that is telling.
What I believe happened is Magnus (someone who has presented a lot of anxiety in the past - see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR-4_ouXUV4 but easy to find other examples) was really nervous that Hans may be cheating, and that impacted Magnus's play (he played a very poor game).
This is, however, irrelevant. Hans Niemann is a chess cheat. Allowing him to set the narrative to "I've only cheated online" is the same as allowing him to set the narrative to "I've only ever cheated while wearing green clothes".
I've never cheated on a game, even a casual one. I would never respect someone who did.
You obviously have, and I don't respect you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've been breaking the HN guidelines a ton lately. If you keep that up, we're going to have to ban you. Please review the rules and stick to them so we don't have to do that.
Past explanations on this point if anyone wants to read any: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
All is not lost; if you use the site as intended for a while, i.e. posting substantive, thoughtful comments that follow the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), you'd be welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we can take a look and hopefully drop the rate limit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The first mistake was still choosing to play when he had reservations once Hans was invited. The second mistake was quitting the tournament and messing up the standings once he lost. The third mistake was making an insinuation through a tweet. The fourth mistake was resigning in two moves his next game with Hans.
Even though Hans is suspicious and untrustworthy, Magnus is taking on himself the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. If he is concerned about cheating being an issue, proactively bring up the issue, don't do it re-actively.
Hans claimed he studied against Magnus' opening because Magnus had played it a few months ago. It turns out Magnus has never used that opening in a recorded game. The dialog has now changed to "well by move 20 the board state became identical to a previous Magnus game" but Hans didn't say he spotted the similarities at move 20, he said he studied that specific opening.
"I was uncomfortable with how he played because he has a history of cheating so I quit"
Which is entirely reasonable, if you think that cheating is an "existential threat" to chess itself.
If he wants to follow through on this, we better see some damning evidence. If this entire hubbub was for nothing, the chess community as a whole is going to have egg on their face.
Perhaps a person knows they should have done more sooner, but still chooses to do what they think is right when they make a decision.
Who are all the other cheaters that Magnus has quit against?
Why is the only cheater he has publicly made a show of having a problem with in all these years the one who recently beat him OTB playing black?
"His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do."
This isn't just "I got weird vibes" or something, this is the professional analysis of someone who has spent a lifetime analysing particular board states, the overall flow of the game, and the psychology of his opponents. He may have his hands tied in terms of what exactly he can say at this time, but the telegraph here is that he suspects cheating because of specific, observable factors in how the prior game(s) went down.
And those factors may ultimately be too subtle to be judged by anyone other than a jury of other top-tier professional chess players, but ultimately that doesn't matter, if it's enough to trigger a more thorough investigation then concrete evidence will emerge one way or the other and show Carlsen to be right or wrong on his hunch.
Tennis players and Chess players are expected to be granted absolute silence.
Is that an inconsistency? I don't think so. It's part of the expectation of the sport. Sport is in general a weird type of impure competition. Sponsorships, TV contracts, etc, all contribute to mixed priorities.
So no, I don't think it's appropriate to equate Poker and Chess in this regard. Their best practices can be evaluated on their own measures.
As much as TV would make you think so that's mostly a myth. It was probably more so the case in the past but now it's at most a very minor part of the game, and most (typically all) of your edge comes from better card playing.
A huge river bluff is viewed in the lens of 'I've represented a range which includes strong hands, and I make money if I get a fold X% of the time while increasing the call chance by Y% when I do have a good hand in this spot' and not 'I'm going to unnerve him by throwing money to make a bad decision'.
You think the players being uncertain whether or not their opponent is cheating is a good thing for chess? The game would crumble.
I would assume that I'd have absolutely no chance of winning against either even with a handicap.
I think as the skill differential becomes greater you have a better chance of identifying where the "master" screwed up allowing the neophyte to win. But it sounds like Hans and Carlsen are too close in skill (at least in this game) to identify a flaw in Carlsen's play that was able to be exploited.
And perhaps Hans went in expecting to lose and played loose and free and surprised himself with a win.
The issue is that will he get that chance at all?
Also, Hans has won some great games in short time controls.
Sinquefield Cup arbiters already sent a press release saying they found no evidence of cheating.
Magnus' intuition is not evidence, full stop.
Hans' play itself is not evidence, full stop.
Only actual evidence of cheating , the means and methods used, the conspirators, are sufficient.
By all means, the court of public opinion is for all to own, but Magnus is already "flat out wrong" by the actual standards of competition.
I think the unspoken truth but also the thing both chess.com and Magnus are hinting at is that Niemann has cheated a lot more than he lets on, perhaps his entire stream was built on cheating, who knows. But chess.com can't just start sharing information like that, and they are walking a fine line just with their public statement where they affirmatively assert that Niemann is underplaying the reality of his cheating. Magnus probably has insider information from chess.com but is bound by NDA and this is also why he's now challenging Niemann to give him permission to speak on the matter.
> So again:
>- MAGNUS has NOT seen chesscom cheat detection algorithms
>- MAGNUS was NOT given or told a list of “cheaters”
>- and he is and has completely acted 100% on his own knowledge (not sure where he got it!) and desires to this time
>I will also address a comment made to this post about Ben’s (Perp Chess) podcast and say that, yes, some top players (not Magnus!) have been invited at times, under NDA, to see what we do… and by extension, they also saw some reports of confessed cheaters (there were many more cheaters - but we only share those who confessed in writing, and only privately under the NDA). Magnus and the team from C24 are not on that list.
I guess "over the board" chess means an IRL chess game.
Can someone explain how the fuck someone would be able to do this and not make it obvious? Why is this being continually glossed over?
Am I dumb?
It doesn't even have to be that complex, for a super GM even just a simple signal that indicates "this position has a crushing move, spend extra time thinking on this move" is enough to significantly improve their performance
Unless you catch the method of cheating directly, it's basically impossible to definitively determine if someone was cheating from a small number of games, they could just have gotten lucky or have been especially prepared in a given line like Niemann claims to have been
This reductive approach to looking at cheating will just end with both of these shmucks sitting naked in an empty room, surrounded by an audience of a single referee who's job is to stop them from physically attacking one another. If he wants to accuse someone of cheating, he should do it - otherwise, dragging someone in public and refusing to make public statements doesn't reflect well on his professional integrity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge
Bridge is an imperfect information game so the opportunities are much larger, but something similar can happen in chess.
Whatever the case is, I don't think a public crusade is the right option. If he had conclusive evidence of him cheating during the match, he wouldn't have made such a protracted statement on it weeks afterwards.
Still could be correct, however. I suspect that Carlsen has certain knowledge of Hans cheating at games later than 16 but not the one he lost that hasn't been revealed yet.
In Magnus' statement he specifically spoke of how he felt, Hans felt. This shows how much information beyond the 64 squares that chess players take in.
I'd argue the opportunities are larger in chess, because "what to do" is much more concretely correct.
Bridge has its own problems... and people will cheat as long as there are physical devices. (Fantunes / Fisher-Schwartz) Imagine if they used any simple encryption algorithm, they'd be fishy, but impossible to catch at that time.
BBO is the future for bridge IMHO.
Chess, will become an in person game with nobody else but the arbiter, players, and cameras in the room.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
- "Such a technique was used in the 1980s construction of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Thousands of diodes were mixed into the building's structural concrete making detection and removal of the true listening devices nearly impossible."
Hans has performed well in tournaments where there was no live broadcast. What's the explanation?
https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/20/carlsen-v-niem...
* a hair of defined length placed in a bowl or glass of water and vibrations at the resonant frequency of that hair would produce visible ripples around the hair. * distant noise such as car horns honking, bass from a passing vehicle blasting dubstep, construction noise, etc. * laser beam through the window visible only with particular contact lenses * a bone-induction speaker or thumper (vibrating device) embedded in them or replacing a tooth * thumpers that can be put inside the soles of shoes that would not be detectable with a regular metal detector
My impression is that the technology is there. If the incentives are high enough, someone can find the way.
If Hans did go to all those extremes to cheat OTB it’s really surprising he would do so while playing black against Magnus Carlsen in an otherwise kind of pointless game.
The consensus among the top GMs was that Hans’s postgame analysis was way below the level you would expect from a player of his rating, never mind a player near Carlsen’s rating (which is much higher)!
The quality of players post-game interview varies widely. Some clearly don’t put much thoughts into them because they would rather go home. Niemann is in good company here. That was nothing particularly exceptional.
And if you don't want to and just would like to go home, fair enough, but then you really shouldn't give an explanation which is wrong!
It's a pattern with Niemann too, he's infamous for saying only "The chess speaks for itself" after beating Carlsen with black once before.
I think the parallel with academic cheating is accurate.
You clearly have never been through a four hours math exam with open questions.
There is no obviously correct answer. There is the way you tackled the problem and the myriad of other ways you could have done which might be more or less obvious, easy or correct.
It’s the same with chess. There is the line you played, the line your opponent played, the other lines you could have played which you did or didn’t consider, same with your opponent. Some of them you considered seriously, other you didn’t. Plus all the things you missed but didn’t matter because your opponent didn’t go there.
Also, you seem to believe chess players are doing post-game interviews because they want to. It’s not the case. It’s a mandatory part of participating in the tournament. Most of them would decline them if they could.
And yes Niemann is infamous for hating post-game interviews and always giving poor answers which is why I’m surprised people actually base their argument on this.
It's an exaggeration to say everyone hates post game discussion. Magnus used to dislike it somewhat, possibly - it was hilarious how Norwegian newspapers tried to turn him into a celebrity in those days because hey! Chess superstar! And it all fell flat because he was so unbelievably boring at the time, lol. He got more social confidence as he got older (and the media got better too, getting people who actually had a clue about chess to talk to him).
But these days, the young GMs are on twitch for heaven's sake. From a social and media standpoint, Niemann is perfectly competent, a lot more so than Magnus was at his age. It's explaining his play he avoids. So yes, it's suspicious. I'm equally surprised at why you would think people would just overlook this.
This is nothing like the Carlsen-Niemann case.
They absolutely were blundering much more than they did vs other opponents, showing a far lower quality off play than usual. Also I believe you didn't read much about his championship match. Remember how the games were moved to a different room, and why?
I thought you were talking about the Candidate's tournament. As for the championship match, it's not generally believed that Spassky severely underperformed anyway. He won several games and put up good fights in the draws and losses.
>I believe you didn't read much about his championship match
I am quite familiar with the surrounding circumstances, including the pre-match negotiations. I do not see how any of this "mentally unbalanced" or "broke" Spassky, unlike (arguably) Larsen and Taimonov. Furthermore, he's generally been commended for his behavior as a consummate professional and a "gentleman" in the circumstances.
I wonder if you are as familiar with chess (the game, professional play, and its history) as you lead on to be, posting all over this thread.
If you think about it: Magnus, is Magnus. He has an aura about him. People make blunders playing against him they wouldn't against others. This is known. Magnus is ALSO very good. But that "aura"... doesn't hurt him.
If for whatever reason, Hans saw far enough ahead, to not be worried... and Magnus hadn't, what does that say about Magnus?
He mentioned Hans wasn't nervous, in comparison to Magnus he had nothing to lose.
I won't defend his prior cheating. I will say: Prove it Magnus.
---
I'll draw a parallel to a game I have played at the national / international level. Bridge.
Bridge has had a TON of cheating scandals. People knew something was fishy. But they took the time, watched the videos, and figured out what happened.
Recent ones during the time I played:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantoni_and_Nunes_cheating_sca...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_and_Schwartz_cheating_s...
A whole article on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge
... I want the smoking gun Magnus. Not your gut.
I wonder if "bridge supercomputers" as a cheating method has been tried. I assume the percentages on finesses working, etc, are easy enough for the experts to learn that they're not very worthwhile.
Interestingly, the computers would to MUCH better on defense. Because as you bid, you speak about the distribution of your hand, and your partner does the same about theirs. (Even in negative inferences.)
And trust me: Good opponents will use that information, already.
So far, bridge has found the smoking guns because honestly: The cheaters have sucked at cheating.
If they bothered to actually encrypt their signals at all, they would have been suspected, but not caught.
---
To answer the question: Even today. Good players will know the answer to when to take which finesses. Where good, is probably around Life Master and a bit under.
Other than that your guess is as good as mine as _how_ he could have received said assistance, I've seen some wild theories.
A micro-vibrating motor in his shoe, buzzing morse code? f4 to g5 for example?
1. The trope of the 'Depraved Homosexual' has a long established history in pop culture and cinema. Anal beads as the choice for cheating would fall, comfortably, into that trope. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepravedHomosexu...]
2. Chess is full of VERY smart people. One of the most common ways to insult a smart person is to call into question their sexuality; hence why we have to have entire movements related to calling out anti-lgbtq+ statements like "that's so gay". [https://welcomingschools.org/resources/stop-thats-so-gay-ant...]
Anyway, combine those two things, and you get your answer. It's because the world hasn't really evolved at all in the last 30-40 years, outside of what we have been forced to do by law. It's easy and socially acceptable to call a man gay as an insult, so in a roundabout way, that's what we're getting with the anal beads talk.
I sort of laser focused on this last week when I heard this theory for the first time. It just struck me as so. . . odd. Why would that be a thing? That's what I came up with.
The key takeaway is that if you have someone assisting you (entering the information into the computer) they only need a very simple way of sending a signal - which could be a "do something unexpected" or "this move is crucial". And you'd only need a time or two in a game to get the edge, assuming you're already skilled at the game.
The simple fact is that computers vastly outcompete human chess players. And not just big and expensive purpose built machines but the kind of computers everyone has access to.
Furthermore at the skill levels these players are you don’t even need constant handholding from a computer. A few hints at key moments would be enough to basically shift the balance in someones favour.
So if someone wants to cheat all they have to do is to receive a few bits of information from an accomplice. The question is not even if someone cheated in that particular game, but if cheating is possible.
We can imagine all kind of spy gadgetry one could use to communicate those few bits. People have two hangups with many of them: they can be found in a security screening, or they sound too sci-fy.
The vibrating anal beads combine three properties: - they could transfer the few bits of information needed to tilt the game in favour of a cheat. - they are not too far fetched. You can buy them right now commercially. - they would be very hard to detect by security arrangements. It feels very unlikely that players would agree to the kind of invasive probing which would be necessary to detect one.
So it is not that people think that this particular player in this particular game actually used vibrating anal beads. It is more about the idea that someone could cheat at chess with covert communication methods.
https://illuminati-magic.com/products/thumper
Some of them seem small enough that they won't trigger a metal detector. Currently they don't constantly scan the playing hall for wireless activity, which is what you'd need to detect this in use. I bet they start scanning for wireless transmissions soon, though.
You missed a large part. Some of his moves were "somewhat suspect". However, he was interviewed after the game with Magnus and he really could not explain why he was making the moves he made. Even the interviewers were almost laughing as he gave his "analysis" for his own moves. He played off his top engine moves as just getting lucky, while at the same time stating he didn't make other moves because they would have weakened his position (when in fact it was the other way around), while also stating he made other moves to strengthen his position (when in fact it was weakening).
Nothing he said made sense. He is playing against the top players in the entire world, and he can't really describe his games. This is super genius territory, and yet he just claims his skills to mostly just be based on luck.
But when you have all these factors happening during one game, statistically it is not probable.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPmminIC7g
That's the majority of the players in the Sinquefield cup. Even Levon, who was initially skeptical, has since reversed his position.
As is tradition in chess, no one says "He cheated" they say things like "his moves were better than one would have expected" or "superhuman" or "I felt like I should trust my opponent over my calculation".
The next step is to place that mild suspicion in the context of both his history of admitted cheating, his unwillingness/inability to explain his remarkable moves post-game, and the additional context of many other games played in the last few years with _extraordinary_ accuracy. Now something that could be explained by just a very strong game appears very suspicious.
I'd say the vibe of the community seems to be a general distaste for drama, rather than taking a particular side.
I'm taken aback at the manner in which these accusations have been made. I guess that Magnus felt that the only way he could force FIDE and tournament organizers into action was with a big, public, shocking act.
It feels like a black eye for chess no matter the outcome. Either Niemann is proven guilty and professional chess has to grapple with that hit to its integrity, or the situation isn't resolved and the question of Niemann's (and pro chess') integrity is left open indefinitely.
I don't know to what extent Magnus has pushed for anti-cheating measures or increased scrutiny of Niemann behind closed doors, but I'll be very disappointed if it turns out that this public spectacle could've been avoided.
At the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I made the unprecedented professional decision to withdraw from the tournament after my round three game against Hans Niemann. A week later during the Champions Chess Tour, I resigned against Hans Niemann after playing only one move.
I know that my actions have frustrated many in the chess community. I'm frustrated. I want to play chess. I want to continue to play chess at the highest level in the best events. I believe that cheating in chess is a big deal and an existential threat to the game. I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over the board chess. When Niemann was invited last minute to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event. I ultimately chose to play.
I believe that Niemann has cheated more - and more recently - than he has publicly admitted. His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do. This game contributed to changing my perspective.
We must do something about cheating, and for my part going forward, I don't want to play against people that have cheated repeatedly in the past, because I don't know what they are capable of doing in the future.
There is more that I would like to say. Unfortunately, at this time I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann to speak openly. So far I have only been able to speak with my actions, and those actions have stated clearly that I am not willing to play chess with Niemann. I hope that the truth on this matter comes out, whatever it may be.
Sincerely, Manus Carlsen - World Chess Champion
Carlsen is all but accusing Niemann of having cheated against him. Why can't he go the extra step? Is this something his lawyers have advised him to do? (I don't have a dog in this fight)
It's also a gambit to get Hans to say something like "sure, Carlsen, say whatever you want" which could be used as a defense in a defamation case.
There's even a hint that Carlsen has evidence of cheating that has yet to be revealed (but not this game).
Remember that statements of opinions, including opinions that are analyses of previously disclosed facts, are protected from defamation claims. Defamation can only consist of a damaging false statement of fact, or the allegation that you're aware of specific undisclosed facts like that to support your opinion.
Other countries have vastly different statues, and in some cases true statements of fact can be defamation (if they were not widely known, I believe).
You could call out Lord St. Buggering-Little-Boys, complete with films, DNA evidence, and witness testimony, and still lose (and be on the hook for legal fees).
If I were Neimann I would actually sue now.
Plus, a very strong implication thag he did so at the Sinquefield Cup.
Neimann may have something.
(I'm not a lawyer, I just nerd out on this stuff, happy to be corrected).
He hasn't said anything beyond provable facts, and let people read into his actions what they want.
Suing someone for defamation because they resigned to you in a tournament is going to be a pretty high bar.
Maybe Hans did cheat OTB, maybe he didn't, but the tough part about reputation is it is very hard to build and very easy to break. And Hans had proven to the world that he would cheat.
I personally don't think Hans did cheat in that particular tournament but at the same time I don't think he deserves too much sympathy. Cheaters literally destroy the game, and Hans at the very least was a cheater.
And the best player in the world could cheat, too, reducing their mental load and taking it easy.
Both cases would likely be exposed by the cheaters getting lazy.
It is possible that some people can reach quite a high level but top out in their natural abilities well below the absolute top of the game and be incentivized to cheat to break through their personal, natural ceiling.
Even worse than "some people are cheating to make it to the elite level" would be "everyone at the elite level is cheating, you can't compete without cheating".
I did broadly equivalent stupid shit when I was 12, 16, 19... I don't think I mellowed out until I was 25-30. 19 is young, 19 year olds are generally still in their peak stupid teenager years. Crime stats back this up: https://pinkerton.com/our-insights/blog/age-crime-curve
If anything someone who is already known to cheat “just because” is even more likely to cheat when there is something to gain.
As for cheating and stakes I think it all depends. His claim is he cheated when he was 16 to boost his rating so he could player higher level opponents on stream and boost his career. If you accept that claim it would make sense that he rationalized it that he was just cheating to get to his "true" Elo and stopped cheating once he got there. Now Chess.Com seems to believe that he cheated beyond that but they haven't specified more at this point.
It sounds like he's saying he cheated to get to where he was going faster, but that he would have gotten there eventually so it's fine.
It would be like Armstrong saying he only cheated during trials and training.
https://pinkerton.com/our-insights/blog/age-crime-curve
(Yes yes I know, Pinkerton are evil. they have the best plot of this correlation I could find. The crime-age correlation is the strongest that exists in the entire field of criminology.)
I see the pattern forming. He clearly has improved his play since but he could also have improved the cheating technique, as others pointed out, just needing a hint or two in the most decisive moments of the game. Has he not cheated against Magnus it's a pity that he got accused with no proofs.
This is equally true of a 19 year old.
Classic "have your cake and eat it too". If you want to play in tournaments with adult prizes then you should expect adult consequences for misbehavior.
And if you also agree with Magnus that cheating is a major problem then him singling out a single player who happened to beat him in OTB chess, as opposed to asking for wholesale changes for the past so many years to tackle cheating more seriously when he owns one of the top chess organizations and has partnerships with nearly every other chess organization, seems like him just being a sore loser.
I don’t need to defend Hans’s cheating to point out that Magnus’s response has been ridiculous because it’s entirely focused on 1 individual player as opposed to the actual large scale problem of cheating in chess. A guy who happened to beat him OTB in a game where he likely did not cheat at all.
There’s a world of difference between holding a personal opinion that X is probably true, and agreeing that X is an established fact.
> Magnus’s response has been ridiculous because it’s entirely focused on 1 individual player as opposed to the actual large scale problem of cheating in chess
From the letter: “I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over the board chess.”
- are how players make their living in cash tournaments
- qualify for OTB events (including wct events)
- are rated by FIDE or national organizations
- count for points in otb/online hybrid tournaments.
All of those are significantly impactful for a professional player.
Come on, just have the guts to admit it.
- are how players make their living in cash tournaments
Players make their living in titled tuesday events? I guess the winner gets $1,500... so if you win every week..
- qualify for OTB events (including wct events)
Titled tuesday qualifies you for OTB events? where did you get this from? first time I'm hearing it.
- are rated by FIDE or national organizations
Titled tuesday is rated by FIDE?
- count for points in otb/online hybrid tournaments.
Titled tuesday ... again...
Hardly anything what you said is true.
It's not proof, but it is evidence.
You're refusing to see this, by the way. You're capable of understanding what I said without me saying it.
Most people just don't like Hans. They don't like his personality, so they have motivation to pile on. See this comment that has been linked EVERYWHERE: https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80630&start...
Nevermind have people shot down this dudes analysis, but he says in the post "But, if you will permit some editorializing, despite Niemann's claims that "it's impossible to play under these conditions," he gives every indication of quite enjoying the attention."
What fucking garbage that is a smear on the face of chess.
They seem to be saying that such behavior can confer an advantage — that to seem to be cheating is itself cheating.
I say we carry on like normal. Either Niemann's success falls apart, he messes up and gets caught, or we find out he's actually onto something brilliant.
Let's say you arrive home with your 2y/o child and are greeted with dog shit on the floor. If I asked the 2y/o who shat on the floor they wouldn't be able to answer, but you could easily deduce that the dog did it. Why? Because you have an immense bank of experience concerning everyday causality that the 2y/o doesn't have.
Magnus has a bank of human chess moves in his mind, that we don't. He knows that the dog shat on the floor.
And keep in mind that Magnus has not thrown this accusation around in the past, even in the face of defeat.
[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows...
Thanks
Moreover the live coverage showed an Hans way too relaxed about moves with 100% accuracy he was pulling.
He could also not give an explanation about of his moves in the game in an interview.
This, coupled with Magnus complaining about low security standards in the tournament make all the things very suspicious.
The problem is this was true a month ago. And a year ago. And 2 years ago. If he should be banned by reputation then it should have already happened. If they do it now they just weaponize cheating accusations.
If FIDE or Chess.com or whoever wanted to ban him from events for his past behavior--or players simply wanted to ostracize him by refusing to play in tournaments with him--they needed to have banned/ostracized him for that behavior. I don't think anyone would complain if Niemann were caught cheating and then permanently banned. That's what Carlsen implies he's after and it's fine.
In contrast, this is "well, you cheated in the past, but we're going to let you play, unless you play really well, in which case we'll assume you cheated". This is just not a sane way to go about it, and creates the scenario in which Niemann is playing with a sort of externally-imposed skill cap. An accusation has to come with evidence specific to that accusation, not some hazy combination of past history + unease with his play. This all sounds like a slow-motion tantrum, which Carlsen can get away with because he's Magnus Carlsen.
Exactly.
Unlike Hans history of cheating, Magnus does not have a history of baseless accusations when he loses (which he has on many occasions).
It reminds me of other cases in cycling or athletics...
Let's hope the truth also triumphs this time.
Carlsen specifically mentions that there are Niemann details he can't or won't reveal. Niemann could release him from that confidence, but I think Carlsen's reputation is strong enough that doubting this doesn't seem reasonable.
Personally, I think shading Carlsen, in isolation, seems misguided to me.
I agree, but that's mostly where my frustration with Carlsen is rooted. He had the choice with how to handle this - he went out of his way to choose the dramatic route.
He better have some conclusive evidence to back up the hurricane-sized shitstorm he's whipped up here. If it turns out the entire chess community got manipulated by a single rockstar and his badly-hurt ego, it would be hard to take the sport seriously again at a professional level.
Being upset at a loss, which you'll see in a few videos, is much different than disrespecting the person who beat him.
Make up your own minds if this crosses the line or if this is normal, competitive behavior.
And even if you're not inclined to believe that, nobody has shown a clip where he has disrespected or accused an opponent of impropriety. This latest incident stands alone as a unique one time event.
Chess.com / Magnus is waiting for Niemann to respond.
Magnus is setting the right example by refusing to play Niemann
Ok. If someone kills a person at 16. Should the killer be in prison for life?
Your comparison with murder is ridiculous. First of all, teenage murderers are regularly sentenced to life in prison. A murderer is deprived of fundamental human liberties--Niemann is deprived of being able to compete at the highest competitive level in a tabletop board game, without suspicion.
(Considering that people become more or less aware about their responsibilities and consequences of their actions at about 15 yo, he is now 4 times the responsible age he was at 16.)
If you believe this, its because you aren't looking. There's tons of explanations online of how it could be possible. Go look at /r/chess.
For those two reasons, I think that any such "pretty adamant" statement can be discounted.
Does that seem fair or reasonable to you? Sure no man can be as good as Magnus, he is clearly cheating in some clear undetected way, right?
Maybe in USA. In Europe some countries even have special sentences for young adults (older than 18 less than 21). Here's for Germany:
"The maximum penalty for any crime committed by a person under 18 (or a young adult under 21 who is treated as a juvenile) is 10 years"
If you murder somebody at 16, you shouldn't be a free man at 19. Three years is not enough time for somebody to mature and mellow.
Imagine if he is a generational talent and one of the best in the world, are you really ready to deprive him any future just because he did stupid things as a kid?
Is it entirely fair to the actually repentant? No. But does it keep out the false-repentant? Yes.
It is immoral to close every redemption path to a former sinner.
I stole stuff at 12 and at 16. I shouldn't walk into a walmart now at 30 and be searched when I leave.
Just relax.
> No one is searched when they leave stores.
In fact there are stores which will ask to search your bags and check your receipts as you walk out the door, and may ban you if you refuse. You probably realize this and are feigning ignorance.
Anyway, what's really insane is the way you're bouncing around this thread giving so many people such low quality replies, like the one directly above where you try to gaslight karamanolev by falsely claiming their comment was unintelligible. It really seems like you have some undisclosed stake in this matter, because you're not being fair or civil to many of those you respond to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32989622
>> You should perhaps actually engage with criticism and disagreement if you want to post here.
> Make me.
It is probably a mistake for me to respond to you at all.
In the US, they can ask - but no one can force you to do anything.
Then everyone will think his students are cheating when they perform well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lba8_wknSY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_in_baseball#Congression...
And the umpires are the dirtiest cheaters of all and always win.
Most recently, superstar San Diego Padres player Fernando Tatis Jr. was suspended for 80 games after testing positive for steroid use. [1]
[1] https://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/steroids_baseball...
Could you elaborate, especially on billiards?
I had heard a 99PI episode about baseball cheating, but thought it was more isolated incidents and not general disrepute.
I enjoy playing pool but know nothing about the professional scene or cheating.
With baseball, a lot of high level players have gotten caught or admitted it, and have said that it's widespread. Jose Canseco admitted to cheating and claimed as much as 80% of players use steroids. He specifically accused Alex Rodriquez, which was later proven true. Allegations like these from admitted/caught cheats might be attempts to justify themselves, but personally I think cheating is and has been rampant in baseball for a very long time. It's still fun to watch though.
Note, however, that steroid use was made effectively illegal on a federal level in the United States in 1990. The 1991 date above references a memo from the commissioner that states that illegal drugs are "strictly prohibited". Steroids are mentioned explicitly, though they do not have to be, seeing as how they were in fact illegal.
You can read the memo here: https://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/format/memos20051109
He cheated as a minor in online play. He has never been shown to have cheated as an adult or in OTB play. Someone needs to prove one of those things before he can be blacklisted for being a cheater.
>He cheated as a minor in online play.
Certain kinds of cheating are not actually cheating? Or between 16 and 19 a switch flicked in his head and suddenly he's clean?
For one thing, the fact that Carlsen is making this statement now and not weeks earlier is embarrassing.
For another, the evidence he presents is disappointingly weak. I can understand being suspicious of online games. Fair enough. But the evidence for cheating offline is:
1) Rapid progress in OTB chess. This rapid progress is still much less rapid than many other players and involved Hans quite clearly spending nearly 2 years only focused on chess during and after the pandemic. 2) Him competing as black in a way only a handful of players could. I’d argue there is almost no one who stands even a 10% chance of beating Magnus as black OTB. But, if all the GMs playing Magnus had a 0.1% chance, then there’s a 1/2000 chance he loses, and the loss is not likely to be to one of the top players simply because there are far more non top players. 3) Lack of nervousness. Well, it’s hard to see how Magnus would be beat by someone who was nervous. On 1 hand, Hans had nothing to lose and be nervous about. On the other hand Magnus had a ton of pressure on a quest for 2900.
At the end of the day, Hans didn’t play a brilliancy to beat Magnus. He simply played normal decent moves. The game itself presented no evidence of cheating.
It took Hans about five years to go from 2300 to 2500 rating, and most of that was pre-pandemic. Increasing your rating gets exponentially more difficult as your rating increases, which is why there are so few players who ever make it to the 2700 level or even the 2600 level. Most players at this level who spend multiple years in a rating lull never significantly increase their playing ability (there are countless examples, but look at someone like MVL for a typical example). There are only a small number of cases of people who reach Hans' level who have staircase looking ratings progress graphs at the 2500+ level.
Hans' recent rating increase is far from proof that he's cheating, but it is definitely extremely unusual.
Why?
How can people act like the evidence of online cheating doesn't affect the likelihood that he cheated OTB? This is the exact same person playing both games.
Circumstantial evidence is still evidence
Ultimately in the fullness of time they were all proven to be correct.
I mean, come on. There's a guy that replied to you who is insinuating that I AM Hans. LOL!
Let the conspiracies fly, I guess!
I have games, as a 1400-1600 that are perfect games.
Everyone has games that are perfect. Everyone. Not just GMs or Super GMs. I have at least a few perfect games and I'm half the rating Hans is.
The games analyzed also have crazy blunders by his opponents.
Where does Hikaru say he only has a 100% correlation game one time? I've seen lots of examples of other players having such games.
His games against Magnus were exceedingly high.
THE FIRST GAME Hikaru opened when he tried to check his games was 100%. He opened a random fucking game!
Also, your anecdote doesn't prove anything.
for reference, magnus carlsen's correlation score at his peak averages around 70% (according to the video)
Here is a blunder that Feller played on move 13 just over a month ago (https://new.chess24.com/wall/news/grandmaster-blunders-mate-...) - this same guy managed to draw against Magnus Carlsen in 2008, in a game where Carlsen also found the moves/mannerisms of his opponent highly unusual.
One thing is it was a very long and rambling video and probably didn't do a great job of motivating examples rather than just getting bogged down in them for a while, so the summary doesn't really say how the examples support the central claim, but that may be the fault of the video honestly lol...
Also a few basic errors like writing "medium" where I'm pretty sure I said or at least meant "median" and in one case, I'd have to go back and watch this to be sure, but it seems like the summary says something is better in B than in A when I was saying it's better in A than B. The summary definitely touches the right content but I'm not sure it's correct.
Also funnily I have a tendency to sprinkle the word "like" liberally(for better or worse) and the summary copies some of the sentences verbatim, starting with "Like..."
(completely off the topic of cheating in chess, sorry...)
This is how they find accounting fraud as well.
Further, clearly the analysis wasn't so irrefutable given that they admitted faults with it after others pointed out mistakes[0]
0. https://twitter.com/IglesiasYosha/status/1574308784566067201?
Me, as a 1600 player, have played some 0-0-0 games on Lichess. I didn't cheat. I just play a lot of chess games and during those games, my opponent was really bad, so I had a perfect game (according to the engine).
Link?
I did have one game where I didn't know the theory except a very vague recollection in the beginning. I actually thought I had blundered in that game and was trying to figure out what I'd do if my opponent made a certain move — they didn't find it, I ended up winning material in a tactic and they resigned — I was in complete shock when it came back 100% accuracy (and I definitely did not see the engine response to the move I was worried about, which was the best move).
I'm only around 1600-1700 on chess.com.
Not taking a position either way on Hans, but I have no doubt he knows far more theory than I do (and I do know some lines 20+ moves deep), and correlating with an engine is not impossible even outside of book.
Engines often play moves that are counterintuitive and weird, but nonetheless good. This is because they can evaluate large trees of tactics in a way that humans cannot.
If a human finds a natural move that is just as good as the engine move (in terms of evaluation), they are still playing accurately, but they are uncorrelated with the engine. Playing accurately is not a sign of cheating. Playing many engine moves is a sign of cheating.
You can find more discussion of it on reddit, but the threads are generally all over the place.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xofl99/one_of_the_10...
We don't know! That's why this is an incomplete analysis. A comparison against other players of his caliber would answer that question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjtbXxA8Fcc
100% correlation to an output that can be tuned doesn't seem that exciting
I thought the video very much did make that case. A single known cheating game had a 98% correlation (Sebastien Feller Paris 2010), other GMs have generally at most 75% average correlation. The analysis had more than half a dozen games with Niemann at 100% correlation. If that's cherry picking, it seems like there are a lot of cherries to pick.
The first 4 are the most interesting, having same sample size of 4000. But across the board players tend to have little distinction between choosing moves between 0.0 & 0.1, except one player
The discussion on /r/chess is pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ko3TdPy0TU
Basically the mistake that is easy to make is that we shouldn't ask: "what is the probability that Hans plays five tournaments like that in a row?", but "what is the probability that someone will play five tournaments like that in a row?". Even if we correct for the fact that there are probably more Minecraft speedruns happening than GM tournaments, odds of 80k just seem a bit too low to call it evidence.
If this were the case, I think we'd see younger players more likely to get these 100s more often as they're learning from chess engines.
Does anyone familiarized with the topic know if this makes sense?
Inexpensive technical countermeasures like the metal detecting wands are reasonable enough, but probably not enough to stop the reputational harm that cheating scandals do to the entire sport.