Also, clever cheating devices have been found in over the board chess competitions. So, this is possible. Moreover, one needn't carry a device on themselves. A cheater may have accomplices providing hints, if they carry a device.
It will be interesting to see how chess tournaments, as well as FIDE, chess.com, and other major chess institutions react to this situation. The potential for cheating has now been brought to the absolute forefront of chess discussion. And Carlsen's actions have been questioned by FIDE in recent interviews, with FIDE staff condemning "vigilantism" of a kind.
Some set of resolutions seems necessary--perhaps standards for security in major chess tournaments, perhaps an alliance to share cheating or reliability data amongst major chess operations, perhaps a standard term in major chess tournament agreements that no previously identified cheaters (online or otherwise) will be allowed to play, and perhaps sanctions in some form against Carlsen (or Niemann, if concrete evidence against him emerges).
The most convincing candidate for such a device I've seen is an Illuminati Thumper Pro hidden in Hans's shoe: https://illuminati-magic.com/products/thumper. If you watch the footage of him getting scanned before his match with Alireza (and, crucially, before Magnus announced he was dropping), there are a couple of subtle things that are consistent with this theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIulWkTHuu0:
1. He swallows (seemingly nervously) at 4 seconds shortly before his left shoe is scanned.
2. As the left shoe is being scanned, there are 2 beeping noises that at least to me, sound like they are coming from the wand, but are seemingly ignored by the wander. The same beeps do not repeat when his right shoe is scanned (that is, it's not just metal parts built into the shoes themselves). Two caveats to this part: First, I've heard differing opinions on whether the thumper will trigger metal detectors. Second, it's possible (even if unlikely IMO) that those beeps are not from that wand and it's just a coincidence that another wand or object beeped - since we can't see the wand in frame.
3. At 1:17 he starts nervously fidgeting with the credit card as the RF scanner gets close to his left foot and noticeably slows down when the scanner switches from his left foot to the right foot, and appears to stop completely as soon as the scanner is moving up away from his right foot. The RF scanner, to my understanding, would only detect devices that are actively transmitting which the thumper shouldn't need to do at all if Hans were using purely to receive engine moves/hints during the but the fact that it theoretically could transmit would explain why he'd be nervous about getting scanned anyway.
Of course none of these observations are proof but they sure look suspicious to me.
IMO, this reasoning potentially implicates every high level player. If it's possible that two hints can account for the difference between 2600 and 2800, and a 19 year old kid under heavy scrutiny can exploit this weakness without being detected, it seems assured that other more experienced players are also exploiting this.
This window seems closed though. Carlsen seems to have no evidence. Where else could the evidence come from? All we have is character attacks. Even if justified, they can't prove that he cheated.
All we know for sure is that Carlsen accused him of cheating with no evidence.
When you see it consistently the difference seems enormous, but the math … is surprisingly tiny.
I can't think of any effective way to curb online cheating in chess. Ultimately, online chess with money prizes shouldn't really exist.
source? sounds like bs to me
Did he steal it? Not necessarily — it’s entirely possible that he got a higher-paying legit job and saved up for it, or inherited money from a relative, or got it legally in some other way. He shouldn’t be convicted of a new crime with no other evidence just because he committed similar crimes in the past.
However, it would be entirely natural for a reasonable person to assume that theft is the most likely explanation of the facts, and to avoid trusting that person.
This is basically what happened with Hans. He has been caught cheating multiple times, and then had an unusually fast rise in rating. Is that rise impossible? No. But it’s consistent with cheating, and given his history, cheating is the simplest explanation.
So it would be totally normal for Magnus to refuse to trust such a person even though it can’t be conclusively proven that he’s still dirty. But even then, Magnus agreed to play against him, until further circumstantial evidence came to light and it just got to be too much.
So, is it possible that Hans is clean? Sure. If that’s indeed the case, do I feel sorry for him? No. He made the choice to destroy his own reputation when he cheated multiple times. If he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt now, it’s on him.
If he has a history of stealing cars AND his new car is hot wired? Possible it's legal? Sure. Let's not twist our hands about a grand theft auto charge, however.
Coming back to your analogy. So now imagine this person suddenly has a new shiny car but he also has the Title and registration for that car. Not only that, someone reported him to the cops and the cops said that the car is not stolen. He also has income tax returns that show that he has a legit source of income. Would it be natural for a reasonable person to assume that theft is the most likely explanation?
Dude probably trains with computers regularly. He has a better memory than 10 average Joe's combined. He's been the absolute #1 of the world for what, 10 years now?
He wouldn't risk his whole reputation for nothing.
I personally take his suspicions very seriously, though I agree that evidence has to be presented sooner or later.
The interesting thing is the one party MORE qualified than Magnus and the other grandmasters to detect cheating is the chesscom statistics team and they think Hans has cheated online recently and didn't admit to it. Still, there's no smoking gun that proves the OTB matches were fixed, Hans can be innocent at least in those specific circumstances, but if he's been guilty in online chess recently is it truly fair to make the world champion play against him OTB?
>He wouldn't risk his whole reputation for nothing.
It is pretty important to realise in terms of Magnus's mindset he has given up on defending the world championship and doing anything other than achieving 2900 elo, the highest rating ever achieved. He is a champion, and that is his goal in life, he wants that rating in a way most people can't fathom. If he proves Hans Neimann is a cheater, Han's win's against Magnus are void, and Magnus's rating goes up. Imagine being the world champion and having your dream drift further away because of a known cheater beating you when they're at a disadvantage, what goes through your head? What goes through your head when you think of how many people COULD be cheating and making getting 2900 impossible? What can others do about the spectre of chess cheating, the world champion, doesn't stand up?
So what I'm saying here is, I wouldn't be super confident that Magnus wouldn't throw his reputation in the trash to become the greatest chess player who ever lived. I think he would absolutely throw away his reputation, but not for nothing.
That just shows that he is fallible, which I empathize with.
Also don't forget the bishop blunder by Nepo in the world championship against Magnus. That was a 1800 level blunder trapping the bishop. Nepo is in top 5 GM list.
The fact of the matter is that all GMs including Magnus have the potential to make blunders.
No more evidence is required. The quality of Hans Niemann's moves, recently as well as during his rise from 2400-rating three years ago, is enough evidence against him.
Either he is a good as Stockfish, or ...
I'm not sure why someone would respond to dozens of all comment threads, but the different tones of voice, presented familiarity with the topic, between posts are disconcerting. I've never accused anyone of being a bot or shill (nor am I now) because I've seen starry-eyed true believers of just about every cause, idea, and entity, but this behavior is exceptionally unusual.
People who know near zero about chess seem to come out of woodwork to defend underdog who is attacked by the top level clique. Its understandable, but to me its akin to the flat earth arguments. All based on emotions, never have much to say about chess.
Anyone who knows a bit about chess (lets say advanced level), would point to the post game interview of game vs Firouzja as amazingly suspicious. It feels like a guy in group project who did noting and is trying to explain the project to their professor.
50/50 split is either illusion or its due to inflation of randoms giving their opinions.
No sound human would bee asking random ppl to determine if a patient has a cancer as a diagnostic tool. Cheating in chess is at top level extremely subtle, how is a random 1000 player any authority on the topic?
I don't think it's too surprising that some people have strong opinions about this matter either.
I know a little bit about the situation (though not an expert - I haven't researched it a ton, just tried to think critically about the situation) due to the fact that yeah, drama is entertaining. But I also think what the WC is doing is disgusting - he is using his position of power to harm someone, and doesn't have much evidence, really, none at all, other than him saying "trust me."
Also, the parallels between this and political discord are really interesting to me, and I wish I were smart enough to boil that down on a sociological level and express myself but unfortunately I am not.
I didn't know anything about Hans until Magnus dropped out of the tournament and this all started. I follow chess, and I didn't even know (consciously, I am sure I heard it and didn't take close note) at the time that he beat Magnus, until he dropped out.
I probably should not care too much, and do something more useful with my time, but it is super annoying to me that people are spreading misinformation to such a degree and no one seems to really care that that this can really impact someone's life.
On top of that, I strongly do not believe that someone should be branded for life due to their past actions.
at the time I read this and replied, your comment was top of the stack. without reading the full comments, i'm already reading your comment as someone that's got their knickers in a twist rather than reading a substantive comment. so hopefully that's what you wanted?
If other world top-50 players even think Hans cheated and got away with it, it creates an open door for lots more unscrupulous players to look for their own cheating schemes. We need to stop being so focused on a 19-year-old child and start asking chess organizers some hard questions about what they are planning to do to guarantee clean chess.
1. Ramp up anti cheat across the board. Stream delay, collect metrics which trigger an INTERNAL review at a certain threshold, etc.
2. Give players a process for lodging a suspicion of cheating. Part of this would be working with FIDE, not starting public drama. Fine them if they break the rules of that process.
If you get caught cheating, even once, you should be banned for life.
Otherwise we end up in a lose-lose situation.
It’s almost impossible for Magnus to prove Niemann cheated on that game.
It’s impossible for Niemann to prove he didn’t cheat.
But shouldn’t matter. He was caught cheating before, he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete again.
I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getting a pass
Edit: Replies seem to focus on my examples. Forget about them. Proposition stands. If you are old enough to compete you are old enough to be banned for life if you cheat. Online or OTB.
I don’t think chess is as bad as cycling. Doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but gives some perspective
These seem like fair qualifications to your proposition.
I know this isn’t proof he cheated, but it doesn’t do him any favors when he’s already under suspicion.
Edit: Way back, decades ago, in Warcraft 2, I became strong enough to regularly get accused of cheating by people who weren’t familiar with me. However the converse side of this is I was extremely accurate at detecting actual cheating.
I do not want to suggest anything here, just side note that there are cases in cycling when someone was cheating and than suspended/relegated but without life ban like Alberto Contador in Tour de France 2010.
Niemann doesn't have to approve such a thing. It falls on the accuser to prove that the accused is guilty.
He simply wants to avoid going through that, which imo is understandable.
When you have proof of cheating the sport's authorities take action (not individual players). When you don't you let the games go on knowing some folks are getting away with it sometimes.
Yes, he most definitely is and the rest of your comment doesn’t disprove that in any way.
Magnus isn’t trying to be judge, jury and executioner. He has just decided that the guy is irrevocably a cheater and as a sentence he will never play a game against him again.
1. It is solidly within the realm of possibility that a person who spends all his time devoted to succeeding in tournament chess would be able to devise a cheating method that cannot be easily detected by standard protocols
2. It is impossible to prove a negative, so it is impossible to disprove Magnus' claims
With these things being said, it is both possible that Hans didn't cheat and we'll never know for sure, or that he did cheat and we'll never know how. Given these facts, the most productive analysis would be to find just how unusual Hans' performance, both in the game and prior, really was.
A few things could be determined:
1. How many other high level players have a history of cheating? Have any players who have once cheated in a lower stakes match later been proven to have cheated in a higher stakes one?
2. Based on improvement per game played, how unusually rapid was Hans' development in the past 2 years? Are there other players which have progressed as rapidly as he has despite having progressed slower earlier in their careers?
3. Do all the engine correlation analyses that implicate Hans not fire warning signals when analysis any other game by confirmed non-cheaters? Do they signal cheating in a similar way when analyzing games of proven cheaters?
Since this statement is itself a negative, you've presented a paradox, because if it were proven true it would then be false.
Hans has a string of games at 100% correlation[0], meaning he's playing perfect games. Past players who achieved this later went on to admit to cheating[1]. Magnus knows this because he owns part of chess.com and presumably sees the data.
Magnus has a lot riding on his statement. He wouldn't make it unless he was sure.
It's cherry-picked games and it doesn't compare to the "engine correlation" of other high ranked players against similar opponents. I would not rely on it as evidence that Hans is "clearly cheating."
I can recall several players on discussion boards analysing my statistics and explaining how I was clearly cheating because it was impossible for a human to play like me. Humans, they said, just weren’t that accurate.
One cheat-detection algorithm even “caught” me one day, and I was promptly banned from that server. Confused about what had happened, I sought out the server documentation online so I could see what they had used to “detect” me. My crime, it turns out, was scoring too many kills per second.
I keep this in mind whenever I see another person accused of something similar. Sometimes people have just put in more effort and study than we choose to comprehend.
His rating plateaued around 2300 from end of 2015 to mid 2018. Then in the last 2 years, I believe his improvement from 2400 to 2700 is the most rapid in history.
If you compare his rating with other young players like Duda, Firouzja, Gukesh - then his rating increase looks very unique.
I'm not aware of any chess prodigies that have followed a trajectory quite like this. So maybe Hans is an unusual talent. Or maybe, he's receiving computer assistance.
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...
The discussion on /r/chess is pretty good.
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).
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?
Given this, we will be left with cheaters getting caught rarely through obvious slips in op-sec (device falls out, gets picked by a detector through unlucky occurrence)
or
We will be forever accusing people of cheating. They will deny it. We will ask them to explain why they made certain moves. They will fail to explain themselves sufficiently... Are we here yet?
But accusing someone of cheating without any concrete evidence doesn’t sit well with me. It creates a situation where it declares all exceptional cases impossible. It’s impossible for growth. It’s impossible that someone could lose to a weaker player.
I suspect that people are able to say “even without concrete evidence, this is astronomically unlikely and the simplest explanation by far is that they cheated.”
Nevertheless, it all just doesn’t quite sit right with me. There’s something manifestly unpalatable about saying, “they cheated because surely nobody could ever do that.”
Please don’t see this comment as something that warrants explanation for why the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. I’m not really interested in the merits of this specific case. I’m also probably doing a poor job communicating this feeling I struggle myself to understand.
Magnus Carlsen didn't say Niemann cheated because he won but because he did so without being fully concentrated.
Magnus is setting the right example by refusing to play Niemann
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.
Ok. If someone kills a person at 16. Should the killer be in prison for life?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
That's a mere gut feeling, how on earth is Niemann supposed to defend against such a vague allegation? Magnus is a world-class competitor not only in chess but also in fantasy football and even quite decent at poker, so it stands to reason that he knows a thing or two about statistics and game theory. I was hoping he'd have far more concrete evidence than what he shared in this statement (like maybe he was playing a game that he'd deliberately prepared to test how long Niemann will take to compute certain hard-to-spot key moves; even that would still be extremely vague, but at least give Niemann something to concretely address). He is such an outstanding brain that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he needs to produce concrete evidence.
In the end Magnus hints that he has more to share, and I hope he will do so soon. Otherwise I don't see how we could get to any sort of satisfying resolution here (short of Niemann suddenly confessing, which seems unlikely, and we still don't have evidence that he has anything to confess at all).
1. How would Niemann have cheated? The shoe computer theory is a bit far fetched - are devices that small capable enough? Is he suspected of having an accomplice?
2. Why didn't Magnus just say something right away? He could have easily made his accusations at the moment to event organizers - quietly - and they could have had Niemann remove his shoes or something. Instead he threw a tantrum. Obviously this isn't just about Hans.
Personally, I think Niemann is just a 19yo kid who has made mistakes and Carlsen is a 31yo professional who is absolutely hammering this kid to make a larger point. He may be frustrated, but taking it out on Hans is a bit much. The imbalance of power here is just off the charts.
Even if Hans somehow cheated in that OTB game - of which there isn't a shred of real evidence - Magnus is the leader of the chess world and needs to accept that responsibility and react in a mature way. He should have taken the high road, simply said "I don't know what happened, but it was highly unusual. Let's guarantee that this doesn't happen in the future," and directed his frustrations totally at the event organizers rather than encouraging the entire world to attack this one kid.
It is extremely easy to cheat online. You just open an engine on your computer.
For OTB, you'd have to be really sophisticated, and most likely have a partner assist you. And you still have to be really, really good at chess - Hans, even if he's cheating, is still a 2600 rated player.
It is several orders of magnitude harder, so way less opportunity, and the risk is much, much higher. Hans would have to have nerves of steel, for sure, to pull it off. Not saying it is impossible.
But there's no evidence he cheats OTB, either.
yes, the tech is there
But yes, I agree that Carlsen should have just refused to play Hans after Sinquefield
Yes, they are. The Stockfish game you can install on your iPhone would beat Carlsen almost 100% of time.
Chess is touted as an ingenious game when it is little more than a brute-force search with simple prune and huge amounts of memorization.
I would argue that most GMs would easily play up to 200-300 elo points below their current level with little to no practice. But they spend decades of their lives memorizing and memorizing just to get the highest rating they can. And it is diminishing returns --- if you spent 1000 hours memorizing to get 100 points, the next 1000 hours will only get you 50 points. And when you reach your peak --- be prepared to keep memorizing forever just to stay there and inevitably drop when you reach a certain age.
What a waste of intelligence.
It is telling that nobody is pushing for chess960. This would greatly devalue memorization and make chess a brute-force-search-with-simple-prune game once again, as it was meant to be. But that's exactly the problem; if you are at the top after doing all this memorization you don't want to throw it away! In fact, your memorization might be better than your calculation in which case you will be surpassed by other players.
Scrabble is a fun game to play with kids, or sometimes with adults, and having a bigger vocabulary is an advantage. But competitive Scrabble means memorizing the dictionary of allowable Scrabble words. It's just a different game. There was the story a while back about the Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French but memorized French Scrabble words and won the French-language Scrabble World Championships: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378...
And that's fine - competition spurs invention to find any advantage possible. But to me it'd be more impressive to see someone play an obscure Scrabble world, and then when you ask what the word means, they're actually familiar with it, rather than "eh, it's in the word list".
I mean chess960 seems to be on the up, no? FIDE had their first ever world champs only three years ago (where notably Carlsen still made it to the final, though did end up losing to Wesley So)
But I did lose all interest in chess years ago when I realized the same thing: at the top level it's not about thinking but about memorizing (at the least) openings.
I believe go is too complex for the human mind to memorize strategies? Human mind, not computer.
If Hans is cheating (possible, especially given his past) Magnus should act and use his connections in the Chess world to catch him cheating.
Suspicion is not proof.
Using his reputation as leverage can work to destroy Hans's reputation, but there is a high risk of collateral damages.
He should be smarter than that.
You are assuming that his goal is to somehow uncover Hans cheating.
On the other hand if his goal is to highlight that in his opinion the security arrangements are not sufficient to be able to tell if an opponent is cheating or not, then he is doing that just right.
He spoke up and the competition in question introduced anti-cheating measures right the next day. That means there were things they could have been doing but were not before.
> Magnus should act and use his connections in the Chess world to catch him cheating.
How do you propose that could happen? Life is not a TV show with Perry Mason moments.
But general anti-cheating measures should be taken. What are those I don't know.
Even if Hans really did cheat, if there is no credible evidence you can’t fault him. And IMO it’s not enough that he cheated many years ago. Right now all the criticism he’s getting is unfair because it’s based on speculation.
Lets assume just for the sake of argument that Magnus has insider information from chess.com making him 98% certain that Niemann is cheating.
Why would he hand him a game that's going to be watched worldwide, where Magnus has nothing to win. Since if he wins we really still don't know anything one way or the other. But he also has everything to lose. If Hans is cheating and manages to pull off something again, then Magnus is cripeling his own reputation.
Magnus seems to be doing the right thing here, which is voicing his concerns, refusing to play him, and asking Niemann for permission to speak on the matter fully. Niemann is doing what you'd expect of a cheater, which is to stay quiet, dismiss the discussions, having difficulty explaining his plays, and pretty much just holding back from letting chess.com or Magnus divulge what information they have from the inside of his bans.
I mean, Magnus is so much more better player than Hans that even if Hans didn't cheat he would probably be worse in rematch. But in all sports sometimes underdogs win. In couple yt videos i watched it was said that Magnus played bad game and that Hans already gained an advantage in opening. Hans said that he prepared opening play but if he is indeed a cheater he maybe used engine just for opening. We'll probably never get an answer if there was cheating or not
To be clear, I'm not supporting either side of the debate, I'm just stating that people are throwing in numbers in a confident and convincing tone without understanding what those numbers mean.
Would a thoughtfully designed device be detectable via the pre-screening methods at OTB tournaments? You only need to send a few bits of information to swing a chess game.
It reminds me of other cases in cycling or athletics...
Let's hope the truth also triumphs this time.
It was a similar case where cheating was theoretically possible and alleged, but could not be proven. Only difference is that the Mike Postle case was a far bigger statistical anomaly.
"Niemann is an admitted chess cheater, and has cheated even more than he has admitted to, per Chess.com's recent statement. Cheating destroys the game and I refuse to play against known cheaters. I will not play Hans Niemann or any other known cheaters."
Are you referring to the concluding paragraph?
Ultimately in the fullness of time they were all proven to be correct.
It is dangerous, because people who do that know exactly they will not be able to provide evidence for their hypothesis to be true, but the other side won't be able to provide evidence either. So they rely solely on their convincing powers, and persuading others into their own belief system instead applying to reason.
I think, if at all, that all just proves one thing, something that scientists knew all along: if you want your thesis to be true, you will start interpreting reality in a fashion that supports your hypothesis. We don't do science like that for precisely this reason.
After all this, I think Magnus really ridiculed himself with this. His strongest evidence is "he wasn't tense"? Really, though?
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.
"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 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.
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.
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.
Playing a match in a big venue like MSG that holds numerous other events would make doing this easier. There are concerts there for example that involve bands setting up a lot of equipment. Get some of your chess team members to take temporary jobs on the crews setting up some of those shows and you might have a good chance of sneaking your chess cheating equipment in.
I think what you want to do with this kind of match is play each game in a different venue, and the players do not find out where the venue is until it is time for them to be taken there (on transportation arranged by the organizers) for the game. The player's teams are not told where the venue was until after the game.
If a player is going to cheat then it has to be done via something entirely contained on/in the player.
Maybe even have some of the games played on the move. E.g., the players are driven to an airport, board a chartered jet, and play their game in flight while the jet just flies around over a wide area.
Also in the public setting he wouldn't even need any device on him, he'll simply have an accomplice showing signs.
I also watched Niemann's games in the Julius Baer Cup, and he certainly has an uncanny ability to switch on some form of an afterburner against people like Aronian, Ivanchuk, Pragg and Duda. Perhaps he is that talented, but I can understand that the top players do not feel at ease.
On the other hand I'm not too happy about chess.com turning into some form of credit rating agency for top chess players. If I were above 2500, I wouldn't play there. Too much to lose if their proprietary algorithms misfire.
As a European, I'd certainly issue a GDPR information request for my cheating score, followed by a deletion request for all personal data.
In my opinion, it's more probable that Magnus is not just a chess player anymore. He is a chess tycoon that has a huge stake in chess business and a huge fanbase. And he is using that power frivolously.
The best way to catch this type of activity would be by detecting the presence of the equipment itself, such as with a nonlinear junction detector. This is a piece of gear that generates a small number of strong, spectrally-pure RF signals and listens for distortion products that indicate the presence of semiconductors nearby that are acting as mixers (which they will, whether they're designed to or not.) You can find anything from a hidden bug to a rusty rivet on a gutter that way. Even so, an NLJ sweep is no guarantee of success. The active devices in the transmitter and receiver could be biased into hard conduction or cutoff except when being used, for instance.
People have joked about "anal beads," but the fact is that a buttplug would be a near-flawless platform for such a communication system. You have the fine muscle control needed to transmit your opponent's moves to an accomplice via any number of pressure or motion transducers, and obviously you have the ability to perceive electrical or mechanical impulses received in return. If X-rays are ruled out for safety and if cavity searches are ruled out for modesty, detecting something like this would be a challenge for the highest-level government TSCM teams.
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.
I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann
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.
My chess.com rating is only 864 and after making a move that won me the game my opponent said they were going to report me because "I played an unusual tactic."
It's taking all the fun out of the game.
Edit - to clarify that cheating being on the agenda is a sad state of affairs, not that Carlson calling it out is sad.
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?
Once a cheat, not always a cheat ... but you built the reputation of being a cheat and that's all on the cheat.
It's on the cheat to literally bend-over backwards (lol) to assure people they have changed.
I want to emphasize, that it is disgusting regardless of Carlsen being right or wrong in his suspicions, it isn't really important, and I would stand by it even after Niemann being proven guilty. This really should be simple: either a player is caught cheating and then he is banned (or awarded a prize, or whatever this particular federation does with cheaters). Public statement must be given by federation and/or organizers, after which players may be allowed to speak up. Or a player isn't caught, and then you keep your fucking opinion to yourself (except of informing the arbiters, of course), however great champion you may be. In fact, the greater you are, the more responsibility you have, and even if you are borderline sure the opponent has cheated (but have no legal proof) — you really should be mindful of possibility that your are mistaken, and of what consequences your (however "legally non-binding") allegations may bear, given how prominent you are.
I.e., this is an issue that must be dealt by organizers — not players, not reddit users and surely not youtube bloggers.
Otherwise, what happens is that somebody totally innocent (and I'm not talking about Niemann — the point is, that it really could have been ANYBODY) can be publicly executed on a whim of a great King of Chess. Seriously, just think about it. A person's whole carrier may be ruined, he may be driven to a suicide, just because… Magnus has suspicions? Does it sit well with you?
Also, all of this is far beyond the question of if a suspect has cheated in the past. I mean, I think it's fair to say that refusing to play somebody who the federation/organizers do not ban, can (and should) be considered ill sportsmanship and be frowned upon — but this is just my personal opinion and means nothing. This said, I guess it should be acceptable that one may publicly refuse to play a person who is known to have cheated in the past (or for any other reason — and the criteria of refusal being potentially arbitrary is why I find this problematic). But then you kinda should make this statement before you play them, or at least make a note to yourself to do it after the tournament has finished, instead of throwing a tantrum just after you lose a game to that person (a game that you played really poorly, according to many respectable experts in the field, by the way… which isn't the point of course).
But, obviously, one cannot (and shouldn't) be expected to make the best and most moral decision all of the time. Which is why this should be handled (and even enforced) by the arbiters/event organizers/federation. And it would be too kind to say that it wasn't — it was literally the opposite of that! They were throwing fuel to the fire all way along! This is obscene.
Obviously there's more information that isn't being disclosed, and until the definitive information comes to light we're all going to be left in the dark.
Nonetheless, addressing this statement, it basically reveals that Magnus couldn't trust Hans before the tournament and especially the game they played in which Magnus lost as white.
Essentially, there isn't a game where Magnus loses to Hans and doesn't see cheating. He'd probably suspect cheating even if he won so long as there was some "unusually good play" from Hans.
So, excluding cheating as a possibility, the probability of Magnus strongly suspecting cheating given that he loses to Hans, however unlikely, looks like about 100%.
I haven't been following this closely (so please correct any details), but Hans's defence of how well he played in the game seems consistent with him playing unusually well and Magnus's observations. IE, Hans claims that he happened to prepare the opening Magnus played because he was trying to think of ways Magnus would play unpredictable openings, which is something, AFAIK, Magnus tends to do. It also seems plausible that Hans would prepare much more for the game against Magnus than anyone else. That combined with some luck and having a good day all seems consistent with not only winning unexpectedly but a relatively unusual demeanour.
And on the demeanour points Magnus makes, can we take a moment to imagine being him in the game: already suspecting cheating, running into someone who seems prepared for your "unusual/unexpected opening" and then being down as white ... what would you see on the other side of the board? How could you not read into any tick or gesture? Moreover, how focused are you? Would this not be the set of circumstances where you're going to play unusually badly? My vague understanding is that Magnus did indeed make some blunders in the game. The question for me is how well did Magnus play relative to his own level?
Overall, on the general point of cheating, Magnus is probably very much on point. His unilateral action on this seems on par with World Champions thinking they're as big as the game itself, for better or worse. On the specific point of whether Hans cheated in this game, I think that "innocent until proven guilty" is the only thing that will keep things together because if Magnus is wrong and Hans is bullied out of the game because of this then it will only contribute to the ugliness of a cheating crisis not remove it, IMO. That a cheating accusation is as ugly as this has been already is already a black mark against all those involved in managing the sport. Should it turn out that Hans did cheat, for instance, it's not a good look that the undisputed world champion had to or felt he had to forfeit a tournament and a game in another tournament to make his point.
Otherwise for the sport of Chess, it'd be a sad sport indeed if exciting and unexpected moments like Magnus's loss to Hans can't exist in it and the difference between "great" and "cheater" is whether you get help from a computer before or during the game.
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
I now wait to see if FIDE will do what they should and sanction him but I am not sure I have faith.
What's the big appeal of chess? We (as humans) can't beat computers. It's probably useful for further research, but I see absolutely no value in (human) competitions.