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Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

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Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#81

Post by agarden »

blub wrote: post #66
agarden wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regan's analysis is a good deal more detailed than that. He claims that if you check the computer just three times a game, he is going to catch you within three games. Now, if you check just once, it becomes a lot harder. For the game against Carlsen, he looked at the key moves in that game. The first 20 or so moves were theory. You can't ever prove cheating in theory. After they diverged from theory, Regan said ther…

If there are several good moves, it seems logical to cheat by not picking the computer’s top choice.

If there are three or four good moves of approximately equal strength in a position, then it just isn't a position where someone at grandmaster level needs to cheat or benefits from doing so. They were going to find one of those moves anyway.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#82

Post by jjulius »

zug_zug wrote: post #64
jjulius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine having to sit through a game that you love to play, only with a nagging thought in the back of your mind that sucks the joy out of the experience and turns it into a chore. That's a completely reasonable position for Magnus to take. It would be even more reasonable for him to simply state that that's why he's acted as such, and yet...

I imagine he'd open himself up to a lawsuit if he accused a player of cheating without hard evidence.

Accusing him of cheating is not at all what we were talking about.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#83

Post by JacobThreeThree »

treis wrote: post #63
Bakary wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At their level of play, a single one-bit message can tip the scales in dramatic fashion. All you have to know is that there is a great move to be found in a particular position, without even knowing what the move is.

Engine moves aren't really like that though. They aren't dramatic strokes of brilliance. They're slightly odd moves that pay off 20-30 moves later. And it's a little bit of a meta game. Engines are ultimately playing against themselves when determining the best move. So they might discard a brilliant looking move because of some line that no human is reasonably going to come up with. Similarly they might make a brill…

Humans can find engine moves, especially when they have hours on the clock like in classical chess. If you can consistently spend the majority of your time on the most critical moments when game-breaking moves could be found with enough calculation, that's enough to tip the scales dramatically over many games.

Sure, the human won't find the move every time, but it's still a huge edge.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#84

Post by SilverBirch »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #60
SilverBirch wrote: post #41

I honestly wish that people wouldn't put out rubbish analysis like this. >his conclusion is there is no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating. No. His conclusion is that based on this really weird brute force statistical analysis there is no statistical indicator that he cheated. Firstly, how you can state there's no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating is absurd. You know he has a previous record of c…

>this really weird brute force statistical analysis Care to explain why you call the method "really weird"? Is there a flaw in the statistics that you can correct? Here's [1] his publications - all well cited, his h-index is good, and I find no refutation of complaints in the literature about his methods. He seems quite competent in this area. >how you can state there's no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating…

It's not that the statistics are wrong, it's that you can't apply statistics to prove this at all. Specifically because the person you're analyzing knows all about chess. They know that a super strong weird move will just expose them, so instead they're going to pick lines that just slightly increase their strength. This is like the statistical analyses that show election rigging by highlighting a statistically improbable distribution of results - that analysis works if the person rigging the election doesn't consider the statistical analysis when they're doing their cheating, it is completely avoidable if you cheat competently.

Which brings us back to a sort of basic question - if this guy is cheating, do we think he's doing it fairly competently or not? If he's not cheating, the statistics will show normal play, if he is cheating and he's fairly competent the statistics will show normal play. So what has this analysis done? It's proved that he's not totally incompetent, which we already knew because he's pretty well established as a good chess player even he isn't truly a 2700ELO.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#85

Post by treis »

Bakary wrote: post #74
treis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engine moves aren't really like that though. They aren't dramatic strokes of brilliance. They're slightly odd moves that pay off 20-30 moves later. And it's a little bit of a meta game. Engines are ultimately playing against themselves when determining the best move. So they might discard a brilliant looking move because of some line that no human is reasonably going to come up with. Similarly they might make a brill…

I don't entirely disagree but consider the following: 1) To be useless to a top player, the decision tree needs to have only long term gains and be barren in terms of short term human-readable profits. 2) In the same vein, the metagaming pruning process you have described has to unfold a certain way, in the context of a game where most of the previous moves have been played by humans and not machines and where there…

The problem is if we're sending 1 bit of information that is something along the lines of "go for it" or "something's there" or whatever. That's just not something an engine can tell you outside of specific scenarios where there is a really good move to be made.

You probably could rejigger the engine to factor into account the likelihood of a human finding the right moves and relative downside. Like an engine might reject a move that leaves them a half pawn down if the opponent makes 25 difficult to find moves in a row. But that risk/reward would be worth it going against a flawed human player.

Perhaps it could also work in conjunction with another GM that you train with regularly. They can use an engine and do the evaluation above themselves.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#86

Post by cosentiyes »

EarthIsHome wrote: post #26
jstx1 wrote: post #3

Fabiano Caruana (former number 2 and World Championship contender) is skeptical of Regan's analysis: > I would take Regan’s analysis with the large grain of salt, and the reason why is not because I have any insight into his algorithm or his methods, but because I know of a case of, a very high profile case, where with absolute certainty I can say that someone was cheating in an important event. And the person was in…

Regan's algorithm cannot prove that you did not cheat; it can only fail to prove that you cheated. The question that Regan's algorithm is this: "Did you cheat?" If the algorithm comes back with "Yes," then you cheated. But it cannot come back with "No." It can only come back with "I failed to prove that you were cheating." You need another hypothesis: "Did you not cheat?" But this is an impossible test.

Agreed, this is also likely a high precision, low recall approach to avoid false positives ruining a player's career

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#87

Post by puffoflogic »

agarden wrote: post #54
binarymax wrote: post #47

If you play at a grandmaster level, then sometimes you only need to cheat on one or two critical moves in the game. The rest you can handle yourself. A smart and talented cheater wouldn't use stockfish for 10 to 20 moves in a 90 move game, you only use the game changing move or two. This is likely impossible to catch and prove.

Regan claims that if you consult the computer just three times during a game, he will catch you after three games. If you consult just once, it gets a lot harder.

He seems to define "consult" as "receive a specific move from the engine". GMs have stated that they could throw a game simply by being alerted that a good move existed. I doubt that would ever show up on a statistical analysis of moves. It would at the very least require an analysis correlating think time, move, and depth of analysis required to correctly analyze the current position. You'd have to say "hey wait player doesn't usually notice there's some X depth analysis opportunity and actually take it." And that doesn't seem to be the analysis which happened here by a long shot.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#88

Post by treis »

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #83
treis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engine moves aren't really like that though. They aren't dramatic strokes of brilliance. They're slightly odd moves that pay off 20-30 moves later. And it's a little bit of a meta game. Engines are ultimately playing against themselves when determining the best move. So they might discard a brilliant looking move because of some line that no human is reasonably going to come up with. Similarly they might make a brill…

Humans can find engine moves, especially when they have hours on the clock like in classical chess. If you can consistently spend the majority of your time on the most critical moments when game-breaking moves could be found with enough calculation, that's enough to tip the scales dramatically over many games. Sure, the human won't find the move every time, but it's still a huge edge.

But the point is that there's not really ever this mythical one great move that's going to win your the game. Look at Stockfish's analysis of the game:

https://lichess.org/broadcast/sinquefield-cup--grand-chess-t...

There's not a single move that significantly improved black's position.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#89

Post by cellis »

treis wrote: post #63
Bakary wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At their level of play, a single one-bit message can tip the scales in dramatic fashion. All you have to know is that there is a great move to be found in a particular position, without even knowing what the move is.

Engine moves aren't really like that though. They aren't dramatic strokes of brilliance. They're slightly odd moves that pay off 20-30 moves later. And it's a little bit of a meta game. Engines are ultimately playing against themselves when determining the best move. So they might discard a brilliant looking move because of some line that no human is reasonably going to come up with. Similarly they might make a brill…

Chess.com has already "fine-tuned" AIs that play at the N-elo level. E.g. 1800 elo, 2200 elo, IM, GM. I'm sure you could constrain stockfish to play at N+1 of your target opponent and thus avoid this issue.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#90

Post by ChrisLomont »

SilverBirch wrote: post #84
ChrisLomont wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this really weird brute force statistical analysis Care to explain why you call the method "really weird"? Is there a flaw in the statistics that you can correct? Here's [1] his publications - all well cited, his h-index is good, and I find no refutation of complaints in the literature about his methods. He seems quite competent in this area. >how you can state there's no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating…

It's not that the statistics are wrong, it's that you can't apply statistics to prove this at all. Specifically because the person you're analyzing knows all about chess. They know that a super strong weird move will just expose them, so instead they're going to pick lines that just slightly increase their strength. This is like the statistical analyses that show election rigging by highlighting a statistically impro…

>it's that you can't apply statistics to prove this at all

If there are not statistical differences, then there are no performance differences. Cheating by definition should imply performance differences.

If he is cheating, then at some point in the future, if that method becomes detectable and he has to stop, then his play will suddenly suffer, which would be more evidence.

Claiming that statistics cannot answer this question with statistics is not true. It may be hard, or the current sample too small, but claiming stats is not usable is a misunderstanding of statistics.

>This is like the statistical analyses that show election rigging by highlighting a statistically improbable distribution of results

This only works on the public, and is not what professional statisticians that analyze elections do.

And even here, if the event is rare enough, say 1 part in quadrillions, and the analysis is correct, then yes, we would certainly conclude there was rigging.

All human knowledge is statistical. Things we claim to be true are only statistically true to large odds, so even for election rigging, if the stats reach some level of certainty, then it is completely valid proof that would hold in court.

The pop idiocy of election rigging claims has never risen to that level.

>it is completely avoidable if you cheat competently

No, it is not. It may only lower the signal to noise ratio, but there is still detectable differences. If you continually improve the statistics and are forced to lower the signal, eventually the signal would be so low as to not affect the system, which in this case is chess games.

Physics, for example, can tease events out of on the order of 1 part in trillions and demonstrate signal. Plenty of other things do the same.

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