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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#701

Post by a9entroy »

School-Cotton wrote: post #539
a9entroy wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a complete analogy tho. Everyone knows Hans cheated in the past. But Magnus is going beyond that and saying that Hans cheated in the over-the-board game against him. 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…

I don’t understand your analogy. There’s no evidence that Hans didn’t cheat in the game against Magnus. This isn’t Hans’s fault, as it’s hard to imagine what such evidence could even be possible, but the fact remains that there’s nothing comparable to having the title, etc. to a car.

He has been caught of cheating online. Where you just open a new window and follow engine moves. Or you have a friend sitting beside you giving engine moves.

In his over-the-board match, he didn't have a laptop. He didn't have a friend giving him moves. He didn't have any communication device. He was mostly looking at the board or into the distance while he was playing. He was scanned with a metal detector. So we know he definitely didn't use any of his earlier methods of cheating if he even did cheat. Carlsen's statement confirms that his preparation wasn't leaked or hacked. I count these as evidence of him not cheating with his usual MO.

But in your analogy, it's completely possible for the guy to have used his usual MO to steal the new shiny car.

Now of course I'm not saying he didn't cheat. It's possible he used some other sophisticated method of cheating. But it would not be natural for a reasonable person to assume that theft using his usual MO is the most likely explanation.

Re: Dear Chess World

#702

Post by zamalek »

root_axis wrote: post #198
peter422 wrote: post #21

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…

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".

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.

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows...

Re: Dear Chess World

#703

Post by lupire »

dfan wrote: post #458
gamegoblin wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "200 points difference means 25% chance to win" breaks down at the highest levels. It works fine near the middle of the bell curve -- i.e. 800-2000 Elo -- but once you get to 2200 Elo you are talking about the >99th percentile. For example, I don't know of a single 2400 player who can score an average of 0.25 against 2600 players. Even at my own mediocre level of 1800, I definitely do not score 0.25 against 2000…

The Elo system is calibrated so that that the expected value from playing a player 200 points stronger than you is 0.24. This is true independent of the strength of the players. If you are scoring 0.10 against players 200 points stronger than you (that would mean, for example, 1 draw and 4 losses over 5 games) but maintaining a stable rating, then you must be crushing players that are weaker than you and/or doing ver…

Elo assumes that performance across n^2 players fits the logistic curve model of n players. There is no reason to believe that assumption is remotely accurate and that Elo would ever stabilize. Players often avoid playing lower rated players, for this reason.

Re: Dear Chess World

#704

Post by z9znz »

roflyear wrote: post #321
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If he's that smart, he should be more than capable of developing a number of other livelihoods - not the least of which could be coaching.

Re: Dear Chess World

#705

Post by lupire »

8note wrote: post #515
dfan wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Elo system is calibrated so that that the expected value from playing a player 200 points stronger than you is 0.24. This is true independent of the strength of the players. If you are scoring 0.10 against players 200 points stronger than you (that would mean, for example, 1 draw and 4 losses over 5 games) but maintaining a stable rating, then you must be crushing players that are weaker than you and/or doing ver…

Is the current ELO accurate though? How many fide rated games were played over covid?

Elo is not an acronym.

Re: Dear Chess World

#708

Post by BurningFrog »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #661
School-Cotton wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is claiming they should be. FIDE isn’t banning Hans based on Magnus’s vague suspicions, as indeed they shouldn’t. Magnus is just refusing to invest time and energy (and rating points) to play against someone he doesn’t like, which is absolutely his right. Nobody has the right to force Magnus or anyone else to play against them.

I think you might want to read the rules of chess tournaments. You will quickly realise that in fact Magnus doesn’t have a choice of who he plays against and can’t actually resign for no reason.

You have the choice of which tournaments to play in though.

Re: Dear Chess World

#709

Post by viridian »

Some interesting meta observations for the few people who read my comment in this already enormous thread. I noticed that opinions on the issue seemed split rather 50/50 until I started seeing the same couple of names over and over on the "no evidence of cheating" side. And in fact, searching the HTML document for this page for a particularly prolific name yields that they make up about 10% of all posts in the thread.

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.

Re: Dear Chess World

#710

Post by lmm »

esrauch wrote: post #362
root_axis wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people might assume that a cheater needs guidance every move, thereby requiring a potentially more obvious cheating mechanism. That is not the case. 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…

A bunch of grandmasters have now talked about the psychological aspect of even just wondering if your opponent could possibly by cheating, and second guessing if a bad looking move by your opponent might actually be a brilliant engine line. It seems that might even be enough for Hans as a 2675 rated player to get an edge against 2800+ player without even actually cheating

I've definitely experienced that, playing mahjong against a guy who was behaving oddly in the European championships. But all you can do is have strict referreeing and stricter penalties for anyone who is caught cheating even once (which seems to be missing in the chess world given the player in question's record). You certainly can't try to retroactively impose a vigilante penalty that FIDE haven't.
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