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The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

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Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#22

Post by msbarnett »

maegul wrote: post #5

So page 9 from the last paragraph is interesting. Chess.com basically indicate that apart from Hans, a number of highly rated players (including higher than Hans) have been caught and admitted to cheating. I haven't gone over the report thoroughly, but it's clearly focused on Hans's conduct and not so much on the state of play regarding online cheating, which is, even by Magnus's statement, the chief focus of all of…

> Second, that it's common amongst the elite of the sport is huge. Either online chess is somewhat dead on arrival as a sport and was never taken seriously by many players (which makes sense to me given how integrated computer engines are in the sport) ... or the chess world needs to go through some sort of cultural revolution here.

Really? My takeaway is that chess.com is doing a better job of detecting cheaters than FIDE, who seem to have been asleep at the wheel with Niemann

> Fourth, the OTB cheating question still seems open and it seems plausible to me that a good chess player would cheat online for followers and income and entrance to tournaments and then use OTB as the real testing ground.

This seems wildly implausible to me. Niemann‘s OTB rise would be indicative of a not just significant but utterly world historic chess mind, head-and-shoulders above Fisher and head-shoulders-and-entire-torso above every other player in history. When led into uncharted territory by the world chess champion, Magnus indicated that Niemann seemed utterly and completely untroubled - and yet he’s, what, running stockfish in another window for $1000 prizes online and getting himself caught dozens of times? Why? Why take the risk against opponents he should beat in his sleep? These should have been sleepwalk games for this Fisher++ genius who’s totally untroubled by a 5 time world chess championship, but he’s for some reason making obviously weaker moves when not switching windows when his unaided moves shouldn’t have been screamingly weaker than the aided ones given his singularly extraordinary chess rise.

It beggars belief. His world historic rise in rating alone is ludicrously over the top. Kid’s an obvious fraud.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#24

Post by a-dub »

doing the statistical analysis and all is pretty cool, but honestly, can't they just challenge him to play at his rating in a secure environment?

his learning curve is a little steeper than the others... that doesn't convince me the otb games were fraudulent.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#26

Post by wsc981 »

crystaln wrote: post #17

Seems like a pretty easy solution would be to have some games played without third party viewers in real time.

People can still cheat with some hidden hardware I guess [0]. A full body inspection of each player would be required as well.

——

[0]: https://github.com/RonSijm/ButtFish

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#27

Post by erdevs »

This report provides a detailed background of Hans' potential cheating, and detailed breakdowns of certain aspects of chess.com's cheat-detection methodology, including previously unknown (or little known) methods such as window focus change event monitoring and post-focus-change move analysis.[1]

The report also reveals Niemann's engine move correlations alongside over two dozen chess Grandmasters who have admitted to cheating on chess.com. The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Perhaps it is a good thing that this scandal is highlighting the issue, and given how widespread cheating may be, perhaps chess tournaments both online and physical need to take cheating much more seriously than they apparently have been.

There is also an interesting analysis of Hans' rating improvement history, his over the board tournament performance and key game analysis, and a rundown of key moments in his game against Carlsen in the Sinquefield cup. Each raises concerns.

Chess.com's report also makes it clear that Niemann lied outright about his history of cheating in post-Sinquefield interviews, as he admits in communications with chess.com Fairplay staff to much broader cheating.

All in all, the report raises many concerns and it seems reasonable for the chess community to demand much higher standards of cheat prevention and detection across competitive venues. How long might cheating issues have gone on merely rumored vs fully investigated or acted upon, had this intrigue not developed due to Carlsen's withdrawal from Sinquefield '22?

[1]Tangentially, this induces an obvious concern about cheat and cheat-detection arms races. A clever cheater might scrutinize this report and refine their cheating plan. For example, they might recognize the need to use a second device (such as a phone) to cheat. They might use the data corpus presented in this report to establish limits on how often they use chess engine moves per game, and they might manage their ratings progress over time carefully, so as to stay in acceptable ranges of engine move correlation, rate of improvement, etc.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#30

Post by mellosouls »

I've only really looked at the WSJ version but I'm scratching my head at what the big reveal is here - we already know - by Hans admission - he cheated online when he was 12 and 16.

I think anybody who knows how online chess tournaments work assumed those two times would cover multiple games and dates.

Other statistical analyses have been published that indicate no evidence for OTB cheating.

The negative against Niemann is the cheating is beefier than he indicated, and given the spotlight he needs to be more thorough.

Chess.com has a dog in the fight though, and it's bark seems worse than its bite here...

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