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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

#81

Post by lvass »

Dalewyn wrote: post #75
erdevs wrote: post #27

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…

>The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning. Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate. These aren't games of pleasu…

Games are just games, they don't have to mean the same thing to everyone. The way you view them tells more about youself than about the games.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#82

Post by plantsbeans »

chucksmash wrote: post #68
paxys wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup that part stood out to me as well. There are dozens of "Anonymous Confessed GM"s on the cheating list, most of them with a rating much higher than Neimann's. And this doesn't even mention the players who are flagged by their algorithm but haven't admitted their guilt. Given the very high ELO range of the offenders (2600-2700), it's clear that a lot of the most popular names in chess are involved. Why not name all…

I wouldn't take this to mean that everybody cheats, or everybody at the top cheats, as a sibling comment has stated. Wikipedia cites the number of grandmasters as "almost 2000" so even 100 GM cheaters is still a small amount (modulo the ones no longer living I guess, who likely are not playing on chess.com). Elsewhere in the report chess.com gives a figure for number of players they believe have cheated on the site f…

1/20 GMs is a minority, but it means that top players play cheaters all the time.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#83

Post by nextaccountic »

berkut wrote: post #37
erdevs wrote: post #27

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…

Does engine correlation actually prove anything though? Some of the 'statistical analysis' that has been posted on twitter regarding it in the last week has been against hundreds of engines, so 'engine correlation' seems to mean "the move made matched against at least one engine that would have made that move" I think?

> Does engine correlation actually prove anything though?

It probably doesn't, and for many reasons, both because the more engines you add the greater the chance of falsely accusing someone (so an analysis that features hundreds engines is probably worthless), but worse than that, you can manipulate the result of the analysis through the selection of engines

There's a number of topics about that on /r/chess, like https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xtwzfe/fm_ingvar_joh... https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xtwzfe/fm_ingvar_joh... etc

But anyway this isn't the analysis that Chess.com does anyway

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#84

Post by fsckboy »

Dalewyn wrote: post #75
erdevs wrote: post #27

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…

>The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning. Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate. These aren't games of pleasu…

If your attitude about chess competition was applied toward you in all of your routine irl activities, you would be extremely unhappy.

The cop does better in his job by meeting his quota of speeding tickets, so it objectively makes sense that he would issue you a speeding ticket every day with no evidence and over your strenuous objections... except you wouldn't object because the cop is working the system rationally. Yeah, right. Anyway, the lawyer you hired to work through this issue in court would of course inflate the number of hours he worked on your case, because why wouldn't he, he'd be an idiot not to!

Can't wait for you to apply for you YC investment, you make a great business partner, so rational and all.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#85

Post by Lerc »

chucksmash wrote: post #68
paxys wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup that part stood out to me as well. There are dozens of "Anonymous Confessed GM"s on the cheating list, most of them with a rating much higher than Neimann's. And this doesn't even mention the players who are flagged by their algorithm but haven't admitted their guilt. Given the very high ELO range of the offenders (2600-2700), it's clear that a lot of the most popular names in chess are involved. Why not name all…

I wouldn't take this to mean that everybody cheats, or everybody at the top cheats, as a sibling comment has stated. Wikipedia cites the number of grandmasters as "almost 2000" so even 100 GM cheaters is still a small amount (modulo the ones no longer living I guess, who likely are not playing on chess.com). Elsewhere in the report chess.com gives a figure for number of players they believe have cheated on the site f…

This article https://en.chessbase.com/post/thirteen-super-grandmasters says

The history of the game of chess knows around 30 players who have at some point exceeded the dream mark of 2600 Elo points.

On the other hand this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_players_by_peak_... puts 125 at over 2700

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#87

Post by moomin »

Dalewyn wrote: post #75
erdevs wrote: post #27

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…

>The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning. Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate. These aren't games of pleasu…

All of those things you can get by cheating. But cheating is never winning. The whole point of a game or sport is that it ceases to be a game when you go outside the rules.

Yes, many can square this circle in their own heads and convince themselves that anything goes. Some, like Lance Armstrong, will enrich themselves enormously. But none of them will have “won”.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#88

Post by threatofrain »

maegul wrote: post #8
paxys wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup that part stood out to me as well. There are dozens of "Anonymous Confessed GM"s on the cheating list, most of them with a rating much higher than Neimann's. And this doesn't even mention the players who are flagged by their algorithm but haven't admitted their guilt. Given the very high ELO range of the offenders (2600-2700), it's clear that a lot of the most popular names in chess are involved. Why not name all…

Yea, it definitely seems a bit suspicious and unfair, which fits frankly with the sport going through growing pains on this. Seems like you gotta beat Magnus for your cheating to matter?! Snark aside, Magnus’s behaviour makes some sense, he wants this to be addressed. But the manner in which it is happening, his conduct included, is just poor form for the sport, even if it was the best overall move Magnus could make.

It appears that chess.com was handling the matter discreetly until Hans made the issue public. It would be unfair if it turned out that the other GM's also challenged chess.com publicly.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#89

Post by chrisshroba »

nevinera wrote: post #54
wsc981 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most of the _plausible_ systems involve a one-way link, where an observer is running the engine and supplying information to the player through some system that is perceptible to the player and nobody else. Forcing the player to pass information about the board state _outward_ certainly doesn't make cheating impossible, but it makes it a whole lot harder - input devices that can't be observed are much more difficult.

I personally think the stakes are plenty high enough that people would try any convoluted mechanisms that they could sneak past security.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#90

Post by moron4hire »

Dalewyn wrote: post #75
erdevs wrote: post #27

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…

>The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning. Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate. These aren't games of pleasu…

A game is defined by its very specific set of rules. This can easily be seen in chess, which has a huge variety of variants. Or how one, minor rule change in baseball and you've got people wondering if the Hall of Fame even make sense anymore.

Once a set of rules are defined, competitions and tournaments within those rules are meant to determine the best people in that game.

When a player cheats, and rationalizes it as "only matters if you get caught", that means the cheater is playing by different sets of rules from his opponent. They are playing literally different games. If the two opponents are playing different games, it completely undermines the purpose of the competition.

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