The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman • Hacker News Board

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#101

Post by Dalewyn » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:22 AM UTC

lvass wrote: post #81

Dalewyn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The question is one of incentives and motivations.

Am I playing chess because I love chess? To have fun? In that case, cheating is counter to my goals (unless I enjoy the act of cheating itelf, but that's getting besides the point).

On the other hand, is chess simply a means to an end? Am I playing chess because I want to win something? If so, cheating is but one of many possible decisions I can undertake to increase my odds of winning.

Where professional games are concerned, where money and fame are at stake if you lose, cheating is downright inevitable and certainly not something to be surprised about.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#102

Post by maegul » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #61

maegul wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which gets to my point about the bias of chess.com. Surely they have an interest in making this look like one awful offender, a bad apple essentially, and not that they’re profits come from a broken sport.

For anyone unaware, chess.com recently bought out the Play Magnus Group for about $80 million. They most definitely are not a neutral party in this financially. I personally interpret this sort of situation as creating an additional burden to acknowledge and demonstrate the conflict of interest isn't a material factor. I don't know if Hans cheated beyond his admissions. Online seems plausible if not likely to me. OTB…

Agreed on all fronts.

I've gotten the vague impression over the years that the chess establishment isn't the most fair and non-corrupt organisation (par for the course perhaps for sports organisations). It also seems to be relatively behind or new to massive cheating scandals (??). Put together an event like this was almost certainly going to be ugly and unimpressive.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#103

Post by kmonsen » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #42

crystaln wrote: post #20

Seems to be happening in the poker world as well. https://twitter.com/dexerto/status/1575867098328289280

For anyone not following this I'll save you some time with the TL;DR: Hustler Casino livestreams a regular game with High Stakes Poker. A new player who is also a wealthy model wife type made a call against a pro that sucked out where her decision making was baffling. Off camera but on mic the pro demanded his money back. Then it blew up into a giant drama of accused cheating. Here's my read on what happened: this wo…

So that story seems reasonable, but at the same time she is a winning player in these games. I know, two sessions has enormous variance, but still the kind of people doing that mistake should not be a winning player in their first two sessions.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#104

Post by avazhi » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

Just ban this clown outright.

If somebody has a prodigious history of not playing by the rules, there is no reason to think they'll ever reform, and it isn't worth the reputational damage to the game both within (Magnus) and without (the public's perception of high-end chess). This has been a fiasco when they should have just banned Neiman once it became clear that he's been consistently cheating for years.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#105

Post by monocasa » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #91

jfghi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be interesting. Have a chess bunker somewhere with 100s of games against a variety of opponents. I think at first there would be some nerves but over time the statistics would become clear. Perhaps there could be a 10 game burn-in.

And as a competing grand master, I want to be a test subject in this bunker why?

Stream it and make money?

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#106

Post by camjohnson26 » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

nwienert wrote: post #92

erdevs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find the decsription "lied outright" unfitting Hmm.. if time allows in the next hour or so, I will find his exact quotes from the interview and will definitely edit this out if it is unfair. But my recollection is that Hans stated explicitly that he had never cheated in a serious tournament since he was 12, that he only cheated thereafter in "unrated" games, that he only cheated twice overall, and that he hadn't…

> that he only cheated twice overall I don’t think he claimed “twice overall” as in “twice exactly”, to be fair, just within a period of time.

He specifically said he never cheated for prize money or while streaming and couldn’t imagine doing so, both statements were false.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#107

Post by maegul » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #91

jfghi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be interesting. Have a chess bunker somewhere with 100s of games against a variety of opponents. I think at first there would be some nerves but over time the statistics would become clear. Perhaps there could be a 10 game burn-in.

And as a competing grand master, I want to be a test subject in this bunker why?

Well athletes are required to provide urine samples and sometimes at random inconvenient times.

For chess, maybe your rating doesn't mean anything until you've gone through a "verified" bunker-play tournament that operates as a sort of baseline for your ability at all subsequent games until the next one.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#108

Post by slenk » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #38

“Our investigation has revealed that while there has been some noteworthy online play that has caught our attention as suspicious since August 2020, we are unaware of any evidence that Hans has engaged in online cheating since then.” So he was re-banned for absolutely no reason. He kept his side of the deal, i.e. not cheat again on chess.com platform. Chess.com didn’t keep theirs.

No...they seem willing to provide evidence that he has cheated more times than he admitted. He did NOT keep his side of the deal

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#109

Post by slenk » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:30 AM UTC

Valgrim wrote: post #2

Will chess.com provide an automated tool that uses the same methodology to analyse every player that uses it's platform? If not it seems unfair to other high profile players. But imagine they do, will those players get automatically banned from the website? Will tournaments require a proof of your online score and "non-cheater" certificate? A part of me seems to see this kind of automated analysis dangerously intrusi…

Most players using their platform aren't making money from it?

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#110

Post by Dalewyn » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:31 AM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #84

Dalewyn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The sad fact of reality is honest people finish dead last in the race known as life. Anyone who succeeds in life has cheated in some form or another, unless their life was a miraculous chain of stars aligning one after another.

Human society and life isn't one of cooperation and harmony, it's a competition and we're all striving to one up each other to varying degrees. If that involves literally kicking another guy off the ladder, so be it. If a cop is feeling particularly irate and/or is hard pressed to satisfy a quota with frivolous speeding tickets, so be it. Contractors inflating their hours is par for the course.

Life ain't all sunshine and flowers, it's also dirty and ruthless. Nobody's a saint in this plane of existence.