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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

#151

Post by Dalewyn »

lvass wrote: post #133
Dalewyn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't disagree at all. But there are people who just want to play the game by the rules. There are people who won't cheat for moral reasons. There are people who lack competence to cheat. There are people who are risk averse. Cheating should be expected, but you were implying every single person has more incentive to cheat than not, which just isn't true. You could even argue most people are in fact cheating and I…

>but you were implying everyone has more incentive to cheat than not,

I am implying that because that's inevitable in a situation where winning is so much more important than simply playing. Again, these aren't games of pleasure, games "for fun". These are games with valuable stakes on the table.

Even Magnus himself can be argued as playing to win in order to eventually obtain the famed 2800 ELO or whatever the magic threshold number is. If evidence comes out that Magnus cheats, it would be a shame but I wouldn't be surprised either.

In situations where the ends justify the means, the means will include cheating.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#152

Post by ndespres »

Dalewyn wrote: post #110
fsckboy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

This is sociopathic rationalization for poor behavior. It isn’t true. If you are a compulsive liar and cheater, perhaps you will justify your immoral behavior by deluding yourself into believing that everyone else is doing it too- but it is not so. We are not all behaving this way.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#153

Post by cellis »

maegul wrote: post #10
bombcar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are devices that you can put on your arm to greatly improve your baseball swing. They are permitted during batting practice but not during play.

But are they even useful in training for a player? Are they essential for improvement and competition?

All major sports watch film, and then run drills based on that film. They also now have analytical recommendations. Welcome to 2022

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#154

Post by remarkEon »

maegul wrote: post #123
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…

> [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 thei…

I guess I’m not as cynical. I picked up chess again when I was deployed (I was on the chess team in high school) and have been closely following this drama, and my sense is that perhaps we all admit that online chess is dead, but a return to analog chess is possible and, perhaps, preferable. I know this begs the question of defeating cheats in irl play, but shouldn’t that be an easier problem to solve?

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#155

Post by maegul »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #134
lysp wrote: post #19

> The conventional wisdom is that if you are not a GM by age 14, it is unlikely that you can reach the top levels of chess. > While that statement may seem discouraging, it has been borne out in modern chess. > Greats like Fischer, Kasparov, Carlsen, and almost all of the modern GMs who have been established as top five players, were notable GMs by age 15 at the latest Wow.

In my opinion, this sort of ad-hoc stereotyping weakens the rest of the analysis. There are plenty of counterexamples. Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19 and is still ranked World No. 9 currently (at age 52). Ding Liren (Current No. 2) became a GM at 17. Grischuk (currently No. 17, peak No.3) became a GM at 17. All three have crossed 2800 ELO at some point. I hope this is not the sort of analysis t…

Yea generally I wouldn't characterise the report as being a glimmering indication of the scientific quality of the chess.com cheat detection team.

Even the graphs look a lot like copy-paste jobs from excel, which is fine obviously, but not the sort of thing I'd expect competent scientists/data-scientists/developers to be doing, especially for a big public report where some of the formatting issues are just about readability and basic presentation quality. Like Figures F and G (page 14) ... why are they styled so differently? Same question applies to many of the graphs, which isn't to mention label font sizes either.

Beyond that, yea I'd say good amounts of the data and logic are pretty basic and wouldn't be surprising from an amateur on the internet. The main thing chess.com have seems to be their Strength Score algorithm, which IMO is probably developed and maintained by a team different from the one that prepared this report.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#156

Post by lvass »

ndespres wrote: post #152
Dalewyn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

This is sociopathic rationalization for poor behavior. It isn’t true. If you are a compulsive liar and cheater, perhaps you will justify your immoral behavior by deluding yourself into believing that everyone else is doing it too- but it is not so. We are not all behaving this way.

It's also the sophist Thrasymachus' central point in Plato's republic: "Justice is serving the interest of the stronger".

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#157

Post by ddalex »

mherdeg wrote: post #73

Is Niemann's win in the 4 September 2022 in-person game really so improbable? Is it unlikely enough that it offers convincing evidence that we live in a simulation? (i.e. he acted based on information he received from outside our reality)

Not a chess specialist, but he pulled out a couple of unusually good moves on a very uncommon line of play without thinking too much about it, almost looking casually. His excuse was "it just happens that I studied this line last night ". This doesn't happen.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#158

Post by maegul »

remarkEon wrote: post #154
maegul wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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 thei…

I guess I’m not as cynical. I picked up chess again when I was deployed (I was on the chess team in high school) and have been closely following this drama, and my sense is that perhaps we all admit that online chess is dead, but a return to analog chess is possible and, perhaps, preferable. I know this begs the question of defeating cheats in irl play, but shouldn’t that be an easier problem to solve?

I would be surprised of over-the-board cheating was viable in the long term. Seems like it should be relatively easy to stamp out provided there's a will to do so.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#160

Post by civilized »

addicted wrote: post #131

Quoted post unavailable.

Can a proven pathological liar really sue to demand that people not accuse him of continuing to lie?

It's my opinion that Hans Niemann cheats every chance he gets. Maybe my opinion is wrong but I have every right to it.

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