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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

#231
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was a line that Magnus has already played once or twice in tournament. Hans wondered how Magnus could surprise him. So Hans studied various lines rarely played by Magnus including this one. This was very clear in Hans interview.

The featured article talks about this. It didn't go down even remotely the same way in Magnus' previous game. He also references a game which never actually happened.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to define "legitimate" as depending on society's perception. As another thought experiment, what if someone didn't cheat, but society erroneously came to the conclusion that the person did cheat. Is what that player did legitimate? I guess it comes down to: does objective truth exist, or is everything relative to society's beliefs?

>You seem to define "legitimate" as depending on society's perception. For the purposes of this discussion, I define "legitimate" as whether anyone wants to cry foul on a player's performance. If a player cheats but doesn't get caught, it's legitimate because nobody can cry foul and make it into a problem. >As another thought experiment, what if someone didn't cheat, but society erroneously came to the conclusion tha…

> That not cheating is stupid.

Hans cheated in over 100 online chess matches, and now he's stuck in this giant controversy. If he didn't cheat in those matches, none of this controversy would have happened, and he would be judged based on his skill.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#233

Quoted post unavailable.

I love the aggressively ignorant takes people feel compelled to make on this topic because they're coming from a place of emotion rather than understanding or common sense. The only thing that will happen to Hans is that he will lose his career and fade into oblivion. Alternatively, he will go the Lance Armstrong route, confess to everything with Oprah, and redeem himself as a decent chess player that streams profess…

I don't know if this guy really cheated or not, but from my glance through I don't see even an explanation of the mechanism he would use to cheat OTB.

But this is a cry wolf situation - I would be surprised if there isn't some terms or condition that allows chess.com to ban known cheaters esp from a tourney with such a big prize.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Find-the-cheater tournament. One player is asked to cheat without consequences, the others are aware there is one cheater.

It would be interesting to see what happens if you tell everyone there’s one cheater but there really isn’t one.

It would also be fun to let everyone cheat but think they are the only cheater.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#235
post #67

The best humans play at an Elo rating of 2800. “Stockfish,” the most powerful chess engine, has an estimated rating of more than 3500. This may be the most terrifying statement I've read all year. From parity to ovewhelming dominance in two decades. And it may just be approaching the base of the S curve. I for one welcome ... There used to be this fantasy that the best player would be a human augmented by a computer,…

Checkout Alpha Zero chess which has no other information other than the chess rules. No opening books or repetoires. It sometimes beats Stockfish like a python strangling and squeeing a prey. It makes moves that no one understands. > In a 1000-game match, AlphaZero won with a score of 155 wins, 6 losses, and 839 draws. DeepMind also played a series of games using the TCEC opening positions; AlphaZero also won convinc…

It played Stockfish 8, which was already a year old when they played, and the match was under arguably unbalanced circumstances.

The current version of Stockfish is Stockfish 15, and although it hasn't played AlphaZero (because AlphaZero doesn't compete), it has played clones of AlphaZero such as Leela Chess Zero in TCEC which it won against consistently for the past 5 seasons.

AlphaZero beating Stockfish was more a propaganda attempt from Google to appear as a world leader in AI then an actually attempt to find the superior engine.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#236
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't look at the chess.com thing since the historic progress is eclipsed by a streak of 5 important games where he simply scores 100%. Everything else is irrelevant. GM's usually have zero games at that level. Dropping to his usual level after that doesn't average it out to human level. lol Someone should organize that running joke: naked chess tournament.

A Find-the-cheater tournament. One player is asked to cheat without consequences, the others are aware there is one cheater.

a triadlol: poker chess deadlift

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#237
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect something like “everyone cheats online” is kind of what we have here, and they’re a bit worried about upsetting the whole applecart.

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.

Err, if that was their interest, why did they even include the new-to-many info about other top GMs having admitted cheating? They could have just not included that part at all.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#238
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…

> Third, chess.com have a conflict of interest in this meta-discussion, I presume, as they have commercial interests in the survival of online chess.

How is this a conflict of interest? It's just regular old interest. They are interested in Chess continuing to grow.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#239
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…

> Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19

At the age of 18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand#Early_chess_...

Also, according 2700chess.com he was #96 in the world with a rating of 2520 on January 1988. That's right after turning 18. Growing up in India (before the chess boom). Before chess engines existed. 6 months later he was #49 in the world. https://2700chess.com/players/anand

A year earlier (at 17), he had won the world junior chess championship (U-20). Not exactly a "strange meteoric rise" for Anand. The "GM at 18".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Junior_Chess_Championshi...

Meanwhile, at the same age of 18 (already during his covid boost), on July of 2021, Hans Niemann was #20 among all juniors (U-20), with a rating of 2571. Close to #300 on the global rating list: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2093596/top https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2000059

Unlike Anand, no achievements of note until then (ok, he was 9th at U-16 World Youth Chess Championships in 2019). A year later he's a top 40 player, hanging out with the best and beating the (incredibly dominating) world champion with the black pieces. Make it make sense.

Also, take a look at this analysis of correlation between average (and stddev) of move accuracy vs rating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnJ0Da4Rp0 - explained in the detail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nEFaRdwZY - analysis applied to several players

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