391–400 of 486 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 1200 playing full games in their head sends up some warning flags to me?! I'm over 1500 on Lichess (yes, ELO calculation is not the same, but likely within 300 points at that level?!) and can't even dream of doing that. Did your friend cheat? ;)
I'm 1500 Lichess but 900 on Chess.com, so no, not within 300 points at that level.
Tbh this scandal only reminds me there is no point in playing a game like chess or go online for fun.
I learned chess late and enjoy playing it, through mistakes, at a different pace... so, in spite of the numerous headlines, I don't get it. Competitively, cheating should be meaningless - and/else what kind of society has people playing chess for food? Perhaps I should read the article. current mood, tipsy
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
So, this is all interesting for chess, but I wonder if we should be discussing more the broader implications. How much does this happen during high-stakes tests (professional qualifications, etc.)? How much does this happen during job interviews? How much does this happen during political debates? How much does this happen during any high-stakes activity where the person is supposed to be thinking through it on their…
I'd be willing to bet that the prevalence of cheating is roughly equal regardless of the discipline. Let's say 1% of participants are cheating at any given time (I have no idea if this is a high or low estimate). For better or worse, this could represent a metric for gauging how well that discipline is at detecting active cheaters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Due to the need for real-time input that's just not true.
There are/have been elaborate cheating setups for online shooters that involved a second computer using the VGA or HDMI video stream. It’s doable to get around kernel detection tools.
> 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.
Most of the sports starts tend to start very very young. Some more true than others, like how most ice skating Olympic winners are sub 18. More true for classical music as well.
Finally he gets on a NFL roster as 3rd string for St Louis. Cleveland skips picking him in the expansion draft. The Rams sign a different starting QB and trade away #2 QB leaving Warner as the backup. The starter gets hurt and with basically no first team practices Warner gets named the starter.
After all that and starting for the first time in the NFL at age 28 he has one of the best statistical seasons ever for QB and wins the MVP and Superbowl. Goes on to win the MVP again and has a 10 year HOF career.
If we apply Chess.com's logic he's the biggest cheater that ever cheated. But obviously he's not because you can't really cheat at QB in the NFL.
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…
the are proven cases of gms selling/throwing games so you can earn norms for gm title (understandable phenomenon when considering effort of getting to gm level vs little money you can make from it, gm from poorer country has big incentive earn extra $).
> 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.
The trouble I have is, that Hans is 19. Given the accusations and his own confession, he is a life long cheater in contrast to traditional GMs. Hans confessed to have cheated at age 12 and 16. Since cheating is arguable habit forming, he simply based his career on cheating. Where others put in the mileage, he invested in his cheating expertise.
Is this an accurate statement given that, because of this report, we are now aware that a lot of other GMs have cheated as well?
Oh? What? And GMs admit to cheating online? Why then is Niemann's possible/likely online cheating news and not the other GMs'?!
Fine, but let's say he's cheating online and that it's more a scandal than those GMs' cheating, and that it being more of a scandal than other GMs' cheating is not in itself a scandal. Now let's look at the OTB issue.
So they have no evidence of Niemann's cheating irl, OTB. And he beat Carlsen w/o cheating, OTB.
And Carlsen threw a fit.
So now chess.com is practically libeling Niemann. They can't prove he cheated even online, but then, Niemann can't prove that he didn't either, and we'll all believe that he probably did because... we'll believe most players do cheat online. And as for the OTB game with Carlsen, there's a video of that game. And Niemann's explanation of his pauses and his thinking in that game are sensible. So chess.com will not come right out and say he cheated OTB -- perhaps that would be a bridge too far in any possible libel case?
I don't know if Niemann cheated, and maybe I don't care because what this brouhaha is leading to up is this conclusion: online chess is so trivial to cheat at that money-making online contests and online game ratings should now be a thing of the past. And that is a conclusion chess.com does not want the public to reach, so they're trying real hard to look like they can do something about cheating at online chess.
Chess had a great revival these past two years because of covid. Chess is very accessible, easy to learn (to a point), very watchable, and trivial to make it playable online. But chess is also a practically a solved problem, with AI and non-AI chess engines that easily beat grand masters and world champions, and it has been a solved problem for quite some time, and now those engines are trivially available to people trying to learn, to analyze, and/or to cheat. That means that cheating will be trivial. No amount of focus change detection or whatever is going to help because you'd have to have cameras and microphones capturing the whole room that a player is in to keep most players from cheating.
Maybe it's time for chess to go back to being an in-person only thing for ratings and contests with real prizes.
Also, let's not talk of the ageism in chess.com's complaint that Niemann is too old to be that good at chess. It's true that generally speaking chess has to be learned early in order for one to get good at it, but there's always humans who defy the averages.