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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

#471
post #7
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…

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…

It would be against chess.com's interests to name those GMs, wouldn't it?

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#472
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) You can look at the "strength" of individual moves. Someone who plays at 2000-level normally but magically coughs up 2600-level moves when in trouble is probably cheating (watch some of the live chess streamers--you'll regularly see this in real time). Computers are quite good at estimating the strength of a move after the fact. 2) Quite often there are certain "play lines" that computers will play that humans sim…

> Computers are quite good at estimating the strength of a move after the fact. Are you sure? I’ve never heard of such a program.

He's just referring to the fact that after game is over you can let your program stew on any given move for a weekend or more before reporting back on how strong it was or wasn't.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#473
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the level of chess player we're talking about it's sorta trivial for them to almost immediately memorize a boardstate. And the rest! I'm pretty crap (hovering 750-850 on chess.com, idk if I play enough for it to be accurate though, probably lower) but I was still thoroughly impressed when I got thrashed by someone (~1200) playing the entire game in their head. As in I had a local game running on my phone, called…

Surely that kind of play would indicate a rating considerably above 1200.

A real-life 1200 should be able to play blindfold. Online ratings are very inflated.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#474
post #71
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

1) You can look at the "strength" of individual moves. Someone who plays at 2000-level normally but magically coughs up 2600-level moves when in trouble is probably cheating (watch some of the live chess streamers--you'll regularly see this in real time). Computers are quite good at estimating the strength of a move after the fact. 2) Quite often there are certain "play lines" that computers will play that humans sim…

I'm haunted by the possibility that humans might (at least half) catch up, too. When I look at how AI beats humans, I can't help thinking that AI shows us that human narcissism holds humans back. We don't want to look stupid, or mediocre - we don't want to make moves that are hard to explain the value of clearly.

In Go, we can't make ourselves spread our moves around the board as much as we should, we tend not to choose a maybe good move elsewhere over a clearly powerful move where the board is developed, for example.

Maybe there's a pattern to the moves AI chooses that is also a pattern humans can see without running every line; we're just reluctant to choose moves that we can't clearly justify in the shorter run.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#475
post #392

Tbh this scandal only reminds me there is no point in playing a game like chess or go online for fun.

I'm confused, do you mean besides for fun?

You are. You can't play for fun when you have no idea if you're playing against another human or Stockfish (or whatever is in fashion this week).

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I would argue his failing wasn't that he cheated, but that he got caught by cheating too obviously against someone who wasn't going to take it lying down. The people who succeed cheat only as far as to reap the rewards while avoiding the risks thereof, they pick the time and place to cheat and not cheat. Of course, we don't know as third-parties whether any such successful individuals are in fact cheaters or not sinc…

I would say there are 4 main motivations to not cheat:

1. Getting caught and problems arising from that

As you stated, there is a non-zero chance that someone who cheated will get away with it. And there is a non-zero chance that someone who didn't cheat will be wrongly widely accused of cheating. But someone who cheats has a much much higher chance of being widely accused of cheating that someone who doesn't. Cheating purely increases your chance of being widely accused of cheating.

You as a single individual cannot know all the various analyses that will be done on your games in the future (whether analysis of your moves vs engine moves or analysis of video or data recordings from websites you're on). You cannot foresee all the different possible ways you might be caught. The better you get, the more analysis will be done on your past games. Every past cheating instance is a liability for the future.

And if you rely on the cheating to get to a high level, you'll be forced to continue doing it to retain that level. You can't foresee the various anti-cheat mechanisms that will be put in place in the future that will catch your future cheating.

Once you're caught, it's basically disaster for you. Even when you don't cheat in the future, people will still suspect that you're cheating.

2. A feeling of accomplishment

People are often motivated by a feeling of accomplishment. If you're cheating to get ahead, you're not accomplishing as much, so you won't have as much of a feeling of accomplishment. If you use a cheat code to beat a videogame you don't feel much accomplishment. You won't feel like the best person in the world at chess if you only won due to a computer feeding you moves.

3. Enjoyment of a better world

You said you'd personally prefer a world without cheating. By not cheating you would be helping create that world. By cheating you would be helping to create a cheatful world. You're going to have a hard time advocating for a cheat-free world if you yourself are cheating due to the conflict of interest. E.g. you won't be able to advocate for installation of anti-cheat protections because if they get installed, they'll catch you. Same with advocating for stronger statistical analyses.

If you cheat, you're disrespecting the people around you, both your competitors and the audience. When you're consistently disrespecting everyone around you, I would expect that to have a negative impact on your ability to make friends with them. It could negatively affect your mood and your outlook on life. Overall I expect your life to be less enjoyable.

4. Morality

Is there objective morality? Do we have a moral obligation to respect other people? What is the meaning of life?

I say yes there is objective morality. Yes we have a moral obligation to respect other people, it's one of the components of the purpose of our lives.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#477
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's chess, it's not heart surgery exams. The cheating sucks, but anti-cheat measures are infinitely worse. There is no better way to suck the fun out of something than demanding you submit to a patdown and metal scan or a rootkit before you can participate.

It's just soccer, bicycle racing, weight lifting, sprinting, marathon running, ..., no need to submit to a urine and blood test, if you want to compete in the olympics. That sucks the fun out of it. /s

With respect, in those examples the extreme amount of money to be made with the first place motivates the cheating. The anti-cheat for such competitions only barely works, as top competitors do as many (possibly dangerous) things they can to come out on top. As long as they are undetectable. We should approach a disincentive to cheating in a different way, so it is just a few lemons as it is in chess.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#478
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, do you mean besides for fun?

You are. You can't play for fun when you have no idea if you're playing against another human or Stockfish (or whatever is in fashion this week).

You don't need to worry about that unless you're playing at GM level for fun. For most people they'll pretty much never run into cheating

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers are quite good at estimating the strength of a move after the fact. Are you sure? I’ve never heard of such a program.

He's just referring to the fact that after game is over you can let your program stew on any given move for a weekend or more before reporting back on how strong it was or wasn't.

But standard programs like Stockfish won’t tell you how strong a move was. They’ll just tell you how much it changes the evaluation.

E.g. if you initiate a queen trade in a straightforward position, on the next move I have to take back my queen; any other move will show a gigantic evaluation drop by the engine. But that doesn’t mean it’s a particular strong move — even an absolute beginner will play it. Thus it’s of no value for determining whether the person who played it is cheating.

It’s entirely possible that chess.com has access to more sophisticated software that can estimate the strength of players (they sort of allude to this with their “strength score” metric) but AFAIK it’s not publicly available and not clear how it works, or whether it can evaluate individual moves as opposed to the game as a whole.

Re: The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're streaming it, it's not exactly a secure chess bunker is it?

If information can only go out and not in, maybe?

True, assuming you can know for sure it can't come in. You could just delay the information coming out by a few moves so that even if it can get back in via an accomplice watching the game, it won't matter
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