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A recent chess controversy

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Re: A recent chess controversy

#91

Post by indigodaddy »

bluecalm wrote: post #33

>>The researchers note that there’s a problem with this argument, too, as it violates the likelihood principle. This principle tells us the interpretation should only rely on the actual data observed, not the context in which it was collected. and then in the publication itself: >>The likelihood principle [Edwards et al., 1963] is a fundamental concept in Bayesian statistics that states that the evidence from an expe…

General statistical question. If we say extend the coin flip example distribution to say 10B times. Should/would we expect to see a streak of 100 or even 1000 in the distribution somewhere? Intuition alone tells me probably not for 1000 but a smallish chance for 100 (even if 10B in a row i would think a streak of 100 would be unlikely)

Re: A recent chess controversy

#92

Post by nextaccountic »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #70
sobiolite wrote: post #37

> Nakamura responded to Kramnik’s allegations by arguing that focusing on a particular streak while ignoring other games was cherry-picking. The researchers note that there’s a problem with this argument, too, as it violates the likelihood principle. This principle tells us the interpretation should only rely on the actual data observed, not the context in which it was collected. I don't quite understand this objecti…

I believe they're speaking within the scope of the Bayesian analysis. We could interpret games outside of the winning streak as evidence to whether he's a cheater or not. Instead, I believe they are looking at the question of "given this winning streak in particular, what's the probability of him cheating in this set of games"? They start with a prior (very low probability), I'm assuming they use the implied probabil…

The issue here is that the events are not independent. Because of that, the other games surely provide useful data

Re: A recent chess controversy

#93

Post by anteloper »

This leaves out the extremely important detail that many if not all of these 46 games, Hikaru was actively streaming on Twitch.

The actual chess community's takeaway from this (if consensus is important to you) is that Kramnik (the accuser) has lost it a bit.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#94

Post by zahlman »

srge wrote: post #22

Kramnik has proven himself a troll and did a lot of damage to the reputation of honest and otherwise wholesome people and this without credible proof at all. That those allegations persist under the form of news article is very unfortunate to those victims of his smearing.

Being a "troll" connotes bad faith, i.e. not believing one's own accusations.

From the footage I've seen of Kramnik, I think he does believe himself, and is just generally very "salty" about losing (as the kids say).

Re: A recent chess controversy

#96

Post by TZubiri »

> Kramnik pointed out the statistical improbability of Nakamura’s streak and stated that such a winning run would require the chess prodigy to play at a level higher than his current Elo rating (an estimate of a player’s skill level based on their historical play).

While ELO ratings are a probabilistic model, who said wins and losses have to be randomly distributed, there can be bad days and good days, for example if you haven't slept or if you are at the peak combination of study and cognitive, say because you are well rested on a monday and have been studying on the weekend.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#97

Post by vrmiguel »

rendall wrote: post #31
512 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hikaru is also notable for quickly accusing players baselessly

Whom did he accuse? Kramnik is known to accuse other players. I've never heard this about Nakamura.

Hikaru accused Luis Paulo Supi of cheating at least twice.

From his Wikipedia article:

``` In an online blitz tournament hosted by the Internet Chess Club in May 2015, American Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura accused Supi of cheating (Supi had defeated Nakamura).[2] The tournament judges accepted Nakamura's accusation, reverted the match's result, and banned Supi from the tournament. Brazilian Grandmaster Rafael Leitão wrote in his personal website, "Accusing him of using an engine in this match is absurd. The match is full of tactical mistakes. Nakamura played extremely poorly and, honestly, wouldn't have survived long against any engine given his terrible opening.". ```

Some years later Nakamura lost 4-0 and again insinuated that GM Supi used an engine.

Despite all that, Nakamura still published a video calling him a "legend" for once beating Magnus in 18 moves

Re: A recent chess controversy

#98

Post by omegaham »

hinkley wrote: post #67
wrsh07 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah tbh it doesn't really go into chess-specific stats either You could look at a bunch of other metrics to identify cheating: how many errors/perfect moves^ and whether that's within the usual range. How well were the opponents playing? Etc If you consider that Nakamura might have been having a good day/week, was already stronger than his opponents, and some of them may have had bad games/days, you can change somet…

Is that bit in The Queen’s Gambit about chess players coaching each other between matches complete bullshit? Or should one expect a player to occasionally play uncharacteristically when the stakes are high because they would seek out advice which skews their play? Also psychological games fall neatly into the scenario you describe. I play better and you play worse because I got into your head, or sent the noisy peopl…

The adjournments in The Queen's Gambit were rendered obsolete after chess engines became strong enough to be useful in analysis. The last year that they were permitted was 1996.

Match play at the World Championship (where the two players play each other repeatedly for many games) involves a ton of inter-game coaching and work as each player's team goes over what went well, what went wrong, and how the next game should be approached.

Round robin play in small fields also has a significant amount of preparation because the schedule is known in advance, so players will know whom they have to play the following morning and will prepare accordingly.

I'm not comfortable saying that Hikaru does exactly 0 preparation for 3-minute Chess.com blitz games, but it's probably pretty close to 0.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#99

Post by jonahx »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #70
sobiolite wrote: post #37

> Nakamura responded to Kramnik’s allegations by arguing that focusing on a particular streak while ignoring other games was cherry-picking. The researchers note that there’s a problem with this argument, too, as it violates the likelihood principle. This principle tells us the interpretation should only rely on the actual data observed, not the context in which it was collected. I don't quite understand this objecti…

I believe they're speaking within the scope of the Bayesian analysis. We could interpret games outside of the winning streak as evidence to whether he's a cheater or not. Instead, I believe they are looking at the question of "given this winning streak in particular, what's the probability of him cheating in this set of games"? They start with a prior (very low probability), I'm assuming they use the implied probabil…

His performance in games outside the streak is relevant to the prior of his being a cheater, which in turn is highly relevant to how calculate p(cheater | this streak).

Re: A recent chess controversy

#100

Post by omegaham »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #38
michaelt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just trying to figure out how you even cheat on chess, You use a chess engine to tell you the best move - you can run a chess engine on a modern phone that will easily best the world's top human chess players. The simplest forms of this are things like: "play online, chess engine open in another window", "use your phone hiding in a bathroom cubicle" and "member of the audience follows your game with a chess eng…

Future chess games will have to be played as Faraday cage matches. Two men enter, one man leaves.

Since even a phone has enough processing power to make Stockfish play better than a super-GM, the Faraday cage isn't enough to prevent, say, someone tapping the position into a computer on their person and feeling for some sort of vibration[1] in response. It takes very little information to represent a position, and commentators have pointed out that the minimum amount of information required to produce a decisive advantage is 1 bit ("A winning move exists").

[1] Yes, the ribald jokes have already been made

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