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International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

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Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#91

Post by roenxi »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #63
manvel_hn wrote: post #9

So Kramnik, being a chess player and not a statistician, invented various methods of "detecting" cheating which seemed convincing for for a layman but questionable mathematically. Then he started attacking Daniel, Hikaru and some other players online. This all led to pretty tragic consequences. Kramnik still believes that he's in the right. The only good thing out of this is numerous funny videos by chess players try…

A lot of people imagine chess players to he smart, but there's a video of asking grandmasters very simple (imho) general knowledge questions that they did absolutely abysmally at. It's probably safe to assume that someone who is really good at chess is actually bad at anything that isn't chess

Yes but ... knowing the answer to general knowledge questions isn't really an appropriate test of that. General knowledge sounds like it would be, by definition, things known to people of ordinary intelligence. So it could easily be that very intelligent people aren't up to speed about general knowledge topics because they spend their time on topics of interest to people of high intelligence. That is actually something of a trope.

The nature of the questions and why they are expected to know the answers matters a lot here.

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#92

Post by sevg »

jamesnorden wrote: post #76
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #27

Kramnik undeniably pushed Naroditsky into developing an addiction which ultimately contributed to his death. Whether it was intentional suicide or accidental overdose(both are possible) seems to me to be completely irrelevant. Kramnik engaged in a dedicated bullying and a smear campaign against Danya for a prolonged period, without substantive evidence, and never let up. When Danya explicitly stated in multiple inter…

[flagged]

I had an emotionally abusive partner. But they didn’t force me to become depressed and anxious. They didn’t force me to have to medicate. So yeah it really was just completely my fault.

/s

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#93

Post by nimonian »

g42gregory wrote: post #60
WJW wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean Kramnik or Hans Niemann? Kramnik ((ab)using his status as a former world champion) accused several other top level players to the point that one of them committed suicide. Niemann allegedly cheated (In my personal opinion as a decently rated but certainly not elite chess player, he probably did cheat in this particular game, though proof was never given and probably never will) at a high level chess tourn…

Interesting. Maybe I am not getting something: it sounds like his cheating accusations cover some kind of an online chess tournament. Why does this even matter? Why would people care that much? Shouldn't they be focused on face-to-face world championships, etc...?

Online chess is taken seriously as an e-sport, especially at the top levels, and is played for cash prizes. Imagine if the best cs:go or competitive programmers were found to be cheating. They would be ostracized.

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#94

Post by InterviewFrog »

kelipso wrote: post #71
IncreasePosts wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people imagine chess players to he smart, but there's a video of asking grandmasters very simple (imho) general knowledge questions that they did absolutely abysmally at. It's probably safe to assume that someone who is really good at chess is actually bad at anything that isn't chess

A big percentage of the top grandmasters skip high school and almost none of them have went to college. They are “smart” in that they have the potential intelligence to learn that stuff, as demonstrated by them having learned chess, but they have basically no knowledge of statistics, mathematics, plenty of other general knowledge topics. From that point of view, you should really consider them to be as knowledgeable…

This is just a Western cultural perception and baggage. That if you are good at chess, you are smart. If you can solve the Rubik's Cube quickly, you are a genius, etc.

Getting better at chess, the Rubik's Cube, etc. is a skill. The more you practice and the more passionate you are, the better you get at it. This is just like learning to play the piano or learning to swim. There is natural aptitude as well but its not as simple as being super smart and being able to strategize well using intelligence. That's just the narrative that seems to make sense. Being good at chess isn't evidence that someone is smart in general.

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#95

Post by gwern »

alex1138 wrote: post #75
matheusmoreira wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. > The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.

- Paul Morphy, lawyer (I think). One of... well. Greatest of all time discussions are hard (times evolve) but he murdered his competition relative to his time

(The quote is apocryphal and long after, so I'm pretty sure it's bunk.)

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#96

Post by codechicago277 »

traes wrote: post #87
IAmGraydon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A big percentage of the top grandmasters skip high school and almost none of them have went to college. They are “smart” in that they have the potential intelligence to learn that stuff, as demonstrated by them having learned chess, but they have basically no knowledge of statistics, mathematics, plenty of other general knowledge topics. Source?

Regarding general knowledge, it's a pretty well known phenomena within the community. Here's a video with the three players who spent the longest time at #2 in the world (see [0]) behind Magnus Carlsen answering basic trivia questions[1]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1uk3wa3/world_no_2s_... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXyLJaaLEpE

They mostly did very well, other than Levon Aronian not knowing some basic chemical formulas and Hikaru’s brain freezing on the cube side question.

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#97

Post by codechicago277 »

pdpi wrote: post #65
prmoustache wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't tournaments either held in person or with at least some judge/referree witnessing both parties?

We had that story[0] a couple of years back, about the guy who supposedly cheated by using vibrating anal beads. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37657925

This was unsubstantiated and took a similar toll on Niemann. The recent Netflix documentary interviews the key players, and it’s pretty that he didn’t cheat in that situation. Magnus’s cozy relationship with chess.com made Danny Rench jump to conclusions, giving the Magnus team the impression that cheating had happened, but a later chess.com analysis showed that was unlikely. It made for a good viral story, but wasn’t fair to Hans, no matter how unpleasant his personality is.

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#98

Post by seanhunter »

manvel_hn wrote: post #9

So Kramnik, being a chess player and not a statistician, invented various methods of "detecting" cheating which seemed convincing for for a layman but questionable mathematically. Then he started attacking Daniel, Hikaru and some other players online. This all led to pretty tragic consequences. Kramnik still believes that he's in the right. The only good thing out of this is numerous funny videos by chess players try…

One of my favourite of these is the Professor of Mathematical Statistics from U. Waterloo who is a reasonably strong amateur chess player and was engaged by chess.com after Kramnik’s accusations about Hikaru and did a video with the chess.com “chief chess officer” (IM Danny Rensch) explaining how Kramnik’s theories about how unlikely various streak lengths were were completely wrong (based on the most basic beginner errors in misunderstanding probabilities of dependent vs independent events) and long streaks were highly likely to occur especially for players like Hikaru who play very large numbers of blitz and bullet matches.

Kramnik responded with “This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about”. OK Vlad. You know more about stats than a professor of math stats at uw. Sure…

Kramnik’s behaviour throughout has been despicable. I’m pretty sure it’s grounded in the fact that he is bitter about how chess has changed and he has got older and more stuck in his ways and the modern generation of players (I’m thinking people like Danya, Jospem[1] and Lazavik[2]) play/played a brand of chess that is entirely based on deep engine analysis and is totally alien to guys like him with an old-school Russian chess background. So they must be cheating (as far as Kramnik is concerned). The way he hounded Daniel Naroditsky in particular really disgusted me and I say that as someone who used to be a fan of Kramnik’s chess.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez_Alc%C3...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Lazavik

Re: International chess federation sanctions Kramnik

#100

Post by Biganon »

jamesnorden wrote: post #76
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #27

Kramnik undeniably pushed Naroditsky into developing an addiction which ultimately contributed to his death. Whether it was intentional suicide or accidental overdose(both are possible) seems to me to be completely irrelevant. Kramnik engaged in a dedicated bullying and a smear campaign against Danya for a prolonged period, without substantive evidence, and never let up. When Danya explicitly stated in multiple inter…

[flagged]

What an asinine comment.
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