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Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

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Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How aren't they impartial? They are obviously an interested party, but do they have an incentive to skew the facts? If so in which direction? Not doubting you, just genuinely interested.

As mentioned in the article they are in talks to buy Magnus's app Play Magnus. That being said, if they have literal screenshots of the discussions between Niemann and chess.com admitting to cheating and appealing the ban, those seem like smoking guns in addition to all this other analysis

>if they have literal screenshots of the discussions between Niemann and chess.com admitting to cheating

Screenshots are easy enough to fake perfectly that if I didn't trust a party to give an honest summary of the discussion and (as in the current stake) thousands of dollars or more is at stake, then I wouldn't trust screenshots either.

Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, I think, the single biggest factor in the proliferation of cheating. Most cheaters are smart enough to do the math on how they should win at the sport, or is smart enough to hire someone who can do the math. In other words, cheaters are rational actors. Allowing people back into the sport swings the EV math heavily in favor of cheating if the penalty isn't massive given that the chance of getting caught is s…

The alternative - an environment where innocent people were sometimes getting expelled - would be worse when it's just a game.

Two things though:

1. He admitted to cheating twice, so it's not a question of an innocent man being punished by mistake.

2. As noted already, it's not a game, it's a professional sport that people at his level make their living doing, and every cheater in this scenario is stealing money from someone who has earned it.

Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#245
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely evidence just not very strong evidence on it’s own. Combined with a history of cheating and a few other tells and things look rather damming.

It is not an evidence at all . Things look rather damning only if you are already biased.

Are you suggesting the unbiased stance should be to ignore all prior evidence?

People repeat themselves and form habits.

Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#246

The fact that an athlete in a competitive sport was allowed to partake in an event even after admitting to cheating not only once, but twice, is outrageous in itself.

The admissions were from when he was 12 and 16; many so societies generally believe in redemption from childhood transgressions.

I don't think it's unreasonable to issue a 5 year ban from competitive chess to a 16 year old who gets caught cheating online in a cash prize tournament. Hans is only 3 years past his admitted cheating event, and I don't think its unjust to say that his cheating was too recent to justify giving him a second chance.

Maybe when he's 24 or 30 we can try again.

Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#247
post #48

So, I'm not much of a chess person, much less a competitive chess person. Can the "over the board" cheating potential be reduced with a 5 minute "tape delay" of broadcasting the game? Is that enough time to thwart the influence of an external signal? Seems to me the only way this person can redeem himself is through over the board play under strict conditions ("Come dressed in shorts, a t-shirt and sandals"). But I d…

The delay would have to be a lot longer than 5 minutes. It's not uncommon for players to take 30+ mins on a single move in OTB chess. Also, if your cheating device allows you to somehow input chess positions, then you wouldn't even require an external signal. Though it would be extremely impressive if somebody could pull that off.

Someone has already created a proof of concept for this: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html

Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#249
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I constantly cheated in school. I got caught once and the penalty was a 0 on the test and a talking to. And only because I was a cheating noob. The benefits were in the thousands and thousands of scholarship dollars. I cheat now in my employment. I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each. The risk is getting fired (and if I only get fired from two of the jobs, I am still ahead o…

> I work three full time jobs remotely and do the bare minimum in each I always wonder what the expected value on this strategy is. I'm a naive sucker, so I have worked my ass off at my job, and I have had 250% salary growth in 5 years at it. Maybe that's standard if you're job hopping. Do you ever get raises? Do these jobs actually pay over 33% of the best job you could get? Would it be more stressful to juggle this…

Depends the sacrifices you are willing to make and what you want.

I earn 300K CAD between the jobs plus a pension. Let's call it 230K USD. I have three years of experience. I live in a low cost city in Canada as all my jobs are remote. I suppose it depends on whether you view this as a pro or a con, but my earnings are virtually all cash (some 20K in stock in total), so I am not taking a beating with the current markets. I work about 5-6 hours a day, mostly by being willing to volunteer for stuff that others hate or consider useless careerwise internally (I will happily be the support dev for example, despite that meaning I show far fewer achievements come review time).

Being support dev (monitor Sentry and resolve all the bugs) works because I never join teams with core production responsibilities, so support is never urgent. Say that you are with Netflix. You want to be on the analytics team, not the streaming team. But other devs still hate it, so nobody will question taking a day to answer a question as everyone else doesn't even want to think about it. I went to the extreme and stretched out a config issue for three weeks. My manager and the other members of my team wrote me letters of praise and the skip manager had a meeting to praise me over handling it. Niche knowledge can be quite powerful. Debugging is also a skill in itself. I have also survived several layoffs, so plenty of opportunities to get rid of me.

Pick your teams very strategically. The equivalent of the streaming team at my Job 1 has a horrendous work schedule and 3AM on-call. I have never worked a job with on-call.

Also, choose to work on tools for work, a.k.a things that nobody will complain about over the weekend.

> Do you ever get raises?

I don't generally stick around at any org long enough to get raises, as the job hops have led to huge increases. I was earning 65K two years ago and that was two jobs ago. But I am told that I will be getting at least 8% this year at Job 1. Job 2 has a union ratchet, so performance hardly matters. Job 3, probably not, as they are stingy in every other way (but you can disappear for days and have it not be a big deal).

I personally view raises as kind of a scam. Another dev on one of my teams is brilliant and highly productive, far more so than I am. She didn't get a raise with her promo. I am getting a raise for existing at Job 1. Be friendly, be funny, and you can get away with a lot.

> Do these jobs actually pay over 33% of the best job you could get?

Given the sacrifices I am willing/unwilling to make, yes. If I were willing to make other sacrifices like relocating or working harder, no. I also cannot leetcode that well. If you work for Google, you are beating this strategy.

> Would it be more stressful to juggle this kind of thing than the level of stress at a normal job you're invested in?

I find it less stressful as you just stop caring about all the little games. You stop caring about whether your standup report is meaningful or shows sufficient work. You stop caring about showing initiative. You stop caring about going the extra mile, or about leaving a bug unfixed over the weekend. You find yourself awash in so much cash that losing your job for years wouldn't matter. You don't worry about delivering, as deadlines are meaningless.

Obviously don't blow high profile things, but as long as you deliver the bigger noticeable stuff to a decent standard (and bugs are one area to do that), all is well.

At least in my case, I can coast to retirement within a year and will have a fully paid off upper middle class house before I am 30. That is also a huge stress reliever, as (contingent on responsible spending and prudent investing) I only need to keep up the high salary for 4-5 years.

Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times

#250
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, there were studies out there that there were no statistical differences in his rating gains in tournaments broadcasted with delays and without it. It is exactly the opposite of what you claim: there is a massive statistical aberration in his performance of broadcast tournaments vs. non-broadcast. He is 200 Elo higher in the former. https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?p=933597&sid=1fd7... You're clear…

Because I have seen these claims you are referring to and they were refuted by a more full analysis. This is a carefully doctored result that took only a slice of data 2019-2020, and if you look at a bigger picture, which is actually in a reply to a tweet linked in the post you are referring to, irregularities even out: https://twitter.com/NikolaosNtirlis/status/15688492214487818... > You're clearly very invested in…

That's not a "more full analysis". It's a) not a statistical analysis, b) not "more full" as it's covering a totally different time period rather than being a superset, c) I don't really understand why the "Tournaments" and "no live games" section have totally different columns.

(Oh, haha, 2 out of the 3 tournaments under "no live games" from that tweet are in the small set that the chess.com report says merit investigation.)

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