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
#32So, 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 don't know if how long they're allowed per move, and if 5 minutes is enough time to thwart external influence.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#33I believe the critical aspect here is not the specific cheating that chess.com found, but that this appears to contain written statements by Niemann himself which contradict his public statement. And if it now turns out that he lied in his confession, too, then that's a really bad look w.r.t. his trustworthiness.
- "written statements by Niemann himself which contradict his public statement"
The article doesn't say that Niemann's admissions to Chess.com were about cheating in prize-money tournaments, nor the other disputed facts. The spreadsheet of incidents they show us isn't what Niemann admitted to cheating in, but was Chess.com's internal anticheat flagged -- we can tell because they label it as "suspect games" and it uses qualifiers like "likely". The inferences that the cheating was for real money prizes, or at an age older than 16, or on for-profit Twitch streams, are drawn from from this list of suspected games.
We don't currently know what facts Niemann confessed too: it's not public whether the facts Niemann is allegedly lying about overlap with the facts Niemann admitted to in writing in 2020. WSJ may have evidence that's dispositive on this point (i.e. those Slack texts), but they haven't printed it yet.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#34I believe the critical aspect here is not the specific cheating that chess.com found, but that this appears to contain written statements by Niemann himself which contradict his public statement. And if it now turns out that he lied in his confession, too, then that's a really bad look w.r.t. his trustworthiness.
Confessions have an important role in forgiveness, but given that, the public arena is never the right place for confessions; i.e., do you expect someone to say "Actually, I also hit on another employee last May." That would get you nailed to a cross and no lawyer would ever advise that except on the calculus of further damage control.
There's a huge difference between not confessing and making a false confession.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#35So, 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…
Depends on the game type and cheating type.
If blitz type game where players have 5 minutes per move so tape delay would be ineffective since cheater could just stall.
Cheating type also matters. There's external help (friend in the audience communicating 1 or more bits of information via auditory, optical, radio, or some other signal), and there's also internal help (raspberry pi zero + battery and pressure sensor embedded in your shoe or something). There are so many ways to cheat that it's hard to enumerate all of them let alone prevent all of them.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#36In case you’re looking for whether this says anything about the butt plug allegations, this report does not. It only concerns cheating on an online platform, not in person cheating
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#37Just to make sure I read this right: he most likely cheated in 11 online tournaments from 2015 - 2020. Why not analyze his recent and over-the-board games?
I imagine everything is being analyzed but given that cheating in 11 online tournaments is enough to invalidate someone’s career it makes for an appropriate topic of article.
I get that. Just checking I had it right that this is ~not really the analysis we most want.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#38So, 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…
In blitz, 5 minutes totally would work, in classical chess I have my doubts.
The Sinquefield Cup (the tournament where the drama started) added a 15 minute delay which would be much more noticeable and less forgiving.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#39Just to make sure I read this right: he most likely cheated in 11 online tournaments from 2015 - 2020. Why not analyze his recent and over-the-board games?
From the article:
While it says Niemann’s improvement has been “statistically extraordinary.” Chess.com noted that it hasn’t historically been involved with cheat detection for classical over-the-board chess, and it stopped short of any conclusive statements about whether he has cheated in person. Still, it pointed to several of Niemann’s strongest events, which it believes “merit further investigation based on the data.” FIDE, chess’s world governing body, is conducting its own investigation into the Niemann-Carlsen affair.
Re: Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
#40do I really need to login/pay to read this news?
an archive.ph link and a gift-article link have been posted here in the comments.