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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#361

Post by planetsprite »

There are two things that must be understood before making any judgement on this case:

1. It is solidly within the realm of possibility that a person who spends all his time devoted to succeeding in tournament chess would be able to devise a cheating method that cannot be easily detected by standard protocols

2. It is impossible to prove a negative, so it is impossible to disprove Magnus' claims

With these things being said, it is both possible that Hans didn't cheat and we'll never know for sure, or that he did cheat and we'll never know how. Given these facts, the most productive analysis would be to find just how unusual Hans' performance, both in the game and prior, really was.

A few things could be determined:

1. How many other high level players have a history of cheating? Have any players who have once cheated in a lower stakes match later been proven to have cheated in a higher stakes one?

2. Based on improvement per game played, how unusually rapid was Hans' development in the past 2 years? Are there other players which have progressed as rapidly as he has despite having progressed slower earlier in their careers?

3. Do all the engine correlation analyses that implicate Hans not fire warning signals when analysis any other game by confirmed non-cheaters? Do they signal cheating in a similar way when analyzing games of proven cheaters?

Re: Dear Chess World

#362

Post by esrauch »

root_axis wrote: post #236
erdevs wrote: post #97

A key fact to understand in thinking about cheating in over the board chess: a strong player can defeat a much stronger opponent with just 1-3 hints per game indicating the strongest move. For example, most chess experts agree that a ~2600 rated player with 2-3 hints at key moments per game would be expected to beat a ~2800 rated player. Many people might assume that a cheater needs guidance every move, thereby requi…

> Many people might assume that a cheater needs guidance every move, thereby requiring a potentially more obvious cheating mechanism. That is not the case. IMO, this reasoning potentially implicates every high level player. If it's possible that two hints can account for the difference between 2600 and 2800, and a 19 year old kid under heavy scrutiny can exploit this weakness without being detected, it seems assured…

A bunch of grandmasters have now talked about the psychological aspect of even just wondering if your opponent could possibly by cheating, and second guessing if a bad looking move by your opponent might actually be a brilliant engine line.

It seems that might even be enough for Hans as a 2675 rated player to get an edge against 2800+ player without even actually cheating

Re: Dear Chess World

#363

Post by cool_dude85 »

Tenoke wrote: post #320
mach1ne wrote: post #254

Hypothetically, using AlphaGo as your cheating engine could produce moves which are undetectable to originate from an engine.

Alphazero plays very differently than a human, and you can analyze if the player is playing the same moves as it, just as well as you can with another engine. Less importantly, modern stockfish also uses neural networks.

Nobody has access to alphazero as far as I know. Regardless, it is an interesting point. The TCEC has a ton of oddball engines, many probably open source, that are virtually unknown but are still far stronger than any human. Could make sense to choose one of those if you don't want to be caught.

Re: Dear Chess World

#364

Post by root_axis »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #229
root_axis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider to the chess world, this all seems like a roundabout way of saying "we have no evidence that he cheated, but in lieu of evidence let's go with gut feelings".

A documented history of cheating online counts as "no evidence" in your book?

Is a conviction evidence of a future crime? No, it isn't.

Re: Dear Chess World

#365

Post by roflyear »

hellcow wrote: post #84
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a guy named Ken Regan who is one of the leading experts in this question of whether the correlation with engine moves is at a normal or abnormal level. His statement is that he analyzed the last two years of Hans' games and found no evidence of cheating. So, yeah, the people on Reddit are probably cherry picking. ( https://en.chessbase.com/post/is-hans-niemann-cheating-world... ) The counter to that is that…

Fabi (for those that don’t know, he’s another one of the best chess players in the world) gave a statement along the lines of, “I know of at least one case where I was certain cheating happened, and Regan’s analysis missed it, so take any of his analysis with a huge grain of salt.” So here we have a whole bunch of the world’s best chess players and chess.com believing that Niemann repeatedly cheats, in addition to Ni…

Fabi also said (during the same interview, I'm sure) that he doesn't think Hans cheated. Your last statement there is really misleading and even dishonest.

Re: Dear Chess World

#366

Post by xani_ »

root_axis wrote: post #236
erdevs wrote: post #97

A key fact to understand in thinking about cheating in over the board chess: a strong player can defeat a much stronger opponent with just 1-3 hints per game indicating the strongest move. For example, most chess experts agree that a ~2600 rated player with 2-3 hints at key moments per game would be expected to beat a ~2800 rated player. Many people might assume that a cheater needs guidance every move, thereby requi…

> Many people might assume that a cheater needs guidance every move, thereby requiring a potentially more obvious cheating mechanism. That is not the case. IMO, this reasoning potentially implicates every high level player. If it's possible that two hints can account for the difference between 2600 and 2800, and a 19 year old kid under heavy scrutiny can exploit this weakness without being detected, it seems assured…

That doesn't scale down the skill level. At top level of just about any thing the difference between player is decided by few mistakes (by that I define less than optimal action).

If average player does 100 mistakes per match fixing 4 of them won't matter. But if great player makes 6, fixing even single one can be deciding

Re: Dear Chess World

#367

Post by boole1854 »

usgroup wrote: post #342
boole1854 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While interesting, this does not seem very convincing to me. They successfully show that Niemann was playing many games with a high percentage of "engine perfect" moves, but they do not do enough to show that this is inconsistent with what top players usually do. A whole distribution of scores is shown for Niemann but only limited summary statistics are shown for other top players. A proper comparison would involve s…

Well she shows 6+ games where he has 100% correlation with the engine. What are the chances?

Yes, that's the question that I wish she had tried to answer. What are the chances? Without checking for that pattern by other 2600+ GMs, we don't know the answer.

Re: Dear Chess World

#368

Post by bombcar »

onemoresoop wrote: post #332
insane_dreamer wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are devices that small capable enough? yes, the tech is there But yes, I agree that Carlsen should have just refused to play Hans after Sinquefield

The cheating technique could be ingenious in itself. I remember what students were coming up in high-school, back in the day, without modern technology.

Now I'm imagining a Slugworth scenario where someone developed a cheating tool and offered it to Carlsen and he refused it, but suspects that Slugworth also offered it to Hans ...

Re: Dear Chess World

#369

Post by geertj »

epolanski wrote: post #307
jdthedisciple wrote: post #216

I believe people might be seriously underestimating just how good Magnus may be at detecting cheating. Dude probably trains with computers regularly. He has a better memory than 10 average Joe's combined. He's been the absolute #1 of the world for what, 10 years now? He wouldn't risk his whole reputation for nothing. I personally take his suspicions very seriously, though I agree that evidence has to be presented soo…

Hans is known to have cheated, his coach is known to have cheated, add low security in the event, Hans beating Magnus (a player two tiers above him) on black pieces (Magnus has lost only 15 games against black in an entire world champion career) and Hans acting suspicious during the game and here we are.

> Hans is known to have cheated

Do you have a link to this? Proof that this player has cheated in the past would be the strongest evidence, I believe, he'd do so again.

Re: Dear Chess World

#370

Post by Tenoke »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #363
Tenoke wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphazero plays very differently than a human, and you can analyze if the player is playing the same moves as it, just as well as you can with another engine. Less importantly, modern stockfish also uses neural networks.

Nobody has access to alphazero as far as I know. Regardless, it is an interesting point. The TCEC has a ton of oddball engines, many probably open source, that are virtually unknown but are still far stronger than any human. Could make sense to choose one of those if you don't want to be caught.

Leela Zero is similar enough and available that the point stands.
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