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A recent chess controversy

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Re: A recent chess controversy

#41

Post by rayng »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #13
5tk18 wrote: post #2

It is well known that Kramnik baselessly accuses everyone. The article seems to be more about statistics than chess, and doesn’t make any accusations. Kind of a click bait title IMO.

I'm just trying to figure out how you even cheat on chess, the only thing that comes to mind is moving pieces, and sneaking new ones on the board, but if there's enough cameras, how do you get away with it, eventually someone WILL notice, highlight it, point it out, and you will be shamed.

Magnus Carlsen (2021)

"... But had I started cheating in a clever manner, I am convinced no one would notice. I would've just needed to cheat one or two times during the match, and I would not even need to be given moves, just the answer on which was way better. Or, here there is a possibility of winning and here you need to be more careful. That is all I would need in order to be almost invicible."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcbHmHHwlUQ&t=313s

Re: A recent chess controversy

#42

Post by AlecBG »

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…

Or similarly I flip a coin a thousand times, but only tell you when it's heads and don't tell you how many flips I did.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#43

Post by janalsncm »

mft_ wrote: post #39
tomku wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast, overwhelming majority of chess games are not played in front of cameras or even in-person. The accusation in the article was about online play, and specifically blitz which is played online even more commonly than slower formats of chess because moving quickly is easier for many people with a mouse than a physical board. The way people cheat online is by running a chess engine that analyzes the state of the…

> It's not that good for top-level chess because a Magnus or Hikaru or basically anyone in the top few hundred players can bang out a series of extremely accurate moves in a critical spot - that's why they're top chess players, they're extremely good. Interesting; I thought I'd read that even the very best players only average ~90% accuracy, whereas the best engines average 99.something%?

Well accuracy is measured against the chess engine’s moves so it would be 100% by definition.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#44

Post by thieving_magpie »

mrala wrote: post #7
5tk18 wrote: post #2

It is well known that Kramnik baselessly accuses everyone. The article seems to be more about statistics than chess, and doesn’t make any accusations. Kind of a click bait title IMO.

The title is “Did a US Chess Champion Cheat?” and the text of the article uses statistical analysis to show that the person most likely did not cheat. What would you consider to be misleading between the title and the article?

When I opened the article I thought it was going to be about someone cheating at the US Chess Championship.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#45

Post by tomku »

mft_ wrote: post #39
tomku wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast, overwhelming majority of chess games are not played in front of cameras or even in-person. The accusation in the article was about online play, and specifically blitz which is played online even more commonly than slower formats of chess because moving quickly is easier for many people with a mouse than a physical board. The way people cheat online is by running a chess engine that analyzes the state of the…

> It's not that good for top-level chess because a Magnus or Hikaru or basically anyone in the top few hundred players can bang out a series of extremely accurate moves in a critical spot - that's why they're top chess players, they're extremely good. Interesting; I thought I'd read that even the very best players only average ~90% accuracy, whereas the best engines average 99.something%?

Top-level players regularly are in the 90-95% range aggregated over many games, with spikes up to 98-99%. If you have 98 or 99% accuracy over the course of an entire game (which happens sometimes!), it's either very short or you had significant sequences where you were 100% accurate. If that happened in one of my games it'd be clear evidence I was cheating, if it happens in a Magnus game it's him correctly calculating a complex line and executing it, which he does pretty often.

Edit: Even lower-level cheated games are rarely 100% accurate for the whole game, cheaters usually mix in some bad or natural moves knowing that the engine will let them win anyways. That's why analysis is usually on critical sections, if someone normally plays with a 900 rating but spikes to 100% accuracy every time there's a critical move where other options lose, that's a strong suggestion they're cheating. One of the skills of a strong GM is sniffing out situations like that and being able to calculate a line of 'only moves' under pressure, so it's not nearly as surprising when they pull it off.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#46

Post by gus_massa »

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 agree. The problem when you look only at some "interesting" data even has a name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-elsewhere_effect

Re: A recent chess controversy

#47

Post by mechanicum »

abdulhaq wrote: post #18

Can anyone tell me why numbers in this article are being rendered higgledy-piggledy on my browser, Firefox / Windows 11?

It uses old style figures rather than lining, if that’s what you mean by “higgledy-piggledy”. See https://practicaltypography.com/alternate-figures.html#oldst...

Re: A recent chess controversy

#48

Post by kelipso »

cortesoft wrote: post #4

This is basically an article describing why you can’t just look at an event after it occurs, see that it has some extremely rare characteristics, and then determine it was unlikely to happen by chance. It is like asking someone to pick a random number between 1 and 1 million and then saying, “oh my god, it must not actually be random… the chances of choosing the exact number 729,619 is 1 in a million! That is too rar…

This article feels like an illustration of how easy it is to fool top chess players. For example, if the accusation was against Hans Niemann, top chess players and their fans would be eating it up.

Re: A recent chess controversy

#49

Post by kmike84 »

mft_ wrote: post #39
tomku wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast, overwhelming majority of chess games are not played in front of cameras or even in-person. The accusation in the article was about online play, and specifically blitz which is played online even more commonly than slower formats of chess because moving quickly is easier for many people with a mouse than a physical board. The way people cheat online is by running a chess engine that analyzes the state of the…

> It's not that good for top-level chess because a Magnus or Hikaru or basically anyone in the top few hundred players can bang out a series of extremely accurate moves in a critical spot - that's why they're top chess players, they're extremely good. Interesting; I thought I'd read that even the very best players only average ~90% accuracy, whereas the best engines average 99.something%?

> whereas the best engines average 99.something%?

To compute accuracy, you compare the moves which are made during the game with the best moves suggested by the engine. So, the engine will evaluate itself 100%, given its settings are the same during game and during evaluation.

You get 99.9something% when you evaluate one strong engine by using another strong engine (they're mostly aligned, but may disagree in small details), or when the engine configuration during the evaluation is different from the configuration used in a game (e.g. engine is given more time to think).

Re: A recent chess controversy

#50

Post by fsckboy »

tomku wrote: post #35
giancarlostoro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just trying to figure out how you even cheat on chess, the only thing that comes to mind is moving pieces, and sneaking new ones on the board, but if there's enough cameras, how do you get away with it, eventually someone WILL notice, highlight it, point it out, and you will be shamed.

The vast, overwhelming majority of chess games are not played in front of cameras or even in-person. The accusation in the article was about online play, and specifically blitz which is played online even more commonly than slower formats of chess because moving quickly is easier for many people with a mouse than a physical board. The way people cheat online is by running a chess engine that analyzes the state of the…

reading your description of the "invasiveness" of chess.com's surveillance of high level tournament play, I realized that chess.com could issue their own anal probe, a sonar listening device to check that there aren't any other anal probes in use. finally! we can be assured of a good clean game played fairly from both seats!
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