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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#431

Post by Tao3300 »

root_axis wrote: post #198
peter422 wrote: post #21

For all the people defending Hans, he has admitted to cheating in real, official, prize money online tournaments, and chess.com believes that in his apology he still lied about the extent of his cheating. Maybe Hans did cheat OTB, maybe he didn't, but the tough part about reputation is it is very hard to build and very easy to break. And Hans had proven to the world that he would cheat. I personally don't think Hans…

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".

It kinda smacks of some deficit in the modern game. Consider a hypothetical chess player who does not cheat, never has cheated, but through some combination of the occasional atypical move or odd behavior, makes players think they are cheating.

They seem to be saying that such behavior can confer an advantage — that to seem to be cheating is itself cheating.

I say we carry on like normal. Either Niemann's success falls apart, he messes up and gets caught, or we find out he's actually onto something brilliant.

Re: Dear Chess World

#432

Post by stouset »

systemvoltage wrote: post #346
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…

Mangus is human after all, who occassionally make blunders of sub-GM levels: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=magnus+chess+bl... That just shows that he is fallible, which I empathize with. Also don't forget the bishop blunder by Nepo in the world championship against Magnus. That was a 1800 level blunder trapping the bishop. Nepo is in top 5 GM list. The fact of the matter is that all GMs including Magnu…

Niemann, as black, equalized reasonably early on and then had a consistent lead against Magnus the entire game. Magnus did make mistakes in the game, but only after a near-perfect grind for 27 moves.

To be clear, I'm not saying this to make a claim that this is definitive proof of anything. I'm pointing out that the theory that Magnus simply blundered away the game doesn't hold water. Niemann had the advantage—as black no less—for essentially the entire game against someone who is widely known for being capable of grinding away nearly-perfectly for extensive periods of time.

Re: Dear Chess World

#433

Post by andrepd »

stouset wrote: post #318
gamegoblin wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "200 points difference means 25% chance to win" breaks down at the highest levels. It works fine near the middle of the bell curve -- i.e. 800-2000 Elo -- but once you get to 2200 Elo you are talking about the >99th percentile. For example, I don't know of a single 2400 player who can score an average of 0.25 against 2600 players. Even at my own mediocre level of 1800, I definitely do not score 0.25 against 2000…

As an example of this, until the Niemann game Magnus had a 53-game win^H^H^Hunbeaten streak. Prior to this he had a 125-game unbeaten streak. Many (most?) of these games were played against competitors within 200 Elo. Many of these were played against the 10 next-best chess players in the world. The back of the envelope percentage calculation absolutely does not apply at this level of chess. In reality if Niemann wer…

So hitting a 1/100 chance means he is cheating? 1% is slim, but far from impossible.

Re: Dear Chess World

#434

Post by dorkwood »

syncerr wrote: post #227

Hans is clearly cheating. Comparing his past games against what an engine would do is pretty damning. Chess engines are far superior to players and the best players in the world top out in the high 70s percent correlations (Magnus averages around 70%). Hans has a string of games at 100% correlation[0], meaning he's playing perfect games. Past players who achieved this later went on to admit to cheating[1]. Magnus kno…

When I was younger, I spent many, many hours playing one particular video game. I became a “known cheater” at the game, despite never actually cheating (I’d cheated at other games in my early teens, but had since given up that lifestyle).

I can recall several players on discussion boards analysing my statistics and explaining how I was clearly cheating because it was impossible for a human to play like me. Humans, they said, just weren’t that accurate.

One cheat-detection algorithm even “caught” me one day, and I was promptly banned from that server. Confused about what had happened, I sought out the server documentation online so I could see what they had used to “detect” me. My crime, it turns out, was scoring too many kills per second.

I keep this in mind whenever I see another person accused of something similar. Sometimes people have just put in more effort and study than we choose to comprehend.

Re: Dear Chess World

#435

Post by maxbond »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #375
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…

> Also, clever cheating devices have been found in over the board chess competitions The most convincing candidate for such a device I've seen is an Illuminati Thumper Pro hidden in Hans's shoe: https://illuminati-magic.com/products/thumper . If you watch the footage of him getting scanned before his match with Alireza (and, crucially, before Magnus announced he was dropping), there are a couple of subtle things that…

It's interesting speculation, I wouldn't say I was convinced but I did see what you meant.

Re: Dear Chess World

#437

Post by lairv »

psychphysic wrote: post #390
root_axis wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hot take, but chess is a zombie sport. Software running in a smartphone can play deep games against each other. Chess engines aren't like car engines are to sprinting. They are more akin to text-to-image AIs but as though every single picture they produce is better than what any artist ever could produce. Part of that is because Chess is easily defined (the win conditions are comparatively simple). I'm rambling now a…

> Chess engines aren't like car engines are to sprinting.

I think this is questionable. While we can understand the physical limitations of a human compared to an engine, we tend to alleviate the intellectual limitations. Just like an engine can deliver far more power than a human could ever do regardless of their training, a computer performs far more chess move computations than a human ever could, regardless of their training. It's just that our brain is biased toward alleviating computational cost, because we implicitly think "in the end, a human could as well play the same moves as a computer"

I do agree however on the premise that chess is a zombie sport, but I think it has more to do with the ease of cheating. If you consider cycling for example, there has also been cases of cheating with an electric engine inside the bike, and new cheating methods are likely to be developed faster detection procedures. And in this case "Bike engines are like car engines are to sprinting"

Re: Dear Chess World

#438

Post by roflyear »

Etheryte wrote: post #302
Tenoke wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one of those games, Nieman was losing by 1.3 points in the first 10 moves despite being 100% according to this analysis so I'll take it with a grain of salt. This only looks at having moves within the top 3 engine moves done by one of the engines tested, and sometimes there's just 1-2 good moves so doing 1 out of 10 (or whatever) possible moves doesn't mean you did anything good. Further, it's unclear how cherry-p…

A 1.3 difference out of an opening sideline is neither rare nor lost, and mostly simply comes down to the fact that the engine doesn't understand the opening. Even the mod pin in the link you posted clearly outlines that this is a misleading way to frame this. It would be better to read more into the discussion before helping misinformation spread.

1.3 is evaluated as more than a pawn, which is significant.

Re: Dear Chess World

#439

Post by stouset »

andrepd wrote: post #427
stouset wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hard evidence—exactly—do you expect Carlsen to be able to produce? Alternatively, imagine anyone in a similar position. What hard evidence can anyone produce in situations such as this? 100% serious question.

Doesn't than line of thinking mean that anybody can accuse somebody of cheating when they unexpectedly beat them?

No, it means that the reality of catching cheaters in chess is fundamentally heuristic if you don't manage to catch them red-handed.

This accusation hits many of the heuristic high notes.

That doesn't mean he definitively cheated. But to me, with ~15 years of chess under my belt, it does make this accusation credible.

Re: Dear Chess World

#440

Post by swyx »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #375
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…

> Also, clever cheating devices have been found in over the board chess competitions The most convincing candidate for such a device I've seen is an Illuminati Thumper Pro hidden in Hans's shoe: https://illuminati-magic.com/products/thumper . If you watch the footage of him getting scanned before his match with Alireza (and, crucially, before Magnus announced he was dropping), there are a couple of subtle things that…

is there any thinking on how many bits of information do you need to cheat, and how many can be communicated via thumper?

e.g. is the bit of information "move the knight" aka theres only about 4 bits of info, or is it "move the knight to E6" which is a good deal more bits, that could be lossy/error prone.

just on the surface of it, i dont see how this thing could give enough info but i suppose with a loooot of training you could improve the info transfer rate?

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