531–540 of 1001 posts
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He's admitted to cheating at 12 years old and at 16 years old (just 3 years ago)
It is relevant to remember that he "admitted" to cheating on two different occasions only after he was caught and banned for doing so. He did not voluntarily come forward and confess of his own volition.
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, th…
The questions I have about this are pretty basic: 1. How would Niemann have cheated? The shoe computer theory is a bit far fetched - are devices that small capable enough? Is he suspected of having an accomplice? 2. Why didn't Magnus just say something right away? He could have easily made his accusations at the moment to event organizers - quietly - and they could have had Niemann remove his shoes or something. Inst…
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…
In case you haven't seen it, some new evidence surfaced yesterday: https://youtu.be/jfPzUgzrOcQ
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…
The bigger question to me is why Nieman, who had admitted cheating in the past, was admitted to the tournament in the first place.
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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
Won't they run into the same issue playing strong players? A weird Magnus move might be a blunder or a brilliant line he calculated? Are GMs cheating against NMs because there's said skill gap?
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…
Imagine you know someone with a history of stealing cars and other valuable objects. He has been caught multiple times. Now you see him with a shiny new car that you’re pretty sure he can’t afford. Did he steal it? Not necessarily — it’s entirely possible that he got a higher-paying legit job and saved up for it, or inherited money from a relative, or got it legally in some other way. He shouldn’t be convicted of a n…
That's not a complete analogy tho. Everyone knows Hans cheated in the past. But Magnus is going beyond that and saying that Hans cheated in the over-the-board game against him. Coming back to your analogy. So now imagine this person suddenly has a new shiny car but he also has the Title and registration for that car. Not only that, someone reported him to the cops and the cops said that the car is not stolen. He also…
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Chess engines have outclassed humans for about 15 years now. Yet chess is more popular than ever. Why would chess engines playing very well mean human chess stops being interesting? I don't see the relation.
In a similar vein, Tool Assisted Speedruns for video games can always outperform human players, but TAS streams and youtube videos don't get nearly as many viewers as real humans running. And human speedrunners caught cheating and using tools etc. have drastic hits to their popularity after they're exposed.
However, TAS is very unlikely Computer Chess because the TAS is actually a composite of a vast number of individual human player inputs - assembled by in effecting rewinding and continuing the game over and over. The TAS is not a machine beating the game, but the effect if humans played the game as well as they know how. That's why they have "sync" problems during a GDQ, the playback device has no idea how to play, it's just robotically carrying out actions.