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Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

incoherency.co.uk

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Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can metal detector detect a gram of Silicon(except transistor I think there are non metallic replacement for everything)? Also, many players bring their own beverage in their container. Seems pretty steep to ban everything for a small minority of cheater.

Can a computer small enough to contain a chess engine be fitted into one gram? The players beverages would also have to be taken out of their original container and transferred into a tournament-provided container.

IBM has 1mm * 1mm chip comparable in performance to 1990 Intel, likely much lower in weight than 1g along with photovoltaic cell for power[0]. I don't think this is enough for beating Magnus, but it could at least find tactics.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/19/17140116/i....

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alireza was able to speak accurately and in depth in his post game interviews along the way. Niemann doesn't seem able to do this.

What are you talking about? He talked for 17 mins and according to GothamChess and PowerPlayChess, it was one of the best chess interviews ever . Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCeJrItfQqw I don't get it. HN seems to be always on the skeptical side when accusing anyone, here we're seeing people pile up on Hans without any evidence whatsoever. The fact of the matter is, no one knows why Magnus quit.

On the specific line Hans dodges the discussion. FWIW Gotham et al are just happy about the interview for the entertainment factor, when most post game interviews are very dry and boring.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#63
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago online poker was extremely soft, and you could make a profit easily with a little bit of skill. At any rate, what you describe is usually not considered cheating - most sites (with some exceptions now, but likely none back then) explicitly allow software that tracks stats about players - by 2010 (when I was playing semi-professionally online) most regs used software like that (usually Poker Tracker or Ho…

It was a long time ago so my memory might be fuzzy, but I believe he played on pokerroom.com... the cheating part of it, from my memory, was that the tracking software had access to mucked hands, which normal players at the table wouldn't have access to.

For most of the sites, the software was reading the text-based "hand history" to collect data. When hands were mucked at showdown, the contents of the mucked hands generally appeared in the plain-text hand history (and most UIs provided a way to view them or to replay the hand action-by-action).

There were a couple of sites where this wasn't the case, or where the hand history wasn't provided in a simple text format (or at all) -- but generally, that's how it worked for the majority of the poker sites/clients.

The reason for being able to view mucked hands (at showdown) is because you can do the same in live games, at least that's the house rule in the vast majority of live rooms. It's almost always frowned upon, to varying degrees, to actually request to see a mucked hand - but generally IS allowed by rule (ie WSOP events explicitly allow asking to see hands mucked at showdown, though an 'anti-abuse' discretionary clause is included in that rule, too).

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#64

If one really wanted to cheat with a computer, I imagine it would be better to only carry around enough hardware to communicate wirelessly with it, rather than the whole thing. This would be harder to detect as the amount of hardware would be much smaller, and it would allow using a more powerful computer.

How do you prevent the detection of that communication?

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#65
post #10

Computer-assisted chess cheating has been going on for over a decade now.[1] It's getting to be embarrassing for humans, that small battery powered devices now win against strong players. At world championship level, at least you still need a laptop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess#High-profile

Magnus Carlsen would have a real hard time drawing stockfish on a phone 1/100 games.

My impression from reading about chess engines online is that drawing is far simpler if that is your explicit goal. Several comments online on different websites claims that they are able to end games in draws against stockfish.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a long time ago so my memory might be fuzzy, but I believe he played on pokerroom.com... the cheating part of it, from my memory, was that the tracking software had access to mucked hands, which normal players at the table wouldn't have access to.

For most of the sites, the software was reading the text-based "hand history" to collect data. When hands were mucked at showdown, the contents of the mucked hands generally appeared in the plain-text hand history (and most UIs provided a way to view them or to replay the hand action-by-action). There were a couple of sites where this wasn't the case, or where the hand history wasn't provided in a simple text format…

That is interesting… I don’t play a ton of poker at casinos, but I haVe played in probably a dozen or so tournaments at Hollywood Park and a few in Vegas… I have never once seen anyone see or request to see a mucked hand, although I have seen someone get yelled at by the dealer for trying to turn over another player’s mucked hand after the showdown.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alireza was able to speak accurately and in depth in his post game interviews along the way. Niemann doesn't seem able to do this.

What are you talking about? He talked for 17 mins and according to GothamChess and PowerPlayChess, it was one of the best chess interviews ever . Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCeJrItfQqw I don't get it. HN seems to be always on the skeptical side when accusing anyone, here we're seeing people pile up on Hans without any evidence whatsoever. The fact of the matter is, no one knows why Magnus quit.

> it was one of the best chess interviews ever

It was, but for reasons having nothing to do with his analysis of the game. Stronger players like Hikaru have dismantled Hans' last two interviews pretty convincingly[1]. Those interviews and his history of being banned from chess.com seem to be driving the current speculation more than Hans' actual play.

The interview after Magnus was great because Hans was saying things like "He's just so demoralized because he's losing to an idiot like me. It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me." People were excited to have a "Conor McGregor of chess", so to speak. That's it.

1. See short clips at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETzdxK7QUmg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTs-eFgLqc for example.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#68

This is relevant to today's events because Magnus Carlsen just withdrew from a tournament[1] after yesterday's loss to a significantly lower rated opponent who had previously been suspended for cheating on chess.com. The tournament organizers have also implemented additional anti-cheating protocols starting today. Whatever comes out of these accusations, the chess world will sure enjoy its new infusion of drama. [1]…

I know some fairly high rated players who've had accounts suspended for cheating because they got angry and used an engine to cheat a cheater. So you can be a good player and a cheater.

Edit: For clarification, after losing to an obvious engine user, they used an engine themselves to strike back.

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? He talked for 17 mins and according to GothamChess and PowerPlayChess, it was one of the best chess interviews ever . Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCeJrItfQqw I don't get it. HN seems to be always on the skeptical side when accusing anyone, here we're seeing people pile up on Hans without any evidence whatsoever. The fact of the matter is, no one knows why Magnus quit.

> it was one of the best chess interviews ever It was, but for reasons having nothing to do with his analysis of the game. Stronger players like Hikaru have dismantled Hans' last two interviews pretty convincingly[1]. Those interviews and his history of being banned from chess.com seem to be driving the current speculation more than Hans' actual play. The interview after Magnus was great because Hans was saying thing…

I don't want to defend Hans further, but Alireza and many other GM's have been falsely banned on Chess.com. It means absolutely nothing.

All I suggest is to stop this speculation, let's wait for evidence and if it is true, then fuck Hans. But at this point, I am just seeing a giant mob coming after him including on HN which is kind of appalling.

We need to be better including Hikaru Nakamura, he seems to be also doing it for the views. Hikaru's accusation or speculations have also been mocked on Twitter.

This just got posted by Gotham, absolutely level headed and facts based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDUmS_MJceU

Re: Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about chess. Do computers play like top humans? Or different stylistically? ie - if you were a top player and looking at the moves of an opponent, could you discern if the style was more similar to a top rated human or a top rated computer?

There are "computer moves" which stand out vs human players. These normally show up in lines where there are many options of roughly equal value and the computer picks a move that is infinitesimally better but out of 'theme' with the position. They can also show up when for instance there are multiple checkmates in a position. The computer will choose the one requiring the least number of moves even if it requires de…

> There are "computer moves" which stand out vs human players. These normally show up in lines where there are many options of roughly equal value and the computer picks a move that is infinitesimally better but out of 'theme' with the position.

To elaborate on this, humans use pattern recognition to identify themes within a position. This is a shortcut that prevents needing to mentally brute-force your way down an enormous tree of possible positions. Elite chess-playing humans are very good at this, but are still very good at spotting potentially non-thematic (perhaps "surprising") moves that offer some quantifiable advantage.

Computers operate very differently from humans. They rigorously evaluate positions to absurd depths. They can examine lines further than 30 moves deep without too much time. Often the moves they come up align with the thematic ideas that humans have (after all, there's a reason why humans have identified these patterns). But at the end of the day, the computer isn't playing thematically. It only cares that the position at the end of best-play by both sides has the score most in its favor.

This leads to computers playing moves that humans would only come up with exceedingly rarely. And if a human came up with that move, there would generally be some clearly-identifiable reward that humans can pick up on several moves later. When a human player plays computer moves, those noticeable rewards are often missing. The cheating human makes a puzzling move, play continues, and many moves later their opponent is worse off. But even after serious analysis it's not entirely clear how that original move brought about this advantageous position.

Of course maybe the human in question really wasn't cheating and stumbled into a brilliancy. Perhaps it's even one they didn't even truly understand the ramifications of when they played it! But when a human makes several of those types of moves in a single game, or even across a single tournament, it brings about extreme suspicion.

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