Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#61

Post by rob74 » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #5

hugh-avherald wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Fabi, but the question must be asked: how does he know (with certainty!) that the player was cheating. Did the player confess? Was he blatantly looking on his phone in front of him?

Making moves perceived to be outside his skill class I assume.

If it's that, then it's pretty arrogant - I mean, that's like saying: "he's too stupid to make such a good move, so he must be cheating"? Even (relatively) bad players are bound to make good moves from time to time, either through dumb luck or through occasional sparks of inspiration, so that's hardly a reason to be 100% sure they are cheating...

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#62

Post by buzzdenver » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

Mizza wrote: post #42

buzzdenver wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing prep might work in something like a world championship game where the two participants play dozen or more games. It would be much harder to steal the prep of half of your opponents in a round robin tournament. Also, if you assume that Niemann is cheating and his real rating is 2450, not high 2600s like it is officially now, then no amount of prep stealing will make him competitive with Magnus.

But that's literally the situation. He did beat Magnus, claims that he happened to study deep into a fairly esoteric line that Magnus played, then seemed unfamiliar with the variations of it when asked about it in a later interview. Magnus seems to think Neimann's coach - another cheater - got information about Magnus' team's preparation.

That explains one game, but he consistently seems to play at the high 2600 level.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#63

Post by treis » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

Bakary wrote: post #27

tbrake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is, I think, couple of ways to do it. One way would be to not be greedy and only get help from time to time. So if I was the player I would not rely for the algorithm for every move, just sometimes. Just enough so that it makes a difference. This is something Magnus has said before as well (paraphrasing): "If I got engine help for just one or two positions a game I would win every time."

At their level of play, a single one-bit message can tip the scales in dramatic fashion. All you have to know is that there is a great move to be found in a particular position, without even knowing what the move is.

Engine moves aren't really like that though. They aren't dramatic strokes of brilliance. They're slightly odd moves that pay off 20-30 moves later.

And it's a little bit of a meta game. Engines are ultimately playing against themselves when determining the best move. So they might discard a brilliant looking move because of some line that no human is reasonably going to come up with. Similarly they might make a brilliant move that humans don't recognize as such because no human can analyze as deeply as ane engine. So when a computer looks at a board and says there is/isn't a great move that's not necessarily the same as what a person would think.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#64

Post by zug_zug » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #49

frodetb wrote: post #21

I wonder if the explanation for Carlsen's move could be far simpler than people are making it out to be. This is the guy who decided not to compete for the world title, simply because he didn't feel like it. He loves chess, and wants to keep playing it for the joy that it gives him, and nothing else. He could have resigned early simply because going through with the game would have left a bad taste in his mouth. I'll…

>Imagine having to sit through a game that you love to play, only with a nagging thought in the back of your mind that sucks the joy out of the experience and turns it into a chore. That's a completely reasonable position for Magnus to take. It would be even more reasonable for him to simply state that that's why he's acted as such, and yet...

I imagine he'd open himself up to a lawsuit if he accused a player of cheating without hard evidence.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#65

Post by ChrisLomont » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

throw7 wrote: post #37

You either have evidence or you don't. This quasi economic modeling of chess players is ridiculous. He says his models don't know anything about playing chess. OK, let's apply your models to all sorts of areas where we suspect fraudulent play. This chess drama is corrosive. Speculation from day 1 starting with carlsen.

>You either have evidence or you don't. This quasi economic modeling of chess players is ridiculous

Modeling provides the best evidence in all aspects of life (design, science, invention, marketing, medicine, ....). All human knowledge is built in modeling and statistical evidence. Nothing is 100% certain except mathematics, and even that is often fuzzier than 100%.

So how is modeling yet another thing ridiculous when it provides empirically the best methods in so many other domains?

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#66

Post by blub » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

agarden wrote: post #52

SilverBirch wrote: post #41

I honestly wish that people wouldn't put out rubbish analysis like this. >his conclusion is there is no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating. No. His conclusion is that based on this really weird brute force statistical analysis there is no statistical indicator that he cheated. Firstly, how you can state there's no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating is absurd. You know he has a previous record of c…

Regan's analysis is a good deal more detailed than that. He claims that if you check the computer just three times a game, he is going to catch you within three games. Now, if you check just once, it becomes a lot harder. For the game against Carlsen, he looked at the key moves in that game. The first 20 or so moves were theory. You can't ever prove cheating in theory. After they diverged from theory, Regan said ther…

If there are several good moves, it seems logical to cheat by not picking the computer’s top choice.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#67

Post by mmmpop » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

notafraudster wrote: post #55

dandanua wrote: post #17

Chess became a joke today. People decide if you cheat or not just based on your moves and results. It's nonsense. It's like deciding if an athlete is cheating or not without doping tests - solely based on the "distribution" of success. And Magnus behavior - hinting accusations again and again - is far from ethical too.

I think people decided he’s cheating because he admitted to cheating the two times he got caught cheating online, denied ever cheating besides those times, has had a meteoric rise in terms of moving from low GM to his current state, was unable to explain his play in a reasonable way, played almost perfectly, beat a substantially better player, and that player feels he cheated despite having never made accusations lik…

I think people are right to suspect him of cheating given everything you said.

Reading through your list, I can't help but be fascinated by the amount of hubris it would take to actually cheat as such, and then proceed to live with yourself. Hell, given his comments, he seems pleased. We could be dealing with a real sicko.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#68

Post by ChrisLomont » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

thedstrat wrote: post #24

anothernewdude wrote: post #14

A bell curve. That's it. Is Hans Niemann cheating? Ken Regan is cheating people into calling him an expert.

Agreed. The analyses based solely on a comparison of average centipawn loss is so so flawed. It only takes using an engine move once or twice to completely demolish a much better opponent in a game. These types of analyses don't find this type of cheating. A much better analysis imo would be trying to find the probability of someone at his ELO finding surprising moves. EG I played a 1900 online recently who happened…

>It only takes using an engine move once or twice to completely demolish a much better opponent in a game.

That's not true. Pick an engine, set to a few hundred points above your strength, then try to beat it using only one or two moves from an engine. You will lose nearly every game, because so many of your other moves will be so below the other player that the 1-2 good moves cannot make it up.

This is demonstrated quite often by the games where GMs are "helped" by others in multi-player games, and it shows that help against a much better opponent takes far more than 1-2 moves.

Among really close players it helps. But not once you get a few 100 ELO points apart.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#69

Post by humanistbot » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

jstx1 wrote: post #3

Fabiano Caruana (former number 2 and World Championship contender) is skeptical of Regan's analysis: > I would take Regan’s analysis with the large grain of salt, and the reason why is not because I have any insight into his algorithm or his methods, but because I know of a case of, a very high profile case, where with absolute certainty I can say that someone was cheating in an important event. And the person was in…

The fact that Caruana has not said why he has "absolute certainty" the person cheated is cause to be skeptical of Caruana's skepticism.

Re: Is Hans Niemann cheating? – Expert analyzes

#70

Post by bombcar » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

debacle wrote: post #33

bombcar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proving a positive result is much easier than a negative. A positive “this move right here is not reasonable without a chess computer suggestion ♟” vs “we didn’t find anything suspicious”. And if you’re cheating, adding another layer of “try to find moves that aren’t suspicious” would be theoretically possible.

The other factor is that Regan's process is designed to not produce false positives - if it says you are cheating, you are almost guaranteed to be cheating.

Exactly - the lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack; a common mistake.

All we know now is that an "obvious" method of cheating wasn't used. That may be because there was no cheating at all, or a new method of cheating has been developed.