It's a real red flag that he plays stronger moves after the browser window loses focus. I'd argue that's much less circumstantial than anything else so far.
Which shows ... I don't know ... naivety, or cockiness, or something. If I'm cheating at chess (or poker or whatever) online and I know that there are likely to be some form of anti-cheat scanning happening... why wouldn't you run your chess client on a computer beside you - then everything surrounding that is undetectable (processes, focus, CPU utilization, etc.)
Why don't cheaters just use two machines or even just their phone and a laptop? The evidence is often around other processes or browser tabs running on their device (and in this case also focus loss) but an immediate thought must be to simply use multiple devices.
No, the evidence is usually around analysis of the moves and how they compare to those generated by chess engines and how the same player has played in the past. The mechanics of the cheating are mostly irrelevant.
In blitz, 5 minutes totally would work, in classical chess I have my doubts. The Sinquefield Cup (the tournament where the drama started) added a 15 minute delay which would be much more noticeable and less forgiving.
That's a question I was going to ask. Sure, not _every_ move is 5 min, but wouldn't a 5 min delay almost ensure any cheater would play mostly more than 5 min, each turn? (besides some simple moves, ofc) Or is it that they only need to cheat at a few points where taking more than 5 min wouldn't be abnormal at all?
The latter. The article briefly points out that cheating on only a few moves can give one grandmaster a significant advantage, which makes cheating difficult to detect. In discussion of a previous article, some HN commenters suggested that even having a binary “be careful here” signal based on a chess engine could make a big difference.
I don't know how market leading chess cheating software works, but it's not that hard to imagine that it just captures the screen, or scrapes the moves in any number of ways automatically is it? I'm sure it's not needed to manually type in all the moves. As to how he'd cheat over the board, that's the big question. There are a couple of theories floating around, some more realistic than others, but if we knew for sur…
Anyway his over the board results are more or less consistent with his online results, so either he has invented some cheating method that had evaded detection for many years at top level events, or that he is really good on his own.
I mean, probably the worst way to cheat is 'mindlessly'. If you're doing nothing more than 'transcribing' moves from one client to the other, sure. But if I'm cheating and trying to figure out maximum ROI, I'm looking at what the computer did for me, trying to understand it and figure it out. That way I can learn and get better myself, as well as talk/bluff intelligently about why "I" might have made a certain move.
The fact that an athlete in a competitive sport was allowed to partake in an event even after admitting to cheating not only once, but twice, is outrageous in itself.
Right? I completely didn't understand this part? In pretty much everything else, you cheat, you're basically done.
> In pretty much everything else, you cheat, you're basically done.
The penalty for cheating in most major sports is way more lenient than you think. Most leagues will suspend you for a handful of games in the first instance. In the NBA for example you can be caught three times before being suspended for one season.
The next 'move' for cheaters is to use chess computers in a way that passes 'Chess Turing Test' and makes cheating indistinguishable from normal human play under analysis. When there is money in the game, there is incentive to cheat. > The report says dozens of grandmasters have been caught cheating on the website, including four of the top-100 players in the world who confessed. There are probably smart cheaters alr…
Cheat detection isn't done by only by move analysis, but by an extensive profiling of a person and games based on many factors beyond even just the moves. For instance one of the easiest ways to catch a weak player cheating is move times. Such a player will have no idea whether a move is trivial or works only due to an exceptionally precise and lengthy series of counter-intuitive calculations that no human could do w…
What happens when it’s a strong chess player who is cheating?
Even a strong player can benefit from consulting a computer. Chess games can win fail based on a few moves.
A strong player would only need to consult the computer on a few moves to get a considerable advantage.
GothamChess coverage on YouTube [1]. Part of this is showing and reading the article itself so if the WSJ paywall is getting in your way you can read it in the video.
Magnus owns a decent stake in them (20% maybe?) and has been very publicly making accusations as well.
Its not that much, but the article ignores the fact that chess.com knew all of this and invited him to their tournaments. Then once the Singfield cup event happened and Magnus got mad they banned him. They have been selectively releasing information about him and his one time coach for a few weeks now. While in the past they have never, not once, released any of their cheating information. Why now? If they dont relea…
Apparently they have a policy of only dealing internally, with their own online systems. Basically they just quietly ban players caught cheating, and don't report it anywhere normally.
Even now, they haven't released this publicly yet.
So, I'm not much of a chess person, much less a competitive chess person. Can the "over the board" cheating potential be reduced with a 5 minute "tape delay" of broadcasting the game? Is that enough time to thwart the influence of an external signal? Seems to me the only way this person can redeem himself is through over the board play under strict conditions ("Come dressed in shorts, a t-shirt and sandals"). But I d…
It might work if there are no spectators live in person. Otherwise you can easily have someone in person relaying the information to a computer, or you have to search everyone, not just the players.
The admissions were from when he was 12 and 16; many so societies generally believe in redemption from childhood transgressions.
12 is fine... 16 is iffy... it was only 3 years ago. I'm personally a bit frustrated with the ever changing standards for adolescents. They are as responsible or naive as people want them to be for whatever their bias calls for. (not saying you btw, just in general).
Personally, I'm not a fan of permanent Scarlet Letters for .... I think I may go so far as to say anything.