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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#712
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a relevant quote from Magnus regarding cheating: "I would just needed to cheat one or two times during a match, and I would not even need to be given moves, just the answer on which move was way better, or here there is a possibility of winning and here you need to be more careful. That is all I would need in order to be almost invincible." Even just 1 bit - an indication to be careful - would be enough to boo…

yes but against magnus , who is supposedly two levels above Hans, this is not just a one move cheat, he'd have to cheat + have a continuous absence of mistakes, which is an awful lot of information to transmit. i dont have a horse in this race i just like thinking about things in terms of information theory since this is a remarkable applied case another way to decide this - have them play blitz (where the moves are…

Two levels if he isn't cheating. If he is, perhaps 3 or more. Recently magnus played hans on the beach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1OBEY99inw

magnus completely destroyed hans in two games, as black. I think the ease with which magnus took hans apart in these beach games, presumably added to his suspicion when hans played so much better in the Sinquefield cup.

Re: Dear Chess World

#713

Chess is, in a way, doomed. At this point cheating by a smart perpetrator is nearly impossible to detect. - Miniature devices can even be implanted. You can probably already have a chess engine onboard your body. - Accomplices of a cheater only need to transmit a few bits of information to be useful - making cheating cheap when audience is allowed. - Statistical methods will not be able to detect a player increasing…

This seems like an overreaction. We regularly use scanners to detect foreign or hidden objects on people, such as at airport security. It's not out of the question to use such approaches at high level chess where the cost/benefit is worth it.

Re: Dear Chess World

#714

Some interesting meta observations for the few people who read my comment in this already enormous thread. I noticed that opinions on the issue seemed split rather 50/50 until I started seeing the same couple of names over and over on the "no evidence of cheating" side. And in fact, searching the HTML document for this page for a particularly prolific name yields that they make up about 10% of all posts in the thread…

Do you even need to search the HTML? Just a generic find of the browser's search will reveal the same info. Not sure why you'd need to go to that trouble.

at the time I read this and replied, your comment was top of the stack. without reading the full comments, i'm already reading your comment as someone that's got their knickers in a twist rather than reading a substantive comment. so hopefully that's what you wanted?

Re: Dear Chess World

#715

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…

In one of my high school computer classes we'd often set up UT2003 LAN games. I was once called a cheater by someone sitting behind me who, at any point, could have directly observed my every move and corresponding input. I was baffled and amused at the same time. People that lose games have plenty of incentive to claim their opponent is cheating.

On the other hand, as my skill level increased in FPS games it became more and more obvious when one of my opponents was cheating. So IMO you can trust Magnus' ability to accurately estimate the chance of Hans cheating, but you can't trust his motivations for making the claim.

Aside: When you combine high skill levels with cheats that were designed first and foremost to avoid detection, it becomes almost impossible to do detect them. For example in FPS games "aim-bots" are crude compared to "hit-scanners" that simply auto-trigger when your crosshair happens to pass over a valid target. Combine a hit scanner with a player who already has top tier accuracy, and you get super-human accuracy. Let the player enable and disable the hit scanner in real time and they control exactly how accurate they are without any conspicuous appearances. You'd have to (externally) record and sync the monitor's output with a camera that monitors their mouse movements, and even then you'd need EXTREMELY accurate timing - most likely a capture rate higher than the monitor refresh rate.

Re: Dear Chess World

#716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or Niemann, if concrete evidence against him emerges) This window seems closed though. Carlsen seems to have no evidence. Where else could the evidence come from? All we have is character attacks. Even if justified, they can't prove that he cheated. All we know for sure is that Carlsen accused him of cheating with no evidence.

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.

I expect people to hold off the public allegations if they can't prove anything.

I could name specific players who I'm pretty sure were cheating in my own game. I've sometimes had a quiet word with a ref and asked them to watch a particular player closely. I've occasionally had a louder word with a ref and asked them to enforce the rules that are in place to make cheating harder. But you can't pull something like this based off of nothing but your own feelings.

Re: Dear Chess World

#717

Some interesting meta observations for the few people who read my comment in this already enormous thread. I noticed that opinions on the issue seemed split rather 50/50 until I started seeing the same couple of names over and over on the "no evidence of cheating" side. And in fact, searching the HTML document for this page for a particularly prolific name yields that they make up about 10% of all posts in the thread…

I think this is another example of the very common pattern of 90% of the contributions in online discourse come from 10% of the population with 90% of post coming from a 1% minority of the overall population. It's not unusual at all.

Re: Dear Chess World

#718
post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an electrical engineer currently in the process of getting a dental implant, I would say it's definitely doable. But it would present a pretty serious packaging challenge, particularly the power supply. [UPDATE] Turns out you can get dental implant hardware on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/272267166511

Considering it only needs to be powered for a single match it seems very possible to me with over the counter components.

It's a pretty straightforward calculation, which I don't feel like doing right now. But I think Stockfish is going to be pretty power-hungry at the grandmaster level.

Re: Dear Chess World

#719

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…

found the car analogy

Re: Dear Chess World

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bl…

> 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.

Of course he played near-perfectly for 27 moves. That's what it means to be a 2700 (or even a 2500, if you think his recent ratings growth is the product of cheating). Virtually any high-level game will look like that - the players playing mostly perfectly, with on average one or two significant mistakes, but sometimes not even that.

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