81–90 of 339 posts
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.
The admissions were from when he was 12 and 16; many so societies generally believe in redemption from childhood transgressions.
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.)
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.
Allowing people back into the sport swings the EV math heavily in favor of cheating if the penalty isn't massive given that the chance of getting caught is so low (as long as you know what you're doing). The only way to make the EV of cheating negative is to make the sanction very, very bad. Losing all of your future earnings from the sport is a good way to do that.
I used to run Magic: the Gathering tournaments, and there was a tremendous amount of "minor" cheating - forgetting the rules when it benefits them, shuffling in suspicious ways, peeking at opponents decks, etc. Many competitive players even openly admitted to doing this. Even if a tournament official could call them on the cheating and disqualify them (which was frowned upon without hard evidence), they would likely not be suspended from sanctioned play at all unless the evidence was overwhelming. Several famous cheaters did it many times and got caught several times. Minor cheating was very common as a result.
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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.
Honestly, it does seem next to impossible to stop a dedicated cheater if any feedback makes it out of the room in a reasonable amount of time.
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The admissions were from when he was 12 and 16; many so societies generally believe in redemption from childhood transgressions.
Report says over 100, as late as 2020.
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.)
They can really only think in front of them. If I put information into this program, I get information out. They don't think that applications can monitor their own meta-state. Or the state of other applications.
So I'm not terribly surprised that he thought running the engine in another browser window would have been sufficient. He might have even had it open in "incognito mode". And since it's incognito, it can't be detected, right?
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Computer vision for chess is widely available (and very useful!) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19563768 ( "Chessvision.ai – Analyze chess position from websites, images or video" , 49 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21162466 ( "Show HN: ChessBoss – enhancing physical chessboards with computer vision" , 36 comments)
Things that are easy for some members of HN crowd are likely not that easy for a 19yo person who's only notable achievement in life so far is being really good at chess (well, presumably). Such software also doesn't explain his OTB results, which are consistent with his online results.
Magnus has estimated it would usually only take one or two computer corrections per game for himself to play perfectly, so we're not talking about every move, just at key points. Apparently even just an indication that there is some key/winning move at a given point, without indicating what it is, is enough for the player to stop and put in the time to find it.
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He cheated in prize money tournaments. That's borderline fraud.
Here is Carlsen taking a move from Howell in a Lichess prize tournament, which he'd never do OTB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMcnrmb97g
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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 .
He may have to take a long break.
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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.
A strong chess player would have to weigh the risk of losing all their progress and reputation if caught cheating.
After this current situation, I expect the penalties for being caught cheating will be severe. Whether the cheater is banned from all future events or not, nobody will want to support them, nobody will want to associate with them, and they will essentially be cast out of the entire chess world.