Dear Chess World

I am seriously aghast at how so many people defend (or even fully support) this type of behavior. This is disgusting.

I want to emphasize, that it is disgusting regardless of Carlsen being right or wrong in his suspicions, it isn't really important, and I would stand by it even after Niemann being proven guilty. This really should be simple: either a player is caught cheating and then he is banned (or awarded a prize, or whatever this particular federation does with cheaters). Public statement must be given by federation and/or organizers, after which players may be allowed to speak up. Or a player isn't caught, and then you keep your fucking opinion to yourself (except of informing the arbiters, of course), however great champion you may be. In fact, the greater you are, the more responsibility you have, and even if you are borderline sure the opponent has cheated (but have no legal proof) — you really should be mindful of possibility that your are mistaken, and of what consequences your (however "legally non-binding") allegations may bear, given how prominent you are.

I.e., this is an issue that must be dealt by organizers — not players, not reddit users and surely not youtube bloggers.

Otherwise, what happens is that somebody totally innocent (and I'm not talking about Niemann — the point is, that it really could have been ANYBODY) can be publicly executed on a whim of a great King of Chess. Seriously, just think about it. A person's whole carrier may be ruined, he may be driven to a suicide, just because… Magnus has suspicions? Does it sit well with you?

Also, all of this is far beyond the question of if a suspect has cheated in the past. I mean, I think it's fair to say that refusing to play somebody who the federation/organizers do not ban, can (and should) be considered ill sportsmanship and be frowned upon — but this is just my personal opinion and means nothing. This said, I guess it should be acceptable that one may publicly refuse to play a person who is known to have cheated in the past (or for any other reason — and the criteria of refusal being potentially arbitrary is why I find this problematic). But then you kinda should make this statement before you play them, or at least make a note to yourself to do it after the tournament has finished, instead of throwing a tantrum just after you lose a game to that person (a game that you played really poorly, according to many respectable experts in the field, by the way… which isn't the point of course).

But, obviously, one cannot (and shouldn't) be expected to make the best and most moral decision all of the time. Which is why this should be handled (and even enforced) by the arbiters/event organizers/federation. And it would be too kind to say that it wasn't — it was literally the opposite of that! They were throwing fuel to the fire all way along! This is obscene.

My most pro game experience was Battlefield 2 and I'd go on a public 64 player server and score most kills with only the knife. Thing is: My team mates and other pros were capable of doing the same. No pro would accuse us of cheating, just the average Joe's.

This is a farce. All credibility has been lost when you have to scan players like you scan people when entering a plane.

Chess is touted as an ingenious game when it is little more than a brute-force search with simple prune and huge amounts of memorization.

I would argue that most GMs would easily play up to 200-300 elo points below their current level with little to no practice. But they spend decades of their lives memorizing and memorizing just to get the highest rating they can. And it is diminishing returns --- if you spent 1000 hours memorizing to get 100 points, the next 1000 hours will only get you 50 points. And when you reach your peak --- be prepared to keep memorizing forever just to stay there and inevitably drop when you reach a certain age.

What a waste of intelligence.

It is telling that nobody is pushing for chess960. This would greatly devalue memorization and make chess a brute-force-search-with-simple-prune game once again, as it was meant to be. But that's exactly the problem; if you are at the top after doing all this memorization you don't want to throw it away! In fact, your memorization might be better than your calculation in which case you will be surpassed by other players.

> I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getting a pass

I do not want to suggest anything here, just side note that there are cases in cycling when someone was cheating and than suspended/relegated but without life ban like Alberto Contador in Tour de France 2010.

Seriously - go play a fighting game.

In fighting games, most AIs are discredited and stupid because they have no reaction time. I don't know of any that name in a nondeterministic 10-15f of reaction time. It really complicated things.