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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#901

Post by aqme28 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #883
aqme28 wrote: post #872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with this is that it's all circumstantial evidence. If you suspect someone of cheating but can't show it, then enact some anti-cheating provisions and move on. We can't have a rule of law based on just the suspicions of interested parties.

Of course we can rule out people by past cheating. Technology changes, it makes it easier to cheat but harder to hide cheating history (as most of the games between people at this time are online). Rules have to adapt to technology.

You can punish people for past cheating. But you can't say "he cheated before, therefore he's cheating now and that's why he won." I've seen that sentiment a bit too often.

Re: Dear Chess World

#902

Post by rybosworld »

syncerr wrote: post #227

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…

Agreed. His ELO improvement alone is evidence enough imo.

His rating plateaued around 2300 from end of 2015 to mid 2018. Then in the last 2 years, I believe his improvement from 2400 to 2700 is the most rapid in history.

If you compare his rating with other young players like Duda, Firouzja, Gukesh - then his rating increase looks very unique.

I'm not aware of any chess prodigies that have followed a trajectory quite like this. So maybe Hans is an unusual talent. Or maybe, he's receiving computer assistance.

Re: Dear Chess World

#903

Post by radiator »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #216

I believe people might be seriously underestimating just how good Magnus may be at detecting cheating. Dude probably trains with computers regularly. He has a better memory than 10 average Joe's combined. He's been the absolute #1 of the world for what, 10 years now? He wouldn't risk his whole reputation for nothing. I personally take his suspicions very seriously, though I agree that evidence has to be presented soo…

I was agreeing with your complete post, except for the last line.

No more evidence is required. The quality of Hans Niemann's moves, recently as well as during his rise from 2400-rating three years ago, is enough evidence against him.

Either he is a good as Stockfish, or ...

Re: Dear Chess World

#904

Post by asvitkine »

sudosysgen wrote: post #688
goatlover wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hans isn't at the 2800 level, but Magnus is almost 2900, and probably has good reason to be suspicious of someone playing way above their rating in tough matches.

If Hans was to beat Magnus, he would have to play at least at the 2800 level. At which a game with only top moves is quite frequent.

Source for "quite frequent"?

Re: Dear Chess World

#905

Post by me_me_me »

xiphias2 wrote: post #884
asimpletune wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that FIDE isn't really doing anything. This has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments, but what they really need to do is take this seriously and hire magicians, GM's, ex-intelligence, etc... to assess the situation and with transparency provide recommendations on how to move forward. If you look at FIDE's statement, they basically said they were made that Magnus did this and they're using "sophistica…

It's almost impossible to detect cheating, but it's trivial to statistically find a cheater from many thousands of online games that he has to play online to get to this level.

> it's trivial to statistically find a cheater from many thousands of online games

you assume that cheater is stupid and uses cheats for every move in every game.

If you use engine as a crutch to stop you from blundering and suggest moves that you understand, combined with adhering to steady but not explosive growth in elo points,you most likely end up undetected.

Re: Dear Chess World

#906

Post by nottorp »

lupire wrote: post #793
xiaodai wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most chess experts agree that a ~2600 rated player with 2-3 hints at key moments per game would be expected to beat a ~2800 rated player source? sounds like bs to me

If you wrote a computer program with 3 bugs, how long would it take you to fix the bugs if someone did / didn't tell you where the bugs where?

You don't know there are exactly 3 bugs to start with. While in chess, esp if you're experienced, you know what your possibilities are. Just need to pick one.

Or so it has been described above us.

Re: Dear Chess World

#907

Post by t_mann »

"I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do."

That's a mere gut feeling, how on earth is Niemann supposed to defend against such a vague allegation? Magnus is a world-class competitor not only in chess but also in fantasy football and even quite decent at poker, so it stands to reason that he knows a thing or two about statistics and game theory. I was hoping he'd have far more concrete evidence than what he shared in this statement (like maybe he was playing a game that he'd deliberately prepared to test how long Niemann will take to compute certain hard-to-spot key moves; even that would still be extremely vague, but at least give Niemann something to concretely address). He is such an outstanding brain that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he needs to produce concrete evidence.

In the end Magnus hints that he has more to share, and I hope he will do so soon. Otherwise I don't see how we could get to any sort of satisfying resolution here (short of Niemann suddenly confessing, which seems unlikely, and we still don't have evidence that he has anything to confess at all).

Re: Dear Chess World

#908

Post by xxs »

boxed wrote: post #837
octodog wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Airport security is trying to find bombs and knives. Those are potentially orders of magnitudes bigger than the cheating devices we're talking about here. Airport security won't find my 0.1mm knife, and it's not a problem if they don't.

Instead just buy a few bottles of vodka at the transit area: you have flammable liquid and properly sharp/hard object, way better than knife.

In short I'd not bring airport security in this topic

Re: Dear Chess World

#909

Post by gsinclair »

smcl wrote: post #896
nonethewiser wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should do 2 things going forward: 1. Ramp up anti cheat across the board. Stream delay, collect metrics which trigger an INTERNAL review at a certain threshold, etc. 2. Give players a process for lodging a suspicion of cheating. Part of this would be working with FIDE, not starting public drama. Fine them if they break the rules of that process.

> Stream delay Good god yes, I couldn't believe they didn't have a stream delay in the original Hans/Magnus game that kicked this off

Especially given the organisers were approached by at least one super-GM requesting extra security before the tournament started.

Re: Dear Chess World

#910

Post by gmiller123456 »

6nf wrote: post #125
gmiller123456 wrote: post #41

I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann What? I'd like him to explicitly state what rule/law/agreement prevents him from saying more. He explicitly accused him of cheating. I can't imagine what would prevent him from providing details.

Magnus owns 20% of Chess.com. Chess.com put out a statement basically saying 'we have sent Hans evidence that he cheated more than the two times he admitted to' Chess.com / Magnus is waiting for Niemann to respond.

I'm not asking people to guess, I'm asking him to either commit to some allegations (with evidence) or to explain why he can't.
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