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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#931

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #785
pseudo0 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usain Bolt is another interesting case. Commentators have made a pretty compelling case based on the circumstantial evidence that he was doping, but due to weaknesses in Jamaica's anti-doping program it's likely impossible to prove one way or the other. https://tomnew.medium.com/usain-bolt-lance-armstrong-and-the...

A huge number of (male) athletes across all sports are doping now. Testosterone deficiency is a medical condition, and taking “testosterone replacement therapy” is explicitly allowed by many sports. Even if it’s not allowed, it’s not really possible to robustly test for, because in some forms at least it’s simply increasing the levels of the same hormones that your body is naturally producing. Same goes for human gro…

Which sports is TRT specifically allowed? The only one I know of is MMA, but I'd consider that marginal as a "sport". Are there others?

Re: Dear Chess World

#932

Post by roflyear »

viridian wrote: post #709

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…

Maybe you're talking about me. I don't even like Hans. I just think people are morons for spewing bile that harms someone's real life.

I know a little bit about the situation (though not an expert - I haven't researched it a ton, just tried to think critically about the situation) due to the fact that yeah, drama is entertaining. But I also think what the WC is doing is disgusting - he is using his position of power to harm someone, and doesn't have much evidence, really, none at all, other than him saying "trust me."

Also, the parallels between this and political discord are really interesting to me, and I wish I were smart enough to boil that down on a sociological level and express myself but unfortunately I am not.

I didn't know anything about Hans until Magnus dropped out of the tournament and this all started. I follow chess, and I didn't even know (consciously, I am sure I heard it and didn't take close note) at the time that he beat Magnus, until he dropped out.

I probably should not care too much, and do something more useful with my time, but it is super annoying to me that people are spreading misinformation to such a degree and no one seems to really care that that this can really impact someone's life.

On top of that, I strongly do not believe that someone should be branded for life due to their past actions.

Re: Dear Chess World

#933

Post by xboxnolifes »

dagw wrote: post #869
xboxnolifes wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machines can throw objects faster, further, and more accurate than humans, but field sports are still popular. It's interesting not because the object goes far, but because it's being done by a human.

but field sports are still popular. Are they? The throwing sports? How many people do you know who regularly follow shotputting or javelin (outside of possibly the olympics). How much do the top 20 javelin throwers in the world earn in sponsorship and prize money and how does that compare to other actually popular sports. I have no doubt that chess will remain at least as popular as javelin or shot-put for the forese…

If they're popular enough to be in the Olympics, they're popular enough to be called popular.

Re: Dear Chess World

#934

Post by detaro »

viridian wrote: post #895
johnfn wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is fairly split. I saw a poll recently: yes and no were split, but "I don't know" took up a large majority. I don't think it's too surprising that some people have strong opinions about this matter either.

I'm happy to take your word for the fact that it's reasonably split, I don't have a dog in this particular race. The strange thing to me then, is that with regards to this Hacker News thread, it is fairly split in sentiment if you look at the total number of comments in either direction, but if you look at unique commenters it overwhelmingly swings one direction. My question from that premise is, why is that the case…

You've never seen one or you've never paid enough attention to notice?

Re: Dear Chess World

#935

Post by roflyear »

me_me_me wrote: post #894
viridian wrote: post #709

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 am into chess, was studying it, have read few books on chess. People who know near zero about chess seem to come out of woodwork to defend underdog who is attacked by the top level clique. Its understandable, but to me its akin to the flat earth arguments. All based on emotions, never have much to say about chess. Anyone who knows a bit about chess (lets say advanced level), would point to the post game interview o…

You claim the other side is just using emotions, then you use arguments like this:

"It feels like"

Do you see no irony here?

Re: Dear Chess World

#936

Post by roflyear »

tjwhitaker wrote: post #929
me_me_me wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am into chess, was studying it, have read few books on chess. People who know near zero about chess seem to come out of woodwork to defend underdog who is attacked by the top level clique. Its understandable, but to me its akin to the flat earth arguments. All based on emotions, never have much to say about chess. Anyone who knows a bit about chess (lets say advanced level), would point to the post game interview o…

Agreed. Not only the firouzja interview but also the post game interview after the magnus match. It struck me as someone cheating on a test and being unable to show their work after the fact. Alejandro was pushing back against his analysis even before the cheating allegations came out. And his apology interview was full of inconsistencies where he couldn’t keep his story straight. This video does a body language anal…

The issue I have with this is Hans is obviously either some god-level cheater (who can also cheat at rapid formats?? in casual settings - like in parks, on the beach, etc??) or he's actually 2500-2600 (or, let's even say 2400).

If he's 2400, he can still analyze. This leads me to believe that the dude is just trolling. IDK. I haven't watched all his interviews, but he seems like a troll.

Re: Dear Chess World

#937

Post by __s »

glumreaper wrote: post #919
__s wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://imgur.com/a/JpJsMyI

OMG look at the Y axis scale of the graphs. Everyone else is 0-1000+ (often 0-2000), Magnus Carlsen's graph scale is 0-200.

Yeah, because Carlsen's is only a sample of 426 games

The first 4 are the most interesting, having same sample size of 4000. But across the board players tend to have little distinction between choosing moves between 0.0 & 0.1, except one player

Re: Dear Chess World

#938

Post by lastofthemojito »

erfgh wrote: post #846

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 live…

I feel similarly about a lot of games and sports as they're played at the very highest levels.

Scrabble is a fun game to play with kids, or sometimes with adults, and having a bigger vocabulary is an advantage. But competitive Scrabble means memorizing the dictionary of allowable Scrabble words. It's just a different game. There was the story a while back about the Scrabble champion who doesn't speak French but memorized French Scrabble words and won the French-language Scrabble World Championships: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/21/424980378...

And that's fine - competition spurs invention to find any advantage possible. But to me it'd be more impressive to see someone play an obscure Scrabble world, and then when you ask what the word means, they're actually familiar with it, rather than "eh, it's in the word list".

Re: Dear Chess World

#940

Post by MichaelCollins »

zakk wrote: post #899
MichaelCollins wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone kills a person at 16. Should the killer be in prison for life? If you murder somebody at 16, you shouldn't be a free man at 19. Three years is not enough time for somebody to mature and mellow.

Still, cheating at chess is not murdering someone!

And being banned from competitive chess is not an execution or lengthy imprisonment.
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