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Dear Chess World

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Re: Dear Chess World

#951

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #545
stouset wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On Hikaru's YouTube channel today he posted a video about today's developments [1]. In the later part of that video ran some software that used Stockfish to analyze that game and show percentage of moves where each player made the top engine move. Magnus only matched the top engine move 43% of the time, which is quite low for a super-GM. Hikaru said he'd bet money that it was Magnus' worst performance in any game in…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Chess World

#952

Post by jquery »

tzs wrote: post #545
stouset wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On Hikaru's YouTube channel today he posted a video about today's developments [1]. In the later part of that video ran some software that used Stockfish to analyze that game and show percentage of moves where each player made the top engine move. Magnus only matched the top engine move 43% of the time, which is quite low for a super-GM. Hikaru said he'd bet money that it was Magnus' worst performance in any game in…

Later in Hikaru’s stream he analyzed some of his own personal best games and one of them only got a 43% engine match score. So whatever the tool does, it does not conform exactly to ideas of whether a super GM played good or bad, at least not for any single game.

(Sorry for the dupe reply, too late to edit my other comment)

Re: Dear Chess World

#953

Post by jquery »

roflyear wrote: post #936
tjwhitaker wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well he obviously can’t cheat at the beach because Magnus absolutely destroyed him there: https://youtu.be/T1OBEY99inw

Re: Dear Chess World

#954

Post by entropicdrifter »

Freeboots wrote: post #830
camjohnson26 wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, in that video he has a pack of gum that sets off the sensor, the security guard takes it, finishes the scan, and then gives it back! Obviously not proof of cheating but how hard would it have been to hide a device in that pack of gum?

Now I want to watch the tournament footage to see if he ever chews gum...

He chews pretty much the whole game

Re: Dear Chess World

#955

Post by jquery »

noncoml wrote: post #524

Here is a crazy idea. If you get caught cheating, even once, you should be banned for life. Otherwise we end up in a lose-lose situation. It’s almost impossible for Magnus to prove Niemann cheated on that game. It’s impossible for Niemann to prove he didn’t cheat. But shouldn’t matter. He was caught cheating before, he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete again. I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getti…

Well the best way for Hans to prove he didn’t cheat is to give amazing analysis after the game demonstrating his super-elite chess thinking. Unfortunately, he often sounds like someone who did nothing on a group project trying to explain how it works to the professor.

I know this isn’t proof he cheated, but it doesn’t do him any favors when he’s already under suspicion.

Edit: Way back, decades ago, in Warcraft 2, I became strong enough to regularly get accused of cheating by people who weren’t familiar with me. However the converse side of this is I was extremely accurate at detecting actual cheating.

Re: Dear Chess World

#956

Post by jquery »

akudha wrote: post #555
noncoml wrote: post #524

Here is a crazy idea. If you get caught cheating, even once, you should be banned for life. Otherwise we end up in a lose-lose situation. It’s almost impossible for Magnus to prove Niemann cheated on that game. It’s impossible for Niemann to prove he didn’t cheat. But shouldn’t matter. He was caught cheating before, he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete again. I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getti…

Lance’s case is interesting. Cheating is (was?) rampant in cycling. As Bill Burr joked “our roided up guy beat your roided up guy, what’s the big deal?” I don’t think chess is as bad as cycling. Doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but gives some perspective

And cycling became a punchline because of it. I think Magnus wants to avoid that fate for chess.

Re: Dear Chess World

#957

Post by faeriechangling »

undefinedzero wrote: post #822
faeriechangling wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magnus is obviously extremely qualified to detect cheating, I see many other people who are honestly just as qualified as him say that Hans isn't cheating. I'm going to also say emotions are going to play a massive role here, both in terms of defence of Hans and against Hans. The interesting thing is the one party MORE qualified than Magnus and the other grandmasters to detect cheating is the chesscom statistics team…

Not sure Chess.com is entirely objective. They recently acquired Play Magnus after all, so he will have some influence. The timing is pretty suspicious.

Chesscom is known for being a little extra responsive to abuse reports from the players that it sponsors, which has raised some eyebrows. Their neutrality is a question.

Still people literally know the chesscom cheating team. IM Danny Rensch is the face. I would say there is a fair amount of respect for that team within the community, as well as a healthy scepticism. If anything they probably get more criticism for ignoring cheating than for taking action.

It’s a tough gig, chess cheating is very hard to prove.

Re: Dear Chess World

#958

Post by tjwhitaker »

roflyear wrote: post #936
tjwhitaker wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think he necessarily has to be god level. This has been talked about ad nauseum but it’s not that hard to cheat just a little to gain significant advantage. Security has been lax at these events and there are numerous examples of cheating at the top level of many sports and throughout chess history. It’s definitely not that outrageous to see the possibility. Rapid and classical are different games that require different skill sets. He is definitely strong regardless which I think most people agree on. So you may have a point that he should still be able to have better analysis than what he showed. Especially if it’s a classical game where you have been thinking and calculating deeply for 2 hours. Perhaps the analysis was whack exactly because he wasn’t thinking and calculating deeply in these critical positions as magnus suggests in his statement.

None of us know for sure and it’s all speculation at this point. He could be trolling. He could be cheating. At some level he lied in his apology interview. He has not acknowledged the statement chess.com made in which they accused him of lying and cheating more often and more recently than he admitted. There’s just a lot of suspicion and sometimes where there’s smoke there is fire. My guess is he is a strong grandmaster that desperately wanted to be a super gm and took some shortcuts to get there.

Re: Dear Chess World

#959

Post by zach_garwood »

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…

This is a weird criticism to me. It's like complaining that a karate master is just drilling the same moves over and over instead of coming up with moves in sparring, or complaining that a football team is rewatching old games to see what plays work instead of just coming up with plays on the field. The memorization and preparedness IS the intelligence, not the waste of it.

Re: Dear Chess World

#960

Post by roflyear »

tjwhitaker wrote: post #958
roflyear wrote: post #936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think he necessarily has to be god level. This has been talked about ad nauseum but it’s not that hard to cheat just a little to gain significant advantage. Security has been lax at these events and there are numerous examples of cheating at the top level of many sports and throughout chess history. It’s definitely not that outrageous to see the possibility. Rapid and classical are different games that requir…

My point is the argument "he can't even do analysis" does not match up with the argument "it’s not that hard to cheat just a little to gain significant advantage"

To do the second, you need to still be extremely good at chess. Way beyond the level required to do any type of analysis.

"Perhaps the analysis was whack exactly because he wasn’t thinking and calculating deeply in these critical positions as magnus suggests in his statement."

You'd still need to calculate, if you're "just cheating a little"

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