A recent chess controversy
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A recent chess controversy
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Re: A recent chess controversy
#2It is well known that Kramnik baselessly accuses everyone. The article seems to be more about statistics than chess, and doesn’t make any accusations. Kind of a click bait title IMO.
Re: A recent chess controversy
#3The underlying flaw in this analysis is it assumes ratings reflect actual performance in a given game. A long winning streak becomes far more likely if one of the players is part of several matches while tired, drunk, etc. Similarly a players peak performance is going to be higher than their ELO because that ELO includes games played under less ideal conditions.
ELO is presumably more accurate for over the board games at tournaments where players bring their A game than low stakes online games where someone may be less engaged. That’s IMO more worth testing.
Re: A recent chess controversy
#4This is basically an article describing why you can’t just look at an event after it occurs, see that it has some extremely rare characteristics, and then determine it was unlikely to happen by chance.
It is like asking someone to pick a random number between 1 and 1 million and then saying, “oh my god, it must not actually be random… the chances of choosing the exact number 729,619 is 1 in a million! That is too rare to be random!”
Re: A recent chess controversy
#5It is well known that Kramnik baselessly accuses everyone. The article seems to be more about statistics than chess, and doesn’t make any accusations. Kind of a click bait title IMO.
It’s using a random accusation as a starting point for explaining Bayesian analysis.
Re: A recent chess controversy
#6It is well known that Kramnik baselessly accuses everyone. The article seems to be more about statistics than chess, and doesn’t make any accusations. Kind of a click bait title IMO.
It's to be expected per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Re: A recent chess controversy
#7It is well known that Kramnik baselessly accuses everyone. The article seems to be more about statistics than chess, and doesn’t make any accusations. Kind of a click bait title IMO.
The title is “Did a US Chess Champion Cheat?” and the text of the article uses statistical analysis to show that the person most likely did not cheat. What would you consider to be misleading between the title and the article?
Re: A recent chess controversy
#8This is basically an article describing why you can’t just look at an event after it occurs, see that it has some extremely rare characteristics, and then determine it was unlikely to happen by chance. It is like asking someone to pick a random number between 1 and 1 million and then saying, “oh my god, it must not actually be random… the chances of choosing the exact number 729,619 is 1 in a million! That is too rar…
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”
-Feynman, from Six Easy Pieces
Re: A recent chess controversy
#9I'd be much more suspicious if his online performance didn't track with his professional over-the-board performance, where cheating would be much more difficult.
Re: A recent chess controversy
#10This is basically an article describing why you can’t just look at an event after it occurs, see that it has some extremely rare characteristics, and then determine it was unlikely to happen by chance. It is like asking someone to pick a random number between 1 and 1 million and then saying, “oh my god, it must not actually be random… the chances of choosing the exact number 729,619 is 1 in a million! That is too rar…
Yeah tbh it doesn't really go into chess-specific stats either
You could look at a bunch of other metrics to identify cheating: how many errors/perfect moves^ and whether that's within the usual range. How well were the opponents playing? Etc
If you consider that Nakamura might have been having a good day/week, was already stronger than his opponents, and some of them may have had bad games/days, you can change something from "extremely unlikely" to "about a dice roll"
^ according to stockfish