Hans Niemann says he is being unfairly attacked in chess scandal
vice.com
vice.com
Questions have been raised about his 3rd GM norm, but the jury's still out on that. It wouldn't surprise me if he has cheated in OTB as well in the past, given his shady history and behaviour.
But Carlsen really needs to grow the fuck up. As GM Ben Finegold pointed out, withdrawing from a round robin is a dick move, and it kind of ruins the tournament because players can be forced into a draw in a critical round where they need a win. In addition to that, passive-aggressively withdrawing with a cryptic tweet is not even close to the proper etiquette in response to suspected cheating. And it doesn't even make sense from a chess standpoint. He wasn't going to play Hans again. Withdrawing doesn't give him back any rating points. He obviously had no concrete evidence or Hans would be disqualified, so it's not like he's saving the tournament for the other players. He's just being a self-important jerk.
I'm glad he's declined to defend his title because he's no longer capable of being an ambassador for the sport. He only cares about himself(which was basically his explanation for declining) He's also gotten in bed with illegal gambling sites, trying to turn the Norwegian Chess Federation into a lobby organisation for the gambling industry(luckily he failed).
I say this as someone who grew up idolising Magnus Carlsen. I did 2 years ago, even 18 months ago. Not anymore.
He’s a high level grandmaster who happens to have a history of cheating.
Why should I think otherwise? All grandmasters have had surprise loses now and again, right?
So, if we take chess.com at their word and he is lying, we have a person who is a "former" cheater, who is currently actively lying about the scope of their cheating.
It's not conclusive by any means, but this is a far cry from "nothing to see here"
Which they obviously aren’t. Which means that they have found nothing new in the “review”.
The more obvious answer is that Magnus is pissed, and as a part owner of chess.com and biggest draw in tennis, chess.com wants his continued participation and so is kicking Hans out.
They may have justification for it, but it was clearly not enough of a justification to act on before Magnus decided to get all pissy on losing.
Occam’s Razor suggests we should strongly believe he didn’t cheat OTB.
The bigger issue is that known cheaters create a cloud of suspicion that puts their opponents at a huge disadvantage. Magnus has spoken about this before - if you think someone might be cheating you can’t concentrate on chess.
This suspicion can be allayed with extra security but that extra security was only deployed after Magnus left.
It’s not only the main issue. It’s pretty much the sole issue. The only other one I can see is how harshly Magnus should be sanctioned by FIDE for leaving a tournament without a valid reason and his little stint on Twitter.
> The bigger issue is that known cheaters create a cloud of suspicion that puts their opponents at a huge disadvantage. […] This suspicion can be allayed with extra security but that extra security was only deployed after Magnus left.
Magnus knew perfectly well how the game would be played and security was more than adequate before this game. Tournaments takes preventing cheating very seriously and the Sinquefield Cup is no exception.
There are tons of viable methods for cheating. I’ve heard the method of taking a break on a balcony and having a conspirator flash singles at you with car headlights. Or a cheating device in your shoes, or hidden in even more private places.
The point being is that if Hans really wanted to cheat OTB the security measures to stop him are rather inadequate. More theatre than anything.
Do I think he cheated OTB? No but he could have. There will always be that raised suspicion, that extra degree of doubt given Han’s repututation.
Don't forget soundproofing to prevent communication via noises. Oh, and enough earthquake proofing to prevent communication via vibrations.
I wonder how young players can concentrate on chess when they know if they suddenly win over the King then top chess entities can ban them from chess? And the fan base of the King will run after them all over the internet with threats?
Magnus just wanted to be more than a chess King. Evidently, it means being less than a honest human.
He hasn’t even said anything. All he has done is taken cryptic unexplained actions and released cryptic unexplained tweets.
If Magnus believes Hans cheated (again, that’s a big if because Magnus hasn’t said anything) and Magnus is actually correct that he cheated, even in that situation Magnus’s entire set of actions since he lost have been highly dishonest, since his entire communication strategy has been to leave cryptic messages that people can read anything into, without yet having made any clarifying statements.
This person has been caught cheating in the past several times including for prize money tournament so it's much more likely they have cheated many other times and were not caught.
There are many ways you could cheat in a OTB match, most people don't understand how easy it would be, one of the ways you can tell someone is cheating is that they don't understand why their move was good, often computer lines are very unintuitive and moves sacrificing a piece without any positional or tactical compensation mean it has found an idea that requires calculating more moves ahead than any human can.
In the post game analysis hans gave, it was terrible, lines that he suggested often being 1 or 2 move blunders, not expanding on insanely complicated positions, but simply claiming "the chess speaks for itself" and misevaluating who is winning in many variations that were shown, often when deciding between two different lines how well you evaluate the end position is critical to picking the correct line.
I don't know if hans did cheat in this tournament, but if he didn't then he was quite actively giving the impression to the other players that he was, which has would give a huge psychological advantage, not because the opponent "can't concentrate on chess", but because if your opponent is offering you pawns or a piece for "free", in a game against a human you will take it, in a game against an engine taking it means you have already lost.
For the most part they’re working off public information though.
>>"So far, there has not been any concrete evidence that points to Niemann cheating."
So question is, did you read the article?
Moreover chess.com saying they cheated on their website is a wholly separate issue than if Hans cheated OTB. There’s plenty of room to believe that chess.com is being sincere but that Hans may be innocent of both recent allegations, especially the OTB cheating allegation.
So either chess.com is wrong, despite having a pretty good ability to detect cheating, or Hans is lying. I’m inclined to believe the latter.
Also, if chess.com had all this evidence why did they wait until after Magnus’s cryptic tweet to act on it? Do they only run their algorithms on games after Magnus makes cryptic comments on players playing the games?
The far more obvious reason is that they took these actions because they don’t want to potentially lose Magnus and his company’s involvement in the tournament.
That being said I do think it’s unlikely he cheated in Sinquefield. I should stress that OTB cheating and online cheating are indeed psychologically different. One can be a momentary lapse in judgement which can be a slippery slope, the other requires extensive pre-meditation and is more likely to be detected.
Why does he need the benefit of doubt though? There's no evidence or indication that he cheated.
All we have is Magnus quitting the tournament after losing and cryptically retweeting Moutinho saying “I cannot say more”.
For all we know Magnus quit because he has a bad case of diarrhea and finds it embarrassing to talk about that.
There seems to be no evidence that Niemann cheated OTB (his cheating as a 12-15 y/o online I do not take as evidence of anything, as a zoomer socialised on internet gaming he has the misfortune of having his misbehaviors better documented than older generations, it's to me comparable to famous esports players who used to cheat as kids online)
Magnus has not made a clear accusation but just withdrew and posted a meme insinuating cheating, which is awful because that ambiguity in itself creates drama. Any player should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. World Champions should speak with clarity instead of trolling.
The online social media and twitch coverage of the event throws fuel on the fire by creating incentives to milk the entire thing for views, chess coverage degenerates more and more into internet gossip and drama, it's unbecoming for the game. Unlike most people I think the recent surge in popularity has not been good for the professionalism of the game.
[1] - no relation to the former world champion
I don’t think chess is in any risk of disappearing but it was on a significantly upward trajectory when it comes to popularity that this kind of antic may noticeably dent if not reverse.
I for one can’t take it seriously anymore.
And then overall putting even the events in question. If he cheated? Who else have cheated? And how common is cheating? Could it even be that the popular names are cheaters too? After all it takes one to know one...
If he won he would go up 5.4 a draw down 4.5. His starting rating was 2861 so after the game he would be at 2846.
Is part of the drama a kind of unbalance of power. Where those with power in the community exerts more influence and benefit more from their influence.
Could owning chess platforms be seen as a conflict of interest in a professional sporting frame of mind?
Which makes all the comments using chess.com’s actions as evidence kind of pointless.
That being said, Magnus is the biggest draw in chess. So even if he didn’t have part ownership of chess.com, most tournaments would be willing to sacrifice a rather unlikable and unknown player to not piss off Magnus.
There is simply no proof, or even a hint of proof, that Niemann did anything wrong. Carlsen, however, is a drama queen with an enormous ego who is using his power to slander another player.
I think Carlsen should be suspended, not Niemann.
Right before the game would be much worse I assume.
This is the most disappointing part.
The community doesn't seem to have the technical ability to OSINT this.
Where's an expert talking about where in the match with Magnus a computer might have been used.
4chan does better OSINT than the chess community.
People could learn a lot here by being technical rather than just drama driven.
The issue is that nobody can really tell if a single game was cheated on, it’s just not enough data to provide sufficient evidence of cheating. I’ve seen non-cheaters play games where every move is 100% the same as stockfish’s recommendation because the winning line was incredibly forced.