Magnus Carlsen resigns against Hans Niemann after one move
new.chess24.com
new.chess24.com
Have you ever heard of "innocent until proven guilty"? The burden of proof is on the accuser. We should be shown evidence, or Carlsen should apologize.
Nothing dictates that burden of proof is always on the accuser, especially in the internet where there isn't really any authority or agreements on subjects like this. It's just a statement/opinion by grandparent and it baffles me why presumption of innocence is even brought up like it's something to be held everywhere.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is not just a legal concept but a social norm. I'm a big Carlsen fan, but that same logic, applied to other domains, has led to witch-hunts throughout history, or character assassination/reputational damage when someone is accused of something but those accusations are never tested in court.
Coming back to chess, this isn't a casual situation with your friends, but a professional environment with norms and with money on the line. Imagine the same thing at your workplace.
Random non-experts taking sides here is inappropriate. Even many other Grandmasters have opinions on these accusations (true or false), but are refusing to state them publicly, preferring to let it play itself out, due to their respect for norms. Magnus is entitled to his opinion and to expressing them, but treating them as facts rather than accusations is just strange.
Chess cheating expert Ken Regan thinks Niemann didn't cheat. "Innocent until proven guilty" obviously applies.
I think the question is whether it ought to be a social norm.
What do you think of Prince Andrew? Hasn't been proven guilty. Should we just go about our business with him as usual? What about everyone else who settles a case?
I think of "Innocent until proven guilty" as a sort of viral trope. People think it's the norm, so when the question comes up, this phrase appears in their minds and is the first thought on justice. But I'm not sure it's a good norm, at least I have yet to hear arguments about why we should follow it, especially outside of the legal realm.
But just because the bar is set so high for criminal guilt doesn’t mean we can or should use it elsewhere.
And much of personal interactions are basically “guilty until proven innocent” because the risk (even if minor) isn’t worth it. Most people have no problem being told they can’t share a bathroom stall with you even if you’d share one with a spouse.
Even civil cases have a lower bar, and many personal interactions are way lower.
And while I do have a problem with “do one crime and never be hirable again for anything” I do not have a problem with certain crime blocking certain types of work, and/or subjecting you to additional scrutiny.
> What do you think of Prince Andrew? Hasn't been proven guilty. Should we just go about our business with him as usual? What about everyone else who settles a case?
We have circumstantial evidence that he did it; testimonies from victims, who have made credible claims, etc. There's also a difference between making sure you're not victimized (e.g. being careful around alleged abusers, or Carlsen being suspicious about a suspected cheater), but that doesn't apply to internet gossipers.
And the public's reaction to Prince Andrew would be different if he was a nobody, who was publicly vilified by the most influential people, with zero evidence available to the public; compared to him being a powerful person, who is publicly protected by the most influential people, with plenty of circumstantial public evidence. I think he's guilty, but there's context to my belief.
What irks me is when people take sides in "he said she said" conflicts (i.e. with zero public evidence) between two people they've never met. "Innocent until proven guilty only applies to courts!" is reasoning I've seen far too often regarding accusations published in some random tweet, and it's really quite ugly.
And Carlsen didn't technically accuse him and Niemann is not technically on trial, so "innocent until proven guilty" is irrelevant. Magnus's goal seems to be to get Niemann disinvited from tournaments. He's taking such drastic measures for a reason at the expense of his own hard earned rep, and given his benevolence as world champion you have to trust his judgement.
Magnus should explain his actions to the organisers and the public, or just not enter tournaments.
Carlsen himself said something akin to "Watzkin didn't have thick enough skin to become chess world champion", if you knew a bit about chess you wouldn't suggest this silly explanation
Suggesting that pro chess players don't tilt is absurd given that we've seen it happen plenty of times, often after losses.
Hans has cheated before and that affects credibility. Magnus has been around for awhile and gathered a reputation regarding professional style. That affects credibility. Having high or low credibility is not a crime and everyone is free to create their own personal theories on credibility.
Magnus has decided that he does not want to play Hans. As the world chess champion people will want to know why. Magnus has pre-emptively tweeted a meme which basically says that he refuses to say anything. I don't see what's wrong with Magnus avoiding Hans while basically saying nothing.
Losing games on purpose is unsportsmanlike. Now, if Magnus has good reason to believe that he's just countering bad sportmanship with his own brand of it, that could perhaps be justified in some circumstances. But to the general audience, it makes chess look really bad.
That's what Magnus is to the "general audience" with regards to chess, and it's going to take a lot for Magnus to be a net negative to chess. We are only making drama because Magnus is so good. Nobody would be blinking an eye if I failed to show up to a tournament, and my opponent would be glad to reap the points.
Not really, at all. That TV series and the COVID pandemic have way more to do with current chess popularity than Magnus & Nakamura. The playing public doesn't really care who the champion is, they play with themselves and only very few follow every game on major tournaments. As a spectator sport, chess is beyond boring, even worse than baseball (seriously, how come people in the US are so into watching baseball??!)
So is cheating. At least this is blindingly obvious.
In the few high level tournaments that are knock out or Swiss system it would be less unsportsmanlike because in those most other players won't have to play Magnus.
He almost certainly explained himself to the organizers of the Sinquefield Cup, given how they instituted more anti-cheating measures as soon as he withdrew. They knew what was up, they just didn't come to a good resolution with Magnus and he withdrew instead.
> and the public
No good can come from that, any resolution will be either Hans being caught red handed, tournaments employing anti-cheating measures that put Magnus at ease, or tournaments having to choose between inviting Hans or Magnus. None of those involve the public in any way.
> or just not enter tournaments
I'm pretty sure he told the organizers of this tournament "I'm not coming if Hans is coming", and they told him "you signed the contract months ago, you have to come". So instead Magnus did the closest equivalent to not playing Hans: play one move and forfeit.
In other words, he is bullying Niemann using his status and renown as a world champion. Nice.
Is this a troll or some kind of rhetorical question? OP explained exactly his reasoning and clearly they said it was because of reputation.
> Have you ever heard of "innocent until proven guilty"?
It is not a court and Hans is not being tried on criminal charges, so what does that have to do with anything? Legal systems also have other standards for evidence such as balance of probability.
> The burden of proof is on the accuser. We should be shown evidence, or Carlsen should apologize.
What exact accusation did Carlsen make? A verbatim quote with complete context will be sufficient.
I don't think we should live in a society where people can be imprisoned by relying on accusations alone, of course hard evidence should be required, but I don't mind living in a society where people are free to use the shared knowledge of their own community to reach epistemological conclusions. If the chess community decides to trust Magnus and his credentials without any proof, that's their prerogative, the concept of criminal innocence doesn't come into play at all here.
What can he do if he is completely convinced of the other player cheating. He can only let the other player win and at the same time make clear that he is not going to play against him.
That is the only legal and honest way to deal with what you perceive is a cheating opponent.
What else can you do? Get a libel trial?
He has not said that the other player does not cheat. But he is not going to play against him.
It is not so easy as to say: "hey, this player cheats".
OK: he has no proof. Perfect, he is willing to lose and keep his mouth shut. But he has said something: "I cannot say anything without getting into an unsolvable trouble".
why would you need proof when Niemann already admitted to cheating in the past?
It is simply immoral to deny any kind of redemption to any person who has ever made a mistake. For a person so ready to cast stones, are you yourself without any sin? Should the errors you once made follow you for the rest of your life?
I'd say people should put up some evidence of Niemann's cheating, how exactly he was receiving information on best possible moves, or just shut up about it. Or dial the anti-cheating measures to eleven, strip the players naked, put them in a Faraday-cage without spectators and cameras, and see how they do.
Do you see how absolutely impossible to do this, don't you?
And honestly, even if it was proposed as a joke, a bluetooth buttplug actually sounds like a good secret channel for small amounts of information if you don't mind it sitting there. You're probably can feel the vibration very well and add some bits with different vibration speeds and patterns. I feel like the shoe method would require you to have your feet still and it's easier to enforce a shoe check than an anal probing...
In the criminal court of law, that's the burden of proof. This is not it.
Has Carlssen explicitly said "This guy has cheated?"
He has only said "I cannot speak because I would be in such a big trouble that I am not willing to do so".
It is not so trivial as "prove it" when you only have a deep, serious, professional conviction.
How would you explain his reaction then?
He didn't explicitly said that, but he certainly implicitly said that, which is essentially the same in this situation.
Best thing would probably be some statistical analysis, and some likelihood of the moves made. And in the end, someone will probably conclude that there's a x% chance that cheating occurred.
With that said - at this level, I don't know how you differentiate true outlier moves, from the player just being incredibly apt at the game? I've heard that one way of identifying algorithmic / computer programs, is that the moves can extremely weird compared to what a human player would have done.
Until he lost to Hans.
It’s also important to note that Magnus has still not actually accused Hans of anything. He’s letting insinuations, innuendo and Twitter imaginations run wild do all the work for him.
He's even lost to Hans before, with white, in the game where Hans infamously said "The chess speaks for itself".
And he didn't immediately withdraw from Sinquefield. Hans' postgame comments, where he made an odd claim about preparation, came in between and may have been a factor.
Remember, Chess is a LOT about preparation these days, and Carlsen was also at one point #1 fantasy football player in the world. He probably knows a thing or two about applied statistics. Even overlooking the specifics, he wouldn't get as far as he has if he wasn't pretty good at keeping his frustration at losing from influencing his judgments.
It sounds like Magnus was suspecting something and prepared obscure line to test his response. Its not conclusive evidence as there is always some chance he just studied that sideline and know how to exploit it.
But it looks like its conclusive evidence to Magnus or he knows more than he lets out.
The rule (in this case, rule of law) that forbids slavery is pretty modern, surely that doesn't make it any less important?
my best theory is that Carlsen is afraid to play against people who HAVE cheated once, because there mere thought that he COULD be cheating right now is enough to derail him from clear thinking. I think this because it's exactly what he declared in an interview ABOUT cheating on 2021.
So basically he's boycotting someone as a message for other cheaters and, even if hans is innocent, and keep Chess clean. It's of unfair for Hans if he's not cheating but ... what is a fair justice anyway ? There's always a message sent by a sentence.
Like in your preparation you make an opening move and see what move the engine makes in response. Now do this in your live game and see if the opponent made the very same move. If they do, this confirms cheating. In this case may be that's the first he would do given he already suspects cheating?
In case of the first moves, there's definitely not a wide array of potentially equally good moves. There's a very well known set which is studied by every serious chess player.
Chess GMs at Magnus and Hans’ level wouldn't even need to cheat on every move and certainly not on any opening where something like the first 20 best moves are all memorised. These guys would only need the engine to tell with them one or two moves per game to pretty much always win.
Why did Magnus start the game and then resign? Maybe he thought it would make a statement. Maybe he needed to technically show up to the game to avoid a penalty.
I dont know if he is cheating. Evidence is not clear. My theory is one of two things.
1) Carlsen doesn't want to play with anyone that has ever cheated. Fair enough. But be more vocal about it.
Pet theory 2) Carlsen is on tilt. We could be seeing a shift in play style, like we have several times with poker. GTO came on the scene and suddenly the whole game changed, and those on the top many times found themselves unable to deal with how the newer players were approaching the game.
Now in Chess, it's much harder to see what's an overplay or not, especially for us who aren't GMs. But the basic thing exists, it exists in all games. Players still have to make decisions about whether to concede a little of their edge (it starts off with white, but can change across the game) with a safe move, or go for a potentially risky counter.
Now imagine what suspectimg your opponent might on decisive moves have engine help, does with that dilemma.
Some players may feel they have to, but others manage to refrain from making overplays, and just keep playing moves they consider objectively best, patiently waiting for their weaker opponent to make big mistakes. Usually such patience does get rewarded.
As more evidence comes out, it seems that Hans has cheated a lot more than he admitted, and potentially over the board as well (for example, this analysis [1] shows that he's playing at superhuman levels in some games.) This all helps Magnus's case. I think it is likely that Hans will be slowly barred, silently or openly, from tournaments and venues all over the world.
Several years ago. I think when he was 16? (Not saying that is when he cheated, but that’s when he admitted to cheating).
Actually, with the advent of image generating AIs, such questions become more relevant.
Why should we, as "appreciators/consumers" of this art, care about how it was done? Do we think that a drawing made with the help with a computer "less artistic" than one drawn on paper?
Also imagine that this AI is friendly and superhuman, and it is established that its works are aligned with our interests. All "art" produced by this AI inspires us to be better version of ourselves and enlighten us to help us solve our conflicts. In this scenario, why should we care about the work of one particular human vs another?
The point that I am trying to make is that chess is already a reduced version of this hypothetical. Those that care about chess as a game will have little to learn by looking at humans. Those that want to improve their own game will do it by playing against/studying/interacting with the advancements in computers. There is very little left room for humans by themselves to show any new development in the game. As such, it seems to me that the ones interested in events related to human players are those who worry more about measuring humans against each other than in the game itself.
In most sports it's possible to find a machine that does it better/faster, but sports are about humans measuring themselves against one another, not against a machine.
I think this line of thinking only makes sense if either you do require the robots to behave like humans (opposite of the comment you replied to), or by rewriting the rules of the game completely.
I don't think you need the players to look like humans, but you have to in some way keep the spirit of the game. For example, you can't pick up the ball and hold it while you move, but have to roll or bounce it in front of yourself (dribble).
Also used to be true for chess.
Right now he seems to be occupied with his automatic puzzle solver. Based on the first video it looks like it'll take a while.
It's like "okay, here we have a bunch of genetically gifted people who spend their whole lives training for that. Why should we care whether someone can run 100m in less than 10s or not? What difference does it make to any of us if Usain Bolt is the fastest man to run the 200m on a very controlled environment?"
This is not to say that running as an activity is useless, or that we should give up on exercising. I don't know if that is the point from OP, but I myself do question why we collectively think that is so important to devote so much time and resources in trying to optimize for these crazy, arbitrarily-constrained scenarios that we call "sports".
Humans like puzzle games, for some intrinsic reason. Chess is a very large and addictive puzzle.
In addition, humans enjoy playing games, and I think this extends to watching or following other humans who are better at it as a vicarious means of participating. A Saturday poker game with your crew is not diminished by the fact that everyone in the game would be slaughtered in a professional tournament, nor is the fun of watching said tournament diminished by that knowledge. I can enjoy a game of flag football with my family, and still enjoy an NFL Monday Night game, even though no one in my family would last 2 plays in the latter.
I can understand that out of an abundance of caution (and on the advice of his lawyers) he doesn't want to name anyone in particular, although seeing so many fingers pointed at Niemann (understandably, given his past) I do think Carlsen should at least release a statement saying "I don't want people accusing Niemann of cheating, that was not my intention".
Someone on Carlsen's team could be encouraging him to focus on lines which they've discovered (through a bug in the hotel room) that Niemann's team is preparing counters for.
In both of these cases, the corrupt team member could be motivated by the possibility of winning a large bet on the outcome of the chess match, without either player being in on it.
(I admit that the idea of Stockfish giving deliberately bad information only to Carlsen, to weaken his prep, is not very plausible, but we don't know how rational Carlsen is being here).
Pretty much every grandmaster who has commented on the prep leak idea has stated it just makes no sense on the face of it.
Maybe he does, or maybe Carlsen thinks he does.
> the prep leak idea makes no sense.
The "malicious person on Carlsen's team" hypothesis I was putting forward didn't involve them leaking the prep to Niemann. I merely supposed that someone in such a position could negatively influence Carlsen's performance, and profit from it through betting.
Has Magnus said he's cheating?
It's easy to say "Just don't tweet anything", and that's advice that we might wish millions of other people would follow too, but Carlsen is now getting criticism for his silence, so it seems like he can't win either way (ironically).
He's being criticized for being silent after having published a vague tweet insinuating his opponent was cheating, not to mention the resignation stunt. If he'd actually been silent about it and just withdrawn from the tournament before the match, there wouldn't have been anything to criticize.
I haven't seen evidence of Neumann's cheating, as is claimed in this comment. Only allegations, which do not look very strong to me.
The second line of inquiry is statistical analyses of Hans's over-the-board games. See my original comment for one such analysis, but he really has been playing at an absurd level in some games (performing as well 0 centipawn loss against some engines!)
It's not a good look.
He had played at a way more serious events, and still the only 'evidence' of cheating is his relatively good performance. Until someone comes up with an explanation how he is able to cheat with games streamed with delay and after metal detector scanner, I suggest treating Carlsen's behavior as tantrums of a person who can't take a loss.
Also, whatever chess.com says about cheating online is irrelevant, as their methods are known to produce a lot of false positives. Additionally, since recently chess.com is in business relationship with Carlsen, so they can hardly be counted as an independent party in all of this.
That argument works better when someone's 25 than when they're 19. This isn't the distant past, this is 3 years ago. That's definitely recent enough to be a black mark on his reputation. On the other side, the main person who's suspicious of them isn't some internet random. It's the world greatest chess player, which should is decidedly a mark in one's favor reputation-wise.
This is the very basis of how reputation works. You slowly establish reputation by having a track record of positive behavior, you rapidly tarnish reputation by having a track record of negative behavior, and when you are making judgements based on limited information about the activity at hand, you trust the more trustworthy.
Think of how much good will Microsoft has had to build in the last 10 years to try and make up for the 20 before that. Think of the fable of the boy who cried wolf. Trusting those who have earned it and distrusting those who have wronged before is basic society 101.
Regarding Carlsen's behavior, so far it looks like he has grown a very big ego. Not interested in a second championship match with Nepo, throwing tantrums against an up and coming player who defeated him. Maybe he's feeling he is losing his edge against a new generation of players, and doesn't like it.
There are a lot of lower-quality accusations, but this is the interesting one IMO. It should be easy enough to independently check for someone who has a setup for that sort of thing.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ChessfanMWP/videos
The last 5 or so vids on that channel are in English, but youtube does a decent-ish translation of his other videos too.
1. I didn't cheat!
2. Ok yeah I cheated those times but I never did it again
3. GOTO 1
It seems we've gone through this cycle once already - where Niemann has admitted that he was caught cheating on two occasions in the past. And now chess.com are saying actually he has cheated more times than that, so we're seemingly going through this cycle at least once more: https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352
This is very feelings-based but as an outsider who doesn't really play Chess and can't evaluate what happened on the board, it certainly doesn't look good. He's at very least been quite dishonest
Cheaters are serial cheaters, and they will deny deny deny.
The problem is really that he has admitted to cheating more than once. There is a reason why sports and just about everything else employs zero-tolerance policies: It doesn't just happen once.
I'm not saying that is what happened here - I really don't follow chess enough to have an informed opinion on this specific case.
However I object to the blanket opinion that there aren't people who cheated once and absolutely regretted it and never did it again, especially kids, especially online.
Great examples from CS:GO include s1mple, went on to become undisputed GOAT. Steel and the iBuypower crew (not cheating but matchfixing) that eventually became casters/analysts and upstanding members of the community.
In both of these cases the lapses of judgement occurred when the players were young. s1mple got a second chance, iBuypower didn't. I think they should have been offered that same chance as they showed over the years their character wasn't black, they had just made a grave mistake. A more fitting punishment would have been a length limited ban of a year or so, instead they were handed down lifetime bans from official events which I think was too harsh for essentially a bunch of teenagers.
Cheating is that last edge that puts competitive players above their competition.
And for things like matchfixing- these are almost impossible to detect so you basically have to come down very hard on them.
1. BadThingX occurs
2. related BadThingY occurs
3. related BadThingZ occurs
4. Bob denies doing all instances of BadThing
5. something comes out, and Bob concedes that he's done BadThingX when he can no longer get away with denying it
6. something comes out, and Bob concedes that he's done BadThingY when he can no longer get away with denying it
7. I am now pretty sure Bob is also responsible for BadThingZ
I've seen this kind of cascade of lies gradually unravel often enough that my brain (over?)eagerly pattern matches it. As I said this is a pretty abstract description that doesn't exactly fit, but I guess we're at least clear on how we have contextualised it and reached our own opinions.
Please cite research on that.
> There is a reason why sports and just about everything else employs zero-tolerance policies.
The sport doesn't employ zero-tolerance. The verdicts issued by WADA for cheating (doping) in sports are usually a suspension for ~1-6 years (out of the top of my head).
For some e-sports (e.g. ESIC and CS:GO), the verdicts are similar: a few months to maybe 2-3 years suspension from official tournaments.
What we have is the world champion throwing a tantrum because he lost against a player there is absolutely no evidence has cheated against him and is now calling for him to be expelled despite having no evidence whatsoever. This is harassment pure and simple.
The whole thing is disgraceful and reflects extremely badly on competitive chess.
He made no comment.
I don’t understand how an adult can defend Magnus there. As a public figure his attitude is simply shocking.
For a public figure his response is unusually quiet and calm to me. Though I'm not into chess so I don't know how it is perceived from that angle.
The crux seems to be that a genetl(wo)man would either directly accuse, or remain silent. What M.Carlsen is doing is de-facto accusing while saying "don't look at me, I didn't say it out loud". It's so... un.. hacker.. style.
Honestly, bravo. He's at the point in his career that he really doesn't need to prove anything, and as such is uniquely positioned to make this kind of statement with at least a vague chance that it will be heeded.
That’s absolutely not the rule and neither you nor Carlsen get to decide that.
There is no permissiveness here. Hans has played according to the rule of the tournament. There is no evidence of cheating. That’s it.
Unless you have proof of what you are advancing, you are just bullying a teenager. The conduct of the chess community has a whole has been nothing short of shameful in this instance.
I find the general holier-than-thou self-righteous attitude expressed by most armchair commenters extremely off putting.
That's what I see in your comments, haha.
Let the man protest. It appears to be quite effective. There is a long history of positive change coming from quiet, stubborn, non-violent protest outside the rules.
You absolutely can. Billions of people do it every single day for less reason.
> I find the general holier-than-thou self-righteous attitude expressed by most armchair commenters extremely off putting.
I find the crowd chanting evidence, evidence, evidence off putting.
From what I can find: "he did admit that he had cheated in the past – first as a 12-year-old when a friend gave him some help in an online tournament and then as a 16-year-old playing unrated games while he was streaming."
A 12-year old cheating in a tournament! We cannot ever trust this man!
Magnus Carlsen started playing at around age 5. Was in his first tournament at 8. Was winning and establishing a career in his teens. Was grand master in his early 20's.
So, cheating at 12 and 16 could equate to cheating now. That's only 3 or 7 years ago. Hans is 19.
The cheating when he was 16 was unrated, so that's less severe, but the same argument applies here really; how many 100% responsible 16 year olds do you know?
Should there be some consequences? Maybe? But people further upthread here are argueing for life-time bans, which seem ridiculously draconic for the actions of a teenager who can't buy alcohol or cigarettes, is below the age of consent for sexual activities, etc. in in many jurisdictions.
In my early teens I would shoplift for the fun of it and did some other things I'm not especially proud of today. That's been 30 years ago and I haven't stolen anything in just as many years (since I was 14 or 15).
I'm very uncomfortable writing off an entire person over actions they did as a teenager.
https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352
>"Dear Chess Community,
>The last few days have been tumultuous for many in the chess community. At this time we have reached out to Hans Niemann to explain our decision to privately remove him from chess.com and our events. We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com. We have invited Hans to provide an explanation and response with the hope of finding a resolution where Hans can again participate on Chess.com. We want nothing more than to see the best chess players in the world succeed in the greatest events. We will always act to protect the integrity of the game that we all love."
Hans Niemann is not being honest.
* His blitz/rapid ratings went up just as much as his classical ratings. Cheating in OTB blitz is much harder, so you would expect his blitz rating to stay roughly the same if his recent rise was due to cheating.
* Ken Regan is generally the most trusted authority of cheating detection (you can find his papers online, his methodology is rigorous), and he says there is no evidence of Hans cheating OTB.
* AFAIK no strong player has described the game between Hans and Carlsen as suspicious. Even the (increasingly rare) ones that are fully on Magnus' side.
Shall we permissive against people who cheated, or who admitted to have cheated?
If this is permissible, or even acceptable why we have a word for this?
Note: Consider this as a meta question. This is not related to Hans or Magnus, but to humans at large, incl. me and you.
That should be the rule.
Everyone can help to make this new norm by refusing to play against players who have cheated. Carlsen is helping to make it the rule.
That's straying pretty far into conspiracy theory territory.
One important question is whether Niemann has cheated in tournaments with prizes or "only" in ladder-type games (he's only admitted to the latter as I understand)
Yeah, justice!
If you steal something once in your life, straight to jail, for good. If you have a speeding ticket, no more driver license for the rest of your life.
After all, people don't change, any mistake in life should be fatal and destroy your entire future.
</sarcasm>
But lowlife should not be allowed in professional chess, and professional chess is not place for second changes.
To you hold this view for all competitive endeavours or just chess? If you cheated in a high school basketball game, should you be barred from ever playing professional basketball.
Get down from your ivory tower...
I don't think one and out forever is really the way to deal with cheating in teenagers, they are yet to fully understand the consequences of their actions or how to deal with pressure/emotions - especially in online settings when the temptation is higher and the fallout less obvious.
No, you shouldn't. People make mistakes, especially children. It is simply immoral to close any path to redemption for them. Also, anti-cheating measures on second-rate chess site chess.com are known to produce a lot of false positives. Niemann was never caught cheating in over the board games, so people trying to kill his career because of Carlsen's unspoken allegations should be ashamed of themselves.
Considering how Carlsen has not made any public statements about the matter how did you get to this?
But true. There is no evidence, but there is quite a lot of suspicious activity around Niemann if there wasn't this wouldn't be a story.
Well, chess players are famous for spending a lot of time analysing their opponents' games in great detail. And the world champion is in a sense the greatest living human analyser of high-level chess games.
You're right that Carlsen hasn't produced any hard evidence - or even made any clear statements. But on the other hand, for me to say I knew better than him about analysing chess would make it look like I didn't know what I was talking about.
Without hard evidence I don't think Niemann should be punished - but it's certainly appropriate to take a very hard look.
Just consider, for a moment, the possibility that the kid did cheat again. What could Carlsen have possibly done that you wouldn’t call a tantrum? What he did was the most polite, least confrontational, thing possible.
We don’t currently have sufficient evidence that he cheated, but don’t confuse uncertainty for evidence towards either side.
He could (and should) have played a game in the best way he possibly can. If he'd lose again (which I doubt) we could have analyzed Niemann's performance and maybe arrive to some conclusions.
???
Follow discussions on r/chess and people like GothamChess, PowerPlayChess. Facts and very little speculation.
Evidence is needed.
This is being overstated. There's not any hard evidence suggesting he's been cheating over the board, and for such a potentially career-ruining allegation you'd want some pretty strong evidence.
Also, think about how much harder it would be to cheat over the board. You might use hidden devices, accomplices, secret signals--compare that to an online game where all you need to do is switch over to another tab to check the engine. Cheating OTB requires a significantly greater degree of forethought, planning, and commitment--a persistent and repeated willingness to cheat that is way less acceptable than an online player getting tilted and looking at an engine. Still cheating, yeah--but at least it's not premeditated.
It's the difference between cheating at a casual Poker game at home with no money staked and cheating at the World Series of Poker when serious money is at stake.
He played Hans at the meltwater tournament, and beat him. A few weeks later, he played Hans again at the Sinquefeld cup, and lost to him. After which he posted a cryptic Jose Mourinho meme. And a few weeks later he played Hans online and resigned in 1 move.
What’s Magnus’s case? What has he said his case is? What’s his argument? That losing to Hans was too traumatic for him and that he can’t play him anymore? Because he had no problem playing him while he was still winning against him.
AND left the tournament, which he never did before, and it almost never happens that someone leaves the tournament without stating why. Magnus case is, that he accuses Niemann of cheating, it is very simple. :-) He didn't say that, but he acted like that, he communicated it with his actions.
couldn't it be something else that is causing grief between the two?
Ken Regan, who is the world expert on identifying engine-assisted cheating in chess, disagrees [1].
No offense to random YouTube creator but I'll trust Regan's analysis over Chess fan MWP.
[1] https://en.chessbase.com/post/is-hans-niemann-cheating-world...
> The verdict
> Dr. Regan analyzed all of Hans Niemann's games over the last two years, including online games, such as played on Chess.com and their events, and his conclusion is there is no reason whatsoever to suspect him of cheating. The wide range of results in a bell curve, with some good and some bad, is actually a sign of a healthy distribution of results. Many of the so-called points of suspicion are in fact quite normal and suspicion is really the result of faulty analysis by zealous amateurs. Even online his play has been quite devoid of anything unusual.
[1] https://en.chessbase.com/post/is-hans-niemann-cheating-world...
Not that hard to reconcile......
The best expert on opining whether Niemann has been cheating or not is the player who understands the game of chess more deeply than anyone else. He understands it from the human point of view (for example: which variations can a player of X or Y level calculate accurately, which ones might seem to work but are in practice too complicated/too risky to play, which moves are absolutely unbelievable from a human because one has to find ten super moves in a row starting from a non-forcing position) as well as from the engine's point of view, due to his experience in analysing with computers. He also has recent experience in playing Niemann in a tournament.
I trust that Carlsen knows what he is doing.
>includes having the entire tree of variations for every position in your mind while investigating
Too bad even Magnus can't do that and the closest you can get is by writing software to do it for you.
You did not describe the algorithm or the data which would help writing the software you are talking about. As I said, for me if this software would be based on comparing the engine's best move with the human's move and give such metrics as average centipawn loss, it would not be nearly adequate for this purpose.
And I insist that all the things you described as the hardest part are only poor substitutes for understanding the game of chess.
Wow.
Regan has been an active and respected member of scientific community, a lecturer and book author for a long time. If anything that adds and not takes away from his credibility. He's also the most prominent expert on cheating detection that FIDE has ever worked with and he's an authority on the matter.
Oh, and he's rated at around 2400 ELO. But I guess it's very easy to just slander him like that. Go back to reddit.
“I would take Regan’s analysis with the large grain of salt, and the reason why is not because I have any insight into his algorithm or his methods, but because I know of a case of, a very high profile case, where with absolute certainty I can say that someone was cheating in an important event. And the person was investigated and was also exonerated based on Regan’s analysis. And I am certain that there was cheating. There is no doubt in my mind that this person was cheating and they got away with it.“
So this is one more example of an academic, who is so far away from reality and practice, that real experts just ignore his opinion.
To cheat in chess you input the current state of the game and you get the best possible move out.
You carry some device which lets you input data, computes the best move, and actuates that response back to you.
Let's say that this device is simply a very small microcontroller which takes in input via some pressure sensor, and outputs via some actuator that creates vibration. You've loaded some chess program onto that microcontroller.
You hide the device somewhere on you, tape the input pressure sensor to your thigh, and paint / cover up the sensor and wire with material similar to your skin. Same with the output actuator.
When it is your turn, you input the current state of the board via the pressure sensor. Input sequence is sent to the program, which calculates best possible move. The output actuator vibrates the sequence of what piece, and where to move.
Probably one of the older tricks in the book, as far as device-guided heating goes.
""What I'm saying, as justifying my not needing to take the time to individually into tournaments to see which were broadcast and which were not, is that if there is any bias in my data, then it's towards broadcast games (i.e more of it is analyzed due to availability) and yet I show something entirely normal."
This is a simple logic error. The guy might be reputable but haven't really thought this through.
Quick explanation of the mistake if it's not immediately obvious: it's possible to cheat in a way that his statistical method won't catch but the difference in performance between broadcasted and not broadcasted tournaments will highlight it. His statement assumes that his statistical model will catch every cheater which is obviously nonsense. His methods might be very good in a sense that if they show cheating we can be sure cheating in fact occurred but it can't be good enough to find every cheater, if anything because of limitation of input: just the chess moves. For example he wouldn't catch a stronger GM communicating moves to Hans (it's still very human and normal, just stronger) while comparing performance in broadcasted and not broadcasted tournaments would (if someone communicated the moves to Hans in broadcasted ones).
It's very hard to take the guy seriously after that, especially when he is very arrogant about "there is no evidence" statement while it would be more prudent to say his limited statistical model didn't find any.
As far as I can make up from this story, Niemann admitted to cheating online as a child (not exactly uncommon) but as of yet there's not an ounce of proof that he cheated against Carlsen.
What I don't understand is that people just take Carlsen's side without any proof. Some guy beat Carlsen so he must be cheating? What kind of reasoning is that? Surely the hyper-analytical chess community can provide some kind of statistic to prove that he cheated in the match against Carlsen? A comparison with Stockfish and friends in various combinations, perhaps? _Something_ more than "he beat the best of the best that one time therefore he's a cheating liar".
Until Carlsen and his friends can provide proof of cheating, I can only conclude that Niemann is now the superior chess player. He has now beaten Carlsen twice; once for real, once by Carlsen's resignation.
But yes, Carlsen should be careful because if it turns out he made accusations out of nothing or out of spite, his entire reputation is at stake. I hope Carlsen made those accusations based on something solid.
Now whenever a colleague stumbles to find an answers I have to suppress the urge to say something to the effect of "Did the anal beads' batteries run out?"
Especially since AFAICT it seems to have come from a clearly joke Reddit post[1] about how they discovered the cheating because Carlsen's own anal beads were vibrating in the match...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chessmemes/comments/x8217h/the_real...
This reddit post is just someone else running with the joke later by saying that Magnus also uses them.
my best theory is that Carlsen is afraid to play against people who HAVE cheated once, because there mere thought that he COULD be cheating right now is enough to derail him from clear thinking. I think this because it's exactly what he declared in an interview ABOUT cheating on 2021.
So basically he's boycotting someone as a message for other cheaters and, even if hans is innocent, and keep Chess clean. It's of unfair for Hans if he's not cheating but ... what is a fair justice anyway ? There's always a message sent by a sentence.
1) The first three and only moves of this game at Julius Bär Generation Cup with Niemann as white is the same opening as the first controversial game (2022-09-05) at the Sinquefield Cup but with flipped sides (Magnus white).
2) Chess.com, the organization that decided to ban Niemann [1] sometime between these two games based on his online play behaviour on that platform, just bought Play Magnus (a competitor to chess.com that Magnus formed) less than a month ago and is in the state of merging. [2]
- [1] https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352
I think basing most of the argument on the fact that Niemann has cheated as a kid is not very solid. Even our laws take age into account. Plus from my _personal_ experience highly gifted kids are known to "push boundaries" during their upbringing to test their capacity.
I also don't weigh too much into the "he doesn't analyze like a 2700" argument. I know a very good chess player that could never explain very well why things should be done a certain way. Plus the analysis referred to is in a quite unnatural setting for a chess player.
A final point I want to bring up is that I also instinctively saw this as Carlsen "throwing a tantrum". However, others have been quick to point out that Carlsen has routinely been humble in defeat, praising his opponents. What nobody has mentioned though is that having retired from the world championships, his new stated goal is to reach 2900. With a rating-based goal like such, losing to a sub-2700 player is not only a blow to the ego but also the Elo, which is something that could tip someone over the line. That one loss put Magnus back significantly from his goal, if my understanding is correct.
Anyway, I recognize the chess community gives Magnus the benefit of the doubt, and I can see how he might deserve it. But this certainly needs more than just speculation.
The article shows the amount of pressure tournament organizers are putting on him, but nowdays the money is in streaming more than in tournaments.
Just curious, what do you base that on? Is there a relevant article? If so I'd love to read it.
He loves to talk about how much it shocked the go community when AlphaGo created new moves / strategies that humans could learn as opposed to just brute force search algorithms. And of course it translated to chess as well somewhat.
https://www.fnac.pt/Game-Changer-AlphaZero-s-Groundbreaking-...
Chess players cannot be just treated like exact subjects in an experiment, especially with a sample size of 1 and std deviation of infinity. Noise factors are too many and sample size needed to account for that is huge.
Also current rating is not a reliable measure. Many young players are rising and they climb by beating players stronger than them.
In Niemanns case people have joked about vibrating anal beads communicating in morse code as well as shoe inserts.
It's a shoe-to-Pi device called Sockfish (a pun on the Stockfish chess engine): https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html
Generally there are some more options: - using a small bluetooth headphone with external person telling you the moves - a vibrating device on the body that vibrates you the moves
both need a live broadcast of the game
Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32729105
People might scoff but honestly, chess players have worried about this sort of stuff for decades. The '78 world championship between Karpov and Korchnoi for example, is a lesson in this kind of cheating - I'm thinking of the yogurt controversy in particular.
I don't believe for a moment that Karpov or his team were cheating in '78 (at least not in that way) but the fact that they weren't is really the salient point - it is very difficult to ignore the idea that your opponent might be cheating once the possibility has been suggested.
That is to say, trust in your opponent is a very important element of competitive play.
That's a relatively low tech solution, it gets crazier from there as other people are saying here.
Carlsen might be over reacting but he seems to have very strong suspicions.
Look forward to the sequel, chess is in an exciting space.
How do you explain to someone else this conviction?
Is it?