> As more evidence comes out
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.
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.
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.
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.