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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, people who do do deceitful stuff - steal, lie and cheat - act quite predictably when confronted with their allegations:

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

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This is exactly how it works. It's disappointing how many ifs and buts people are giving him just because they don't particularly like Carlsen. It really shows.

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.

It can though. Kids can be young and make stupid mistakes.

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.

On one level you're right, if you do something dishonest then admit it that doesn't automatically mean you're never to be trusted ever again. However I think the more times someone goes through the deny/concede cycle I described, the less trustworthy they are, especially if it's for exactly the same thing each time.

I will agree with that too, if there is evidence of cheating after previously having claimed to have repented I would be highly unlikely to advocate for a third chance.

As an interesting aside, it looks like we're both in a similar situation - normally non-chess people who have read or watched a bit about this - but we happened to have landed on different opinions (me being a bit suspicious, you being willing to give benefit of the doubt). So it's funny that this issue appears to have divided both insiders and outsiders alike.

I think my experience playing esports (only at a semi-pro/amateur level however), including LAN play somewhat guides my perspective. Cheating is much more common in esports because of the nature of the game. However there are a lot of reformed cheaters that went on to become either amazing players or great people in the scene even if they didn't return to or find success in playing.

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.

The thing people often forget is that once you’re above backyard pickleball you HAVE to be good at the game to cheat; cheating alone won’t turn a crappy player into a good one.

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.

Ahhhhhhh ok I see that's a bit different from how I was thinking about it, and yeah that does feel more forgivable. Here's maybe a better way of describing what I mean (though it's getting a bit more abstract and distant from the Hans/Magnus issue) if we have a timeline like this:

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.

> Cheaters are serial cheaters, and they will deny deny deny

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.

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