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Comment by solarparade | Hacker News Reader

It is possible to have a device in your shoe that will not trip metal detectors that can feed moves from the outside.

It doesn't even have to be that complex, for a super GM even just a simple signal that indicates "this position has a crushing move, spend extra time thinking on this move" is enough to significantly improve their performance

Unless you catch the method of cheating directly, it's basically impossible to definitively determine if someone was cheating from a small number of games, they could just have gotten lucky or have been especially prepared in a given line like Niemann claims to have been

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If that's a big concern, why would you even allow audiences to spectate in real-time? If the integrity of the game takes precedent over the spectacle of the match, why do we care about anything but the results?

This reductive approach to looking at cheating will just end with both of these shmucks sitting naked in an empty room, surrounded by an audience of a single referee who's job is to stop them from physically attacking one another. If he wants to accuse someone of cheating, he should do it - otherwise, dragging someone in public and refusing to make public statements doesn't reflect well on his professional integrity.

The extent that anti-cheating measures in Contract Bridge have gone to is hilariously insane. The players are effectively in telephone booths and cannot say or do anything except mark a bid indicator or slide a card, and at regulated intervals, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge

Bridge is an imperfect information game so the opportunities are much larger, but something similar can happen in chess.

Then by all means, I'd encourage Carlsen to start the XFL of chess tournaments! The XCL?

Whatever the case is, I don't think a public crusade is the right option. If he had conclusive evidence of him cheating during the match, he wouldn't have made such a protracted statement on it weeks afterwards.

Yeah, some of it seems like regret that he didn't withdraw from the tournament before the match, and some of it doubling down.

Still could be correct, however. I suspect that Carlsen has certain knowledge of Hans cheating at games later than 16 but not the one he lost that hasn't been revealed yet.

Honestly, at the level these guys are at, compared to the engines, chess is an imperfect knowledge game also.

In Magnus' statement he specifically spoke of how he felt, Hans felt. This shows how much information beyond the 64 squares that chess players take in.

I'd argue the opportunities are larger in chess, because "what to do" is much more concretely correct.

Bridge has its own problems... and people will cheat as long as there are physical devices. (Fantunes / Fisher-Schwartz) Imagine if they used any simple encryption algorithm, they'd be fishy, but impossible to catch at that time.

BBO is the future for bridge IMHO.

Chess, will become an in person game with nobody else but the arbiter, players, and cameras in the room.

Makes me wonder if they ever point nonlinear junction detectors[0] at people that aren't supposed to have electronics on them in these kinds of events. I think it would be pretty hard to cheat then. Or would something like The Thing[1] escape that?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Wow!

- "Such a technique was used in the 1980s construction of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Thousands of diodes were mixed into the building's structural concrete making detection and removal of the true listening devices nearly impossible."

Outside, like where?

Hans has performed well in tournaments where there was no live broadcast. What's the explanation?

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