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noncoml

Here is a crazy idea.

If you get caught cheating, even once, you should be banned for life.

Otherwise we end up in a lose-lose situation.

It’s almost impossible for Magnus to prove Niemann cheated on that game.

It’s impossible for Niemann to prove he didn’t cheat.

But shouldn’t matter. He was caught cheating before, he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete again.

I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getting a pass

Edit: Replies seem to focus on my examples. Forget about them. Proposition stands. If you are old enough to compete you are old enough to be banned for life if you cheat. Online or OTB.

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Permanent ban is standard punishment for cheating in lots of things in life. It's bizarre to me that it's not so in chess. Was he only caught while under 18. I can understand giving a second chance to children.

The last time he admitted to cheating was when he was 16

And in a non-FIDE (online) event.

If he was caught in a FIDE event then of course a ban should be permanent, much like athletics.

Imagine if they did that at the FAANG. There would be no more recruits. What percentage of all technical interviews at FAANG involve the candidate googling the answer in a way that the interviewer didn't know about?

My guess? Over 30%

At least pre-pandemic, that would be hard to do at the last stage (on-sites). You're generally in a room with one or more people and often whiteboarding rather than using a laptop. In the stages leading up to on-sites, in many cases, you're actually allowed to use reference materials like the official documentation -- which might contain examples -- because the interviewers don't necessarily expect you to have the entire standard library of the language you're using memorized. I've certainly Googled stuff during remote interviews myself, but I disclose that I'm doing that and explain what I'm searching for.

Steroids aren't even the best analogy. If you get caught with those, you get punished, but eventually you're allowed to play again. Cheating with an engine is more like fixing the game, which is usually a life time ban in most sports.

The situation for steroids is worse though: former steroid users gain benefits today even if they've been clean for a decade, due to how muscle cells work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyFfCVxGTIc

Lance’s case is interesting. Cheating is (was?) rampant in cycling. As Bill Burr joked “our roided up guy beat your roided up guy, what’s the big deal?”

I don’t think chess is as bad as cycling. Doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but gives some perspective

And cycling became a punchline because of it. I think Magnus wants to avoid that fate for chess.

Understandable. There is just too much money and fame in sports - people are going to try to cheat. It is upto the governing bodies to reduce cheating to a minimum, if eliminating it completely isn’t practically feasible.

I agree with other comments here who suggested zero tolerance policy. Cheat once and get banned for life. I remember as a kid, watching hours of cricket. Then I found out some of my heroes were fixing matches. I stopped watching that day. No fan wants to see cheats and match fixers and other bad characters. That is what politics is for!

Fair. However Hans's defence was that 1) he'd never cheated in professional contexts and 2) he was young and stupid.

These seem like fair qualifications to your proposition.

Hans has admitted to cheating in tournaments for money. Money is surely the line between professional and amateur. As for forgiving young people, we should codify that if we are serious about that. For example, we might have a 3-strikes rule that allows all young people to cheat at least 3 times before they are given an adult punishment, and we might also desire the ability to seal prior history.

I wasn’t aware of the cheating for money. Do have a source?

As for codification, criminal leniency for juveniles, which is widespread, gets you pretty close.

For chess to have its own codifications, I think, as Magnus clearly does too, that they need to generally up their game across the board. All the way from detection, investigation, protocols/procedures around suspicions, accusations and hearings/tribunals … and then the penalties can be codified.

I don’t know what’s in place now and what its history is, but Magnus is either chucking a massive rage-quit for losing or telling the chess world they need to get serious and catch up quick vc (or why not both I suppose).

If I was in charge with coming up with the punishment scheme, I would base it on level instead of age.

For NM and above, one time caught should get you banned for life

Protecting the game is far far far more important than protecting the individuals

For NM and below, I guess one warning would be ok. But nothing more than that.

Lance wasn't 16 and Hans didn't win multiple championships becoming the best chess player of all time.

Well the best way for Hans to prove he didn’t cheat is to give amazing analysis after the game demonstrating his super-elite chess thinking. Unfortunately, he often sounds like someone who did nothing on a group project trying to explain how it works to the professor.

I know this isn’t proof he cheated, but it doesn’t do him any favors when he’s already under suspicion.

Edit: Way back, decades ago, in Warcraft 2, I became strong enough to regularly get accused of cheating by people who weren’t familiar with me. However the converse side of this is I was extremely accurate at detecting actual cheating.

> I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getting a pass

I do not want to suggest anything here, just side note that there are cases in cycling when someone was cheating and than suspended/relegated but without life ban like Alberto Contador in Tour de France 2010.

> It’s impossible for Niemann to prove he didn’t cheat.

Niemann doesn't have to approve such a thing. It falls on the accuser to prove that the accused is guilty.

Playing Poker, if you are caught cheating, you are barred for life at least in the platform you were caught. And I agree with that.

Nieman was never caught cheating OTB

This is correct. Despite FIDE's request, there is not yet official collaboration between chess.com Fair Play and FIDE.

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