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Comment by zqlamp | Hacker News Reader

The chess.com campaign continues. 100 games are nothing online, Carlsen/Firouzja play that in a single night. The headline is pure propaganda and omits the word "online".

In fact, the article tries to paint Niemann as a liar while the purported facts pretty much match what he admitted to. One cheating in a titled tournament at age 12 and multiple cheats at the beginning of 2020. He said he was 16, so he was barely 17 according to the article. That isn't a lie, that can easily happen in an interview.

If that is all that chess.com has, their behavior is extremely poor. Also, what about all those other cheating titled players who did not have the misfortune to win against multi-million asset Carlsen?

It is time for Europeans to send GDPR requests for cheating scores etc. and terminate their accounts. The risk is too great.

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He cheated in prize money tournaments. That's borderline fraud.

Here is Carlsen taking a move from Howell in a Lichess prize tournament, which he'd never do OTB:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMcnrmb97g

The move was pretty obvious.

Then why does Carlsen ask "how?" before playing it? This is a conversation that would never have happened in an OTB tournament.

Likely, because he was thinking of something else. It happens often when playing weaker opponents, you are so concentrated on some genius master plan to defeat an opponent, that when an opponent does something dumb you fail to see it immediately. Of course, my lichess rating is slightly below Carlsen's so I'm probably not the world's best expert on such things.

(I don't quite understand what you mean by 'those conversation would never have happened .. ')

So a half drunk Howell blurts a single move to half drunk Carlsen in a bullet game and this is cheating?

Did I miss where cheating online is somehow not as bad as cheating in person? I understand it's harder to cheat in person, but I never thought it was "worse" to cheat in person because it's the worst thing you can do to your opponents in either an online, or an in-person game.

You miss that 100 classical games OTB are an eternity, and 100 online blitz games are nothing.

And yes, while cheating online is shabby, hardly anyone took online chess seriously before the big money tournaments started during the pandemic.

And that the whole chess.com affair is a side show that is exploited for streamer content and clicks. The relevant issue is cheating or not cheating in the Sinquefield cup.

A cheater is a cheater. They are making a choice to cheat. It's not an accident. They know it's wrong, they know their conduct is hurtful. It doesn't make any sense to say that no one took it serious. I'm sure people that lost to him would feel otherwise. If he's so good why would he even bother cheating in tournaments?

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