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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Yup that part stood out to me as well. There are dozens of "Anonymous Confessed GM"s on the cheating list, most of them with a rating much higher than Neimann's. And this doesn't even mention the players who are flagged by their algorithm but haven't admitted their guilt. Given the very high ELO range of the offenders (2600-2700), it's clear that a lot of the most popular names in chess are involved. Why not name all of them? Shouldn't they receive the same amount of scrutiny, public criticism and punishment as him?

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Yea, it definitely seems a bit suspicious and unfair, which fits frankly with the sport going through growing pains on this.

Seems like you gotta beat Magnus for your cheating to matter?! Snark aside, Magnus’s behaviour makes some sense, he wants this to be addressed. But the manner in which it is happening, his conduct included, is just poor form for the sport, even if it was the best overall move Magnus could make.

I suspect something like “everyone cheats online” is kind of what we have here, and they’re a bit worried about upsetting the whole applecart.

Which gets to my point about the bias of chess.com. Surely they have an interest in making this look like one awful offender, a bad apple essentially, and not that they’re profits come from a broken sport.

For anyone unaware, chess.com recently bought out the Play Magnus Group for about $80 million. They most definitely are not a neutral party in this financially. I personally interpret this sort of situation as creating an additional burden to acknowledge and demonstrate the conflict of interest isn't a material factor.

I don't know if Hans cheated beyond his admissions. Online seems plausible if not likely to me. OTB seems much less plausible. But this report being leaked to the WSJ, then goes up on the blog, immediately ahead of Neiman's next big event? That definitely an intentional PR campaign, and that comes across as scummy to me. I'd say doubly scummy consider the report itself establishes how prevalent cheating on chess.com is among GMs, yet nothing like this sort of public disclosure has happened in other cases. It's hard to interpret this as anything but selective enforcement based on Carlson's reaction to a specific player and game.

Agreed on all fronts.

I've gotten the vague impression over the years that the chess establishment isn't the most fair and non-corrupt organisation (par for the course perhaps for sports organisations). It also seems to be relatively behind or new to massive cheating scandals (??). Put together an event like this was almost certainly going to be ugly and unimpressive.

FIDE has a very poor reputation when it comes to handling the more unpleasant stuff.

Err, if that was their interest, why did they even include the new-to-many info about other top GMs having admitted cheating? They could have just not included that part at all.

Because the “our detection shows cheating” is supported by “here’s X cases where our detection worked and got a confession”.

If they have that interest, why did they just release a detailed 72-page report in which they make clear that there have actually been many offenders?

Your argument doesn't hold much water.

It appears that chess.com was handling the matter discreetly until Hans made the issue public. It would be unfair if it turned out that the other GM's also challenged chess.com publicly.

Hans didn't make anything public until two stars made public allegations against him.

carlsen is right saying cheating is an existential threat to chess. if cheating becomes easier to conceal (more subtle) it will kill interest in spectating and double paranoia in player.

i could not care about bike racing due to doping, literally all top racers were doping back when i was following it. i can no longer watch it without doping in the back of my mind after all of it started coming out. Olympiads to me are the same.

if cheating in your sport is not dealt with it will grow like cancer .

I wouldn't take this to mean that everybody cheats, or everybody at the top cheats, as a sibling comment has stated. Wikipedia cites the number of grandmasters as "almost 2000" so even 100 GM cheaters is still a small amount (modulo the ones no longer living I guess, who likely are not playing on chess.com). Elsewhere in the report chess.com gives a figure for number of players they believe have cheated on the site from total player base of 0.14%.

1/20 GMs is a minority, but it means that top players play cheaters all the time.

This article https://en.chessbase.com/post/thirteen-super-grandmasters says

The history of the game of chess knows around 30 players who have at some point exceeded the dream mark of 2600 Elo points.

On the other hand this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_players_by_peak_... puts 125 at over 2700

I don't think the list of other confessed GM cheaters has this same qualifier of "is a super GM" or "is ranked above 2700," however.

Grandmaster rank is achieved via a peak Elo of 2500 plus gaining two grandmaster norms[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmaster_(chess)#Current_re...

https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2093596 says Hans Niemann has a rating of 2699

You were replying to a comment that said

"Anonymous Confessed GM"s on the cheating list, most of them with a rating much higher than Neimann's.

That qualification is true of Hans Niemann's Elo given in the table - at the time of the chess.com cheating - of 2465, when he was an IM with a single GM norm.

The highest rated "Anonymous Confessed GM" in this table in the report is a 2686 Elo.

worth noting that gm title is up for 'sale'

the are proven cases of gms selling/throwing games so you can earn norms for gm title (understandable phenomenon when considering effort of getting to gm level vs little money you can make from it, gm from poorer country has big incentive earn extra $).

As I understand it, Hans decided to take the issue public and made questionable statements about his credibility, which in turn weighs upon the credibility of chess.com's decision to kick him out of an upcoming $1M tournament.

Also these players will think twice now about crossing chess-com's star players and stake-holders.

It would be against chess.com's interests to name those GMs, wouldn't it?

Is it not obvious that you start with the most anomalous ELO to success comparisons?

Therefore, Neimann.

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