> While that statement may seem discouraging, it has been borne out in modern chess.
> Greats like Fischer, Kasparov, Carlsen, and almost all of the modern GMs who have been established as top five players, were notable GMs by age 15 at the latest
Wow.
Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19 and is still ranked World No. 9 currently (at age 52). Ding Liren (Current No. 2) became a GM at 17. Grischuk (currently No. 17, peak No.3) became a GM at 17. All three have crossed 2800 ELO at some point.
I hope this is not the sort of analysis that chess.com has run in the other 71 pages of the report.
Even the graphs look a lot like copy-paste jobs from excel, which is fine obviously, but not the sort of thing I'd expect competent scientists/data-scientists/developers to be doing, especially for a big public report where some of the formatting issues are just about readability and basic presentation quality. Like Figures F and G (page 14) ... why are they styled so differently? Same question applies to many of the graphs, which isn't to mention label font sizes either.
Beyond that, yea I'd say good amounts of the data and logic are pretty basic and wouldn't be surprising from an amateur on the internet. The main thing chess.com have seems to be their Strength Score algorithm, which IMO is probably developed and maintained by a team different from the one that prepared this report.
I’ve seen wonderful and factual data analysis presented in the most horrible default templates and hacked together screenshots.
Honestly, you don't need "design skills" to make a decent graph ... just the wherewithal to think about what would make a graph clearer/easier to understand the same we expect of ourselves with writing.
I suspect there'd be a tendency to presume a design process is more like solving a problem with a clear techniques for arriving at an objectively correct solution, when in reality, it can and often if just the iterative process of assessing-adjusting-repeat. Being better at these things to the point of sometimes reducing the iterative loop to 0 repeats is "design skill". But the essential base-line ingredient, IMO, is being willing to enter the iterative cycle at least to some extent.
That obviously shouldn't be possible. If he only cheated in 1/3 of the games in the event then his performance should have been much worse than events where he cheated 100% of the time.
And I don't understand how they can say this:
>However, while Hans has had a record-setting and remarkable rise in rating and strength, in our view there is a lack of concrete statistical evidence that he cheated in his game with Magnus or in any other over-the-board (“OTB”)—i.e., in-person—games.
So what the hell? They pored over his OTB games, found no evidence of cheating, but then wrote 70 more pages? And even the circumstantial evidence is weak. They base a lot on Hans having unusually late improvements. But it's not like they're an order of magnitude better. He's slightly better than #2. And it's a simple fact that someone is going to have a late career rise that is better than anyone else. It's not evidence of cheating.
IMHO, Magnus or Chess.com need to pony up some hard evidence or STFU.
At the age of 18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand#Early_chess_...
Also, according 2700chess.com he was #96 in the world with a rating of 2520 on January 1988. That's right after turning 18. Growing up in India (before the chess boom). Before chess engines existed. 6 months later he was #49 in the world. https://2700chess.com/players/anand
A year earlier (at 17), he had won the world junior chess championship (U-20). Not exactly a "strange meteoric rise" for Anand. The "GM at 18".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Junior_Chess_Championshi...
Meanwhile, at the same age of 18 (already during his covid boost), on July of 2021, Hans Niemann was #20 among all juniors (U-20), with a rating of 2571. Close to #300 on the global rating list: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2093596/top https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2000059
Unlike Anand, no achievements of note until then (ok, he was 9th at U-16 World Youth Chess Championships in 2019). A year later he's a top 40 player, hanging out with the best and beating the (incredibly dominating) world champion with the black pieces. Make it make sense.
Also, take a look at this analysis of correlation between average (and stddev) of move accuracy vs rating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnJ0Da4Rp0 - explained in the detail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nEFaRdwZY - analysis applied to several players
Hans Niemann didn't win the game. The incredibly dominating world champion lost it. He bodged the game and then threw a tantrum calling the other, weaker, player a cheater to save face because he couldn't stomach his own incompetence.
The rest is what is called "circumstantial evidence" in the lay press.
None of the similarly rated players at the same age did anything similar during "Covid times and The Queens' Gambit boom".
Watch the videos I linked at the end of my comment and tell me how covid times contribute to that anomaly.
IMHO everyone needs to either put up hard evidence or shut up.
This is confusing correlation and causation.
One thing that people don't realize is the sheer amount of money required to become a "GM". You have to get a certain number of "norms" from FIDE and the requirements list is a PITA: https://chessgoals.com/how-to-get-a-grandmaster-norm/
If you don't have a lot of money and a lot of free time to go to a lot of chess tournaments around the world, you are not getting a "GM" title in this day and age. This favors children (few time constraints) with rich parents (lots of coaching along with the ability to travel).
The problem is that if you aren't a "chess prodigy" by 15 it generally isn't worth continuing to pursue--what does sinking the resources into being a "GM" get you at the end? If you're one of the "Chess Gods", you have entry into the tournaments anyway, and, if you're not, it doesn't really matter.
It’s an absolutely ridiculous basis to make a claim.
Hans Niemann was almost 17 years old when the pandemic started. When he turned 15 (June 2018) his rating was 2313, almost 200 points (an immense gulf at that level) below the minimum to become a grandmaster.
I find this true for any semi-competitive endeavor that doesn't also have intrinsic extra benefits. You're going to hit the people who want it more than you and are willing to put in the practice time, and they're going to beat you.
Consequently, any competitive thing I do has to also have an extra dimension to it. A competitive sport is generally fine since I'm getting in better shape. I'm happy to do stuff like darts or bowling if it has a high social aspect to it. As long as I can be slightly above average and that's good enough and there is some extra benefit, I'm down with it.
Chess, sadly, generally fulfills none of those criteria.
!
You even managed a double-entendre in 2 completely different realms. Well done.
Since cheating is arguable habit forming, he simply based his career on cheating. Where others put in the mileage, he invested in his cheating expertise.
Is this an accurate statement given that, because of this report, we are now aware that a lot of other GMs have cheated as well?
What about the stress of the players he's cheated against?
If, for some reason, you decided to drop your budding music/engineering/whatever career at age 20 to focus entirely on chess, and you had the natural aptitude to be able to become a GM, perhaps it could happen. But rarely would a person decide to do that, if they had not prior to that point.
I think both effects have something to do with it.
In other words, you can only learn a language natively, if you have some good reason to do so, like say money.
But, your basic point that both effects have something to do with it, is surely correct.
However, accent is only one part of language. I certainly didn’t have the vocabulary, reading speed, writing elegance, etc. of (educated) native speakers.
It doesn't really matter, does it? There's a big difference between telling someone "if you're not a GM by age 14 [but actually I mean 15], then don't bother, it's hopeless" and "a typical top-level player reaches GM by age 14, but it is possible to reach that level even if you are a relatively 'late bloomer'." I'd prefer not to err on the side of telling people not to try.
Well, it's a report about cheating which is essentially claiming that if you're not a GM by age 14, then you must be cheating. Which is...kind of the same thing.
The conclusion of their report is repeated several times; no evidence of OTB cheating.
I don't think any serious commenters are going to complain about the absence of stereotypes about "the greats" unbacked by statistical analysis. That is what is bad. The actual analysis of anomalously fast progress at equivalent ages is fine.
It's literally the single most important fact in this context.
If there are lots of people like Aronian, then there's nothing out of the ordinary about the evolution of Hans Neiman as a player. If he's a rare and unusual example, he shouldn't be cited to suggest Hans' skill growth is within the norm.
>I'd prefer not to err on the side of telling people not to try.
This is a non-sequitur.
Almost by definition the exception disproves the rule.
There’s literally no logical sense in which the exception can prove the rule unless the rule is not really a rule but more of a suggestion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule
It honestly doesn't bother me as much as when people incorrectly say "begs the question" when they mean "raises the question" but I think we're long past the point of us ever correcting any of these.
Finally he gets on a NFL roster as 3rd string for St Louis. Cleveland skips picking him in the expansion draft. The Rams sign a different starting QB and trade away #2 QB leaving Warner as the backup. The starter gets hurt and with basically no first team practices Warner gets named the starter.
After all that and starting for the first time in the NFL at age 28 he has one of the best statistical seasons ever for QB and wins the MVP and Superbowl. Goes on to win the MVP again and has a 10 year HOF career.
If we apply Chess.com's logic he's the biggest cheater that ever cheated. But obviously he's not because you can't really cheat at QB in the NFL.
Totally unnecessary sentence that just leads to derailment (like in this subthread).