Hans Niemann Suing Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com, and Hikaru Nakamura
courtlistener.com
courtlistener.com
With that said, pretty much everyone in my family, including my SO, are lawyers and I have been around the block a few times when it comes to discussing slander / libel suits in the US.
As an independent 3rd party with no interest in the world of Chess, I don't see how Niemann expects to win any damages in this case.
In the US the bar for slander is very high due to the existence of the first amendment and trying to protect it, you will basically have to prove malicious intent and that the offending party knew they were lying. Other countries like the UK have a much lower bar which is why it's a bigger deal there.
Unless I am missing some clear piece of evidence no one made a bad faith comment (and i need to stress you need to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt)
Magnus felt there was foul play because he knew of Nieman's history of cheating which was public knowledge in the chess world, same thing with his comments regarding the coach
Chess.com simply made available data that is rightfully theirs and stated that his rise has been exceptional.
Hikaru simply commented on the situation like a million other youtubers / twitch streamers and influencers, he just happens to be an expert in the field so he made his opinion using his domain knowledge and the fact that Niemann had been previously accused of cheating.
Again, unless i am missing some clear piece of evidence no one acted maliciously or twisted the truth to purposely cause harm, only gave their opinion using the information they had available.
I don't think that's the only reason you bring a slander lawsuit. I think sometimes people do it expecting they will lose, but knowing the defense will be "we have no evidence the things we said were true, but our false statements are technically legal", and making the defendants go on the record with that defense.
But maybe chess championships and champions are a big enough deal to be considered public.
I am a chess fan and I had no idea who Hans Niemann was before this mess.
That's not the goal with most of these libel/slander law suits. Consider the most famous one - Billy Mitchell the most infamous professional gamer of all time. The evidence is basically unanimous he cheated but he uses lawsuits to shut down people who can't afford to fight them.
I imagine this is no different. Your only mistake is assuming the court won't throw out such a trashy lawsuit and lawyers exist that actually have some dignity.
Shame that it is so difficult to navigate twitter at times, there is a lot of really good analysis here for anyone that is interested. I didn't go over the conspiracy and anti trust charges but he does a good job covering the bases and explaining what Niemann needs to show in order to be awarded damages or not have the suit thrown out.
Assume for a moment Hans did not cheat (aside from the times he admitted to cheating).
In the scenario where he did not cheat - how amazing is his performance? I.e. beating Magnus, Elo rating, etc. I know chess.com did an analysis, which I've read, but I'm hoping someone more impartial could explain it.
In the scenario where he did not cheat, is he really on a Bobby Fischer-like ascendance?
This is what I'm trying to understand - both scenarios seem so wild to me. Either (a) this guy is cheating a pro-level chess (totally wild) OR (b) he's on a crazy ramp-up of skill (totally wild).
(a) is pretty self-explanatory.
(b) is what I want someone to explain - if this is the scenario, just how crazy is the rate of his skill increase?
GothamChess has had excellent coverage of his games.
Like seriously, look at this one: https://youtu.be/ainUWFboMLs?t=1490
Hans threw a masterful knockout punch at the end, one which his opponent completely overlooked, and was solely a single move. There wasn't cheating-like high level strategy involved -- it was a one-move fatality.
Whatever else the kid has done, he is one hell of a chess player. I find it hard not to root for him, even knowing his history.
I think the most impressive thing is that he’s posted a video every single day for… I don’t know how long. He makes it a point of pride not to miss one.
But he doesn't do himself any favors with comments like "the chess speaks for itself", or offering what according to other GMs is a lackluster analysis of those astounding moves.
Whether it's immaturity or cheating remains to be seen.
Bobby Fischer was one of the top chess players of all time and was a certifiably insane nut job. There’s nothing normal about being a GM in the first place.
Niemann literally just won the biggest game of his life. He did something none of Duda, Alireza, etc have achieved. His situation was not normal. Trying to judge his actions based on whether it’s what Duda, etc would have done themselves in a situation they’ve never found themselves despite having had many opportunities to do so is silly.
>He did something none of Duda, Alireza, etc have achieved.
Only if you mean winning in Classical with Black.
Duda beating Carlsen in Classical
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2010697
His interview. The quality of the broadcast is a bit bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fchM2Dcr5mU
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Ali Reza beating Carlsen in Rapid with a beautiful checkmate https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2072900
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Pragg beating Carlsen in Rapid at 16 https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2252714 Giving an interview at age 16 at 3 am after beating Carlsen https://www.chessbase.in/news/Praggnanandhaa-beats-Magnus-Ca...
He might have still cheated to beat Magnus but there's no proof.
It's an honest question. I didn't follow this closely and don't know whether a metal detector could find metal inside a human body.
He doesn't have to send the moves out, he just has to send them in.
To be clear, I'm not saying I believe this.
[0]https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/331807.How_to_Good_By...
The list will also include a special entry indicating "none of the above", which will make the computer switch to the next set of less likely moves.
This scheme could be refined be having some move partitioning on top. For example, an initial list that has only ["pawn move", "light piece move", "heavy piece move"].
Also, no one seriously expects Hans to be a world championship contender.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/x9bgtx/how_quickly_d...
If I never bowled in my life, started, and two weeks later claimed I was getting 270 or higher on a consistent basis you wouldn't say "well there are pro bowelers his age that get similar scores "
From what I understand, if he's innocent then he's beyond Bobby Fischer.
As a non-chess player, I can’t help but wonder if this is just an entire sport refusing to accept that someone could come along and achieve this, or if it’s really just too good to be true.
Plus Hans did admit to at least some amount of cheating.
Depending on how strict we want to be, Magnus himself has been caught "cheating" in online chess games before too:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xkn7ln/why_does_nobo...
Biking obviously involves a lot of different things but it's much easier to see how doping is going to help.
Football has so many facets that it's kind of surprising there aren't more cheating scandals, but at the same time it's harder to isolate any one thing and say that's what's giving a team an edge.
Michael Phelps rose to prominence after most of the big doping scandals by which point anti-doping measures were well established. Besides doping, it's tough to cheat at swimming.
With chess, it's trivial to have a computer on your person capable of beating any human alive, it's just communicating with said computer that is a challenge. Given that chess masters are supposed to be extremely good at strategy and making clever moves people won't see coming, I'm sure there have been some ridiculous cheating attempts.
This would include things like breaking off a twig in your way, removing leaves or grass around the ball, etc.
That's what Niemann wants you to believe, but it's not right. Carlsen is rated about 200 Elo points above Niemann. That makes a win in classical an upset, sure, but far from unprecented, and far from proof that he's a threat to Magnus' dominating position in the chess world the last decade. Weaker players have beaten Magnus, even with black.
Yes, Stockfish is really good. But not crazy. Just call him Hans Shoefish.
I have listened to some his interviews recently and he talks extensively about engine analysed lines. He talks about avoiding lines he hasn't analysed or is uncertain on. I wouldn't be surprised if he has optimised his development on engine analysis. It would explain a high number of highly accurute games. It would also explain the variance in his play where he forced into unknown lines.
His ELO gains are impressive, but not unique. [1]
If he is cheating, no sensible hypothesis of how he's doing it has yet been offered. So it seems more probably he's a legitimately talented player whose merit's obscured by his past.
[1] https://twitter.com/ChessNumbers/status/1568340548490252288
I think so, yes, and even considerably moreso.
According to Yosha Iglesias[1] and her anonymous mathematician friend, for 5 tournaments in a row starting at the Philadelphia Open in July 2021 Hans Niemann played at an average engine correlation of 73%, beating Bobby Fischer's average engine correlation of 72% during his 20 game winning streak between 2 Dec. 1970 and 30 Sept. 1971. Fischer's peak rating was 2895 in October 1971 at 27yo. Niemann's peak rating was 2699 this month, October 2022, at 19yo.
Also according to Yosha, in three years Niemann has played 10 games with a perfect 100% engine correlation and 23 games with engine correlations above 90%.[2]
My own chess layman analysis of the experts' analyses is that the best chess players in the world right now generally play games with engine correlations ranging game to game from the mid-60%s to the high-80%s, with much rarer games in the 90%s, and games 100% engine correlated being a once or twice in a lifetime event. Magnus Carlson at his best has an engine correlation of 70%.[1]
Unless he cheated, it is quite clear to me, at least, that Hans Niemann is the singular greatest chess player of all time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfPzUgzrOcQ&t=15m11s
[2] https://twitter.com/iglesiasyosha/status/1574374153997647874
Fischer at his best during 20 consecutive winning games at his peak performance had an average engine correlation of 72%, while Niemann's average was 73% across 5 tournaments. I just saw this: Magnus Carlson's average engine correlation across 5 tournaments in 2021 (roughly the same period as Niemann's 5) was 66.48%[1].
Niemann conspicuously appears to be a superior chess player at 19yo than both Bobby Fischer at 27yo during the peak performance of his career and a much better chess player than Magnus Carson at 30yo while he was and is reigning World Champion.
[1] https://twitter.com/ty_johannes/status/1574780445744668673?t...
Not amazing at all. It’s a fairly standard performance which is why it’s very dubious he cheated OTB. The chess.com report has to stretch the truth considerably to try to imply there is something fishy OTB. Magnus was just playing aggressively to score against a weaker opponent and had a bad day.
His performance ramp up is not particularly impressive. He played less tournaments that people his age four years ago and his rating went up towards competitive GM level when he started seriously playing. That’s a typical trajectory for a young pro-player. To be clear, we are not talking about a Fischer-like, world champion contender path here.
Further, in the particular game he beat Magnus in, he did not play an extraordinary game or anything. He simply did not make any major mistakes. Whereas Magnus did. If imagine the majority of GMs playing in Hans’s position would have won that game.
as far as i can tell he's hasn't cheated since 2020. Ive seen several of his games though where he certainly has cheated.
>In the scenario where he did not cheat - how amazing is his performance? I.e. beating Magnus, Elo rating, etc. I know chess.com did an analysis, which I've read, but I'm hoping someone more impartial could explain it.
Magnus ultimately drew the match; the one he lost he resigned on move 2. So no remarkable performance.
>In the scenario where he did not cheat, is he really on a Bobby Fischer-like ascendance?
The chess.com allegations has him better than bobby fischer in terms of rise. Though I would say that's not accounting for elo inflation.
>This is what I'm trying to understand - both scenarios seem so wild to me. Either (a) this guy is cheating a pro-level chess (totally wild) OR (b) he's on a crazy ramp-up of skill (totally wild).
He's an admitted cheater; but what seems to have gone unsaid is that perhaps his cheating isn't actual cheating. Rather he was reading his stream comments and viewers were cheating for him. It's not quite the same.
Flipside, streaming is always going to take some of your focus and attention. Streamers are by default not going to be able to compete at the top most level. So the probability he's at a supergm level is basically impossible.
..what?! Your definition of cheating appears to differ from the accepted meaning of the word in quite a few ways
>FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION (Slander – Against All Defendants)
>SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION (Libel – Against All Defendants)
>THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION (Violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, et seq. – Against All Defendants)
>FOURTH CAUSE OF ACTION (Tortious Interference with Contract and Business Expectancies – Against All Defendants)
>FIFTH CAUSE OF ACTION (Civil Conspiracy – Against All Defendants)
And he is seeking 4 x "not less than $100,000,000, plus pre-judgment interest"
The number can only go down, never up, so you ask for all that you can.
It does have -some- sense if you think about it: this is a young kid with a whole career ahead of him. Because of this accusation, his career is pretty much over. Since he could have been one of the best (as demonstrated by beating magnus) he would have made $100m over a lifetime. Based This is probably the order of magnitude that hikaru and magnus will make in their careers. Or some loose logic like that
"Hey, I know you're an Olympic athelete who has been unfairly persecuted for overblown doping allegations, but... have you ever considered a career in journalism?"
In either case, she may well be too old to continue playing competitively when she comes back. But both she and Hans might still find careers in the sport as coaches. By all accounts Hans is an excellent player, even if he's cheated, and a former cheat could still find modest work as a coach.
It is similar to the physical sports - after your career is ended (especially if abruptly from an injury) you just go and work like everyone else.
I've heard the same logic applied to Patent claims, though I also understand that there is also a countervailing force, where it's against your interest to make too many claims.
This is false. A jury can absolutely award more than what the plaintiff seeks, and the judge can increase it even more than what a jury awards.
I mean one of the most famous civil cases, the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, is an example of the jury awarding significantly more than what the plaintiff sought. For a recent example is the Alex Jones lawsuit where the plaintiff's sought a combined total of 300 million dollars but were awarded almost 1 billion dollars.
I only mentioned McDonald's and Alex Jones because most people would be familiar with them, not because they are exceptional. OJ Simpson's wrongful death suit is another example where the damages significantly exceeded what the plaintiff claimed.
Your advice is neither pragmatic or actually advisable by the ABA either and in all honesty, it sounds like you're just making stuff up.
I've worked with multiple lawyers on multiple suits and this is literally how they advised me. I've been on the other side of the table where I received legal letters asking to repair harms, and this is a similar story.
I'm telling stories about my life experiences. If you choose not to believe them, whatever I don't care.
And obviously you should not take the advise of me, an internet stranger, over your personal counsel. But yeah, when you get a suit handed to you, don't be surprised if this is the way things play out. Probably in your analysis you forgot to factor in that the vaaaast majority of disputes never reach an actual trial or a jury and are settled out of court.
"What I gave is pragmatic advise for a normal person in general situations."
Avoid purporting to give people legal advice if you are not a subject matter expert.
If you want to discuss your own personal experiences, by all means you're welcome to do so and there's nothing wrong with that. In that case avoid making factual or categorical claims that could mislead people and certainly don't do so with the notion that you're giving people advice on the matter.
When you say something can never happen that's a factual legal claim that is false when in fact it happens all the time. Perhaps in your specific circumstances that was the correct course of action, but that does not mean that this is a legal principle that can be generalized and from which you can advise others on.
I thought my comment was 1) definitely ethical based on the fact the first sentence stated I'm not a lawyer, then later stating that you should always take the advise of your personal lawyer and 2) added value to ppl who didn't have any legal experience at all on the topic.
You think I was using the word "never" literally? Okay well how about you just said "in fact it happens all the time". Okay so it happens 100% of the time right? Does it even happen 50% of the time? You're a hypocrite for criticizing the use of conversational shortcuts and then using them yourself.
You've failed to convince me of anything, and I'm going to keep living my life and making comments the way I was.
That was the conventional wisdom 3 weeks ago, when chess.com unleashed their report and things looked pretty bad for Hans.
But he performed respectably at the US championship over the past ~2 weeks (4 wins, 3 losses, 6 draws). He was entertainingly arrogant in interviews (I consider this a plus) and seemed to spontaneously conjure chaos (see the king decapitation near the end of the US championship).
If he continues like this (and if security measures are improved), he will be one of the (let's say) top-25 players and also one of the most entertaining.
I don't think we can pronounce the fate of his career yet. He's also only 19 years old.
Magnus made clear that tournament organizers will need to choose between him or Hans. What's the point of choosing Hans?
At high level Chess, Hans career is all but over
What possible violation of the Sherman Act could he be pursuing?
> 69. Upon announcing the Merger, it was reported that “With this, there is no other realistic chess competitor in sight (apart from the open-source and free Lichess platform), raising questions about monopolistic issues in the space and the reasons behind Chess.com’s recent price hike.”
> 70. Once completed, the Merger will further solidify Chess.com’s monopoly over the chess industry by, among other things, providing it total control over Chess24, one of the last few alternatives to Chess.com for online chess, and purchasing the Play Magnus brand, which has become virtually synonymous with chess.
Seems like a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" kind of argument.
Chess.com sponsors and owns so much of the Chess community.
They have more power and influence than even FIDE over the players IMO.
- GM sponsors? Chess.com money.
- Chess streamers? Chess.com money.
Magnus joining forces in a more professional setting via the acquisition created a serious conflict of interest.
Not a perfect example, but imagine if Lebron James was on the board of the NBA while playing for the Lakers...
It just becomes too easy for things to spiral.
How I see it, chess.com's "timed banned", "the report" and "the CEO reddit comments" fueled a fire that didn't need it to support their guy.
Chess.com on all fronts has been only acting in their own self interest ($) and not for the sport of the game.
And now, hilariously, Magnus is not only in bed with that but he can't get out / is part of it.
> Carlsen, having solidifed his position as the "King of Chess", believes that when it comes to chess, he can do whatever he wants and get away with it.
> On September 4, 2022, Niemann soundly defeated Carlsen during an in-person game > Notably, this was not the first time that Niemann beat Carlsen at chess
> Notorios for his inability to cope with defeat, Carlsen snapped. Enraged that the young Niemann, fully 12 years his junior, dared to disrespect the "King of Chess", and fearful that the young prodigy would further blemish his multi-million dollar brand by beating him again
This actually reads like a thriller. Very interesting (and refreshing) to see this kind of structure in a high-profile lawsuit.
I mean the sport of Tour de France cycling disappeared for a decade, replaced by an identical-looking-but-fundamentally-different sport of competing to see who can cheat (dope) the best. It was probably not even possible to get into the TdF during that time period, without doping, there were so many people doing it.
It is entirely possible, that chess (as a professional competition) is not going to survive this, because it will turn out that with modern computing and communications technology, it is not possible to prevent cheating. Whoever wins the competition, will be the one who cheated the best. Chess will be replaced with an acting and subterfuge competition.
Which sort of prompts the question: Why isn't there a "World Chess Cheating Championship"?
The competitors would be given the chance to either demonstrate a type of cheating, or demonstrate a counter-measure, and then judges would be able to organise rigorous tests that paired the methods off against each other.
One sort of test that would be interesting to try is to have a GM who is able to receive a one-bit signal from an accomplice once per game (the much-discussed "this is an important move, think carefully" signal), and then statisticians should try to pick that game (or some set of such games) out of a sea of non-cheating games.
Basically I think that the chess community shouldn't take any "security measures" by event organisers at face value. Without red-teaming, any such measures are just security theatre.
[0] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wh...
Here is Carlsen's twitter statement in regards to the issue in case anyone wants to see or needs a refresher. I'm personally not aware of other "public statements" made that could be closely related but I'm just a rando
https://twitter.com/magnuscarlsen/status/1574482694406565888
I don't think the legal question is going to be establishing that Hans has faced harm. I think that's self-evident. The interesting question is more did Magnus Carlsen's/Chess.com's/Hikaru Nakamura's statements amount to Libel/Slander?
My money is against Hans. Libel/Slander is hard to prove in the US.
The allegations also weren't "Why - this man has admitted to cheated in the past - therefore we shouldn't trust him in the future". In the case of chess.com, they made specific and explicit allegations of cheating across a number of RECENT games. Magnus accused him specifically of cheating in the Sinquefield cup. The difference between somebody who cheated a few years ago as a teenager only online and seemingly reformed, and somebody who cheated again after claiming not to and cheated OTB as well, is significantly different in many peoples eyes. In a way that materially impacts his future career.
Before the Magnus allegations of recent cheating, nobody was seriously considering banning Hans from tournaments. Now he has already been banned from money tournaments by chess.com. I believe the fact he has faced harm as a result of these novel allegations is so obvious as to be beyond dispute. It is by far the easiest part of Hans legal case to prove. Unflattering allegations against Hans literally ended up in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal because of the recent novel allegations of Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen.
Past misdeeds do not mean the end of all future legal protections. Just because you have a shady past doesn't mean you can't sue for slander/libel and win, you see shady journalists who lie all the time win slander/libel cases all the time.
It is actually very rare for anyone to win a slander/libel case, shady journalist or otherwise. The salient issue here isn't his, "shady past", it's the specific behavior he was engaged in. Specifically, he has a documented history as a cheater. If you alleged that he was having sex with farm animals, which is unrelated to his history of cheating, he would have a much easier time proving tangible harm. He is going to have to prove that the recent damage to his reputation was both unfounded and resulted directly from the new allegations of his cheating, and not simply the fact that Carlson and Chess.com publicized his past, documented history of cheating. In short, if you refuse to race against Lance Armstrong because you say he is blood-doping, he's going to have a very difficult time suing for for slander, even if he is not currently engaged in that behavior.
This is ultimately led to the WSJ article.
Chess.com put out a massive publication proving he cheated a hell of a lot more than "once or twice when he was younger".
Because if he's not cheating, he's literally the prodigal child of AlphaZero and Bobby Fischer and should be crowned the GOAT immediately. Some of his play is unreal.
There are more examples of him playing games with 100% accuracy against fellow GMs in the past few years than Magnus has had in his entire career IIRC. Some of his losses are against much lower rated opponents and somehow he manages to play some of the most accurate games against the highest rated opponents.
Honestly, what needs to happen is chess needs to be replaced with Fischer Random, and matches played in significantly faster time controls so players don't have the time to have moves evaluated and transmitted to them.
Use a hdmi splitter. Do image processing on one feed to register moves as they are played (regardless of delay), pass those moves into an engine, and show the output on a hidden display, vibrations to a butt plug, what have you.
For OTB cheating, it becomes more complicated, but I'm sure a computer can be made small enough, and register inputs in any number of ways, while the output can be encoded vibrations.
Sorry I missed the part where there was a proof. Could you pinpoint to it?
...
Despite the public speculation on these questions, in our view, there is no direct evidence that proves Hans cheated at the September 4, 2022 game with Magnus, or proves that he has cheated in other OTB games in the past.
Uh oh ... that doesn't look good for the defendants.
There's no basis to sue Chess.com. Their report is their stance. They sponsor online games and run their own platform, so they can remove Hans if they please. Magnus specifically didn't call Hans a cheater, he just said that he believes that he has cheated more that Hans admitted. Libel starts at "you are" not "I believe".
There was a lot of pilling-on on the internet, but that's the nature of the internet. You can't sue the internet.
Nah, libel triggers as soon as there's intent. And, surprise, intent can be "presumed".
"I believe <person did X>" qualifies as libel, if untrue and it has a defamatory effect. The defamatory effect implies the intent.
Honestly, if no definitive proof comes out of Hans cheating, Carlsen/chess.com are in trouble.
Which is all that is asserted here.
In any case, I know this won’t be officially resolved in the court of public opinion.
Nah, chess.com asserts that he's cheating more than he admitted to. While Carlsen asserts that Hans cheated on OTB games against him. No clear evidence on any of those things.
Also, chess.com is far from an authority here, plus, there's a conflict of interest. They would have to show with some method that a court considers valid (much better than "trust me, bro ;)") that Hans was cheating. Disregarding the underlying truth, something like that is quite difficult to prove.
Making all the right moves and "you can't be that good" is not evidence of cheating, they have to prove that there was an artifact/device/technique being used by Hans to win. Good luck with that.
I don’t know if Carlsen is personally liable, but man, it seems pretty fucking foolish on his part to have said what he said.
There is no conflict of interest outside of keeping games fair. They are a platform that hosts chess matches. That's it. Banning an admitted cheater who admitting to cheating in order to make more money is not a conflict of interest at all - it's what would keep people from using their site.
>A far better solution is to tell Niemann he has been flagged
And that's happened. And Niemann STILL cheated. Did you see the letter the Chess.com folks sent Hans? Hans admitted to cheating, was banned, was allowed to come back, and cheated again. Chess.com was extremely lenient with Hans, and admitted as such.
>he’ll need to explain why he made the moves accurately
That's where the whole "the chess speaks for itself" thing came from....he was put on the spot in the post match interview against Carlsen. He couldn't explain why he made some of the moves he made and would fall back to "the chess speaks for itself" line. That's why people are suspicious of him.
They really don’t have to prove anything to remove him from their site. Him admitting to it, and their interpretation of the stats is icing on the cake.
While it is true that even a single small outside hint can change the outcome of a game, Niemann and the entire chess community have benefitted from practicing against increasingly stronger computer engines where play styles have adjusted to this new era as well in addition to self-funding his tuition at a private school. Many of these tournaments over the past 3 years have only been played online, and have easier access to both stronger real and virtual opponents so having a faster increase in his ELO rating than anyone previously is not outside the realm of possibility.
Defamation, while likely will be settled for much less than the stated amount, on this is case is very justified as tournaments are invite-only rather than climbing a tournament ladder by winning local/regional games. Barring an athlete based on unsubstantiated political decisions and effectively trying to destroy Niemann's livelihood should be seen as highly unethical action by Chess.com and Carlsen.
Hans is actively playing in the US Championship now: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=117035
While I might personally disagree with the company's decision and think it's a bad image to deny the best players from participating, FIDE doesn't have the same level of oversight over players/sponsors like say the PGA does over its relationships. There is a FIDE Code of Ethics[0] that mentions a ban if an advisory panel finds credible evidence of cheating, where I still believe that centipawn loss and the other metrics published in the aforementioned report don't clear the bar of unconditionally cheating and a ban shouldn't be enforced.
[0] https://handbook.fide.com/files/handbook/EthicsAndDisciplina...
An elite set has condemned someone. Even under a lower standard of more likely than not, I do not believe that it is more likely than not that Neiman cheated. I’m glad he’s standing up for himself but I’m sad to see a lawsuit.
Why wouldn't he win? As you mentioned, nothing has been proven, and yet in the "court of public opinion" he's already guilty and is the butt (in the literal sense) of jokes all due to the insinuations and accusations from Mr. Carlsen, the chess tournament hosts, etc.
This guy's reputation is in shambles and yet hasn't been formally charged with anything and there's no hard proof anywhere (AFAIK).
Seems to me that there's an onus on the defendants to prove he cheated, and if they can't do that... wouldn't they have to be found guilty of defaming him?
Notably: I'm no lawyer and have no idea how defamation cases actually work.
The court cases won't be about whether he cheated. They'll mostly be about whether the people he's suing could legally say the things they've said.
Or perhaps it's neither an something more like "an expert, with a lifetime's worth of domain-specific intuition, should be allowed to express an opinion based on that intuition"?
Wouldn’t some aspect of the case be about whether the defendants actually knew for a fact if Hans was cheating? In other words, were they saying “Hans cheated in this tournament and we have the proof” or “Hans’ play has been super sketchy he’s cheating”. There seems to me a difference here, both in intent and scope.
Hans would pretty much have to demonstrate someone else knowingly lied or was extremely negligent with regard to the truth . Which will be very difficult.
Actual malice:
> The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a Federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.
Sets the bar pretty high for him.
This confuses me. How else could he stand up for himself, words alone? If he truly is innocent, he should fight back with the means he's legally entitled to, not with his hands tied behind his back.
Which would make libel and slander pretty untenable by my limited understanding.
Carlsen also had the perfect excuse for his bad performance by suggesting the other player cheated.
This is ultimately led to the WSJ article.
Personally I don't know; I see smoke but no fire and I'm not qualified to judge the meaning of that smoke. Hans' admitted history of cheating before online makes me inclined to believe he's cheated again, but it doesn't prove anything. In the future going forward, I think the chess community should adopt a zero tolerance policy towards cheating; one strike and you're out even if you were a teenager when you did it. This would be the most fair to the players who never cheat even once. But this isn't the sort of standard that should be applied retroactively.
This is just an easy excuse.
"He cheated!" "There are anticheat measures" "They're not good enough"
It's a cycle that can never be solved. The loser can always claim the anticheat measures were "not enough".
You know what. I think Carlsen has cheated in every single one of his games. Prove the contrary.
Something might be placed inside the organism.
> I think Carlsen has cheated in every single one of his games. Prove the contrary.
That's easy. He streamed a lot of games with the tightest time requirements happening in the discipline, kind of 3 minutes per player plus extra 1 second per move. The speed of that game is so high that there is simply no time for having a conversations with cheating device. Also he always notice some suspicious moves (in not that fast games) which becomes correlating with chess engine.
https://www.chessdom.com/hans-niemann-was-thoroughly-checked...
Seems unlikely ...
Conversations? A cheating software can read the board and even move the pieces for him, this is ridiculous. 100% a cheater.
As far as I am concerned, once Niemann has passed all the tests his accusers can come up with, he would be vindicated, and they would be subject to opprobrium - it would be a vindication unavailable even through a successful libel suit. There's no infinite regress of suspicion in this view.
https://www.chessdom.com/hans-niemann-was-thoroughly-checked...
I don't know what else they could have done other than full body x-ray him. Make your own mind up whether these checks are stringent.
In addition, there was a 15 minute broadcast delay.
His record in that tournament for rounds 4 though 9 was loss, draw, draw, win, draw. Hans was the lowest rated player in the tournament by 57 points.
In any such proposal, he could reasonably require the same of his opponents and any monitors present.
Everybody involved should know that the public would be more interested in knowing who is lying in a court of law than blindly taking sides. If Carlsen camp settles out you know he’s got nothing.
what
these guys can’t be serious.
In any case, if Carlsen, Nakamura, and Chess.com are in fact colluding to stifle the anomalously fastest-ascending player, that would be quite the story.
I think it's pretty clear though that Magnus made his statements under legal guidance so this was probably expected.
Maybe the phrase should be updated to "If you can't innovate, litigate. Or cheat"
If you were moving yourself to a better place or even the "sport" or whatever you're involved is moved forward because of you getting better, that would be innovation. Trying to win but not putting in the effort of actually getting better but finding loopholes just flat out isn't. Don't care how much you admire the cleverness in the cheat
:-P
If only there was bread to accompany the circus.
I think xQc said it best:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/x6rx19/xqc_...
He's owed a massive apology by them.
My opinion only obviously.
God people are so fragile these days.
All you need to maintain your mental health is a good bottle of whisky and a stiff upper lip!
If they're right and he faced severe mental health consequences as a result of people correctly pointing out he has cheated for pride and money, in the words of the great Ben Finegold all I can say is...
The truth hurts.