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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

His performance at the US chess championship with strict anti-cheating measures in place proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he's as good as his rating. This whole "improved too fast" as proof of cheating is nonsense.

He might have still cheated to beat Magnus but there's no proof.

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As ridiculous as it sounds, did the US chess championship explicitly check to prevent the vibrating buttplug that has been jokingly thrown around as a theory?

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.

Games were on a 30 minute broadcast delay with no in person audience. Vibrating butt plug works for receive but can't think of a plausible way for Hans to send the moves out.

> can't think of a plausible way for Hans to send the moves out.

He doesn't have to send the moves out, he just has to send them in.

How is his co-conspirator going to feed him moves without knowing the board state

Who said there has to be a co-conspirator? He could have a small computer inside him, if you really want to believe he's cheating.

To be clear, I'm not saying I believe this.

Still has to feed the computer moves

There are plenty of muscles you can use to give input.

So you'd rather believe he is a genius bio hci engineer? Which is more likely?

You don't need to be a genius engineer, you need to be a competent stage magician. And competent stage magicians are more common than 2700 Elo chess players, so it's not by itself unreasonable to suspect.

Clench in morse code?

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader if morse code via butt clenching counts as "plausible"

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader if morse code via butt clenching counts as "pleasurable"

If it can cure depression, I don't see why it can't also improve your chess game.[0]

[0]https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/331807.How_to_Good_By...

He writes with such conviction it's difficult to not believe him. Going to give this a go, wish me luck.

I knew what book that was going to be :D

No, not in morse code. Instead, the computer will (through vibration) cycle through a list of likely last moves, and you confirm the opponent's last move by clenching right after it comes up. This minimizes the considerable risk of incorrect move entry.

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"].

Yes, you can see it in the body scan video.

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