Comment by NickC25 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NickC25 | Hacker News Reader

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The guy has admitted to cheating in the past, to make money. Basically he said that if his rating was above X, he could make more money streaming.

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.

Or just delay the live stream instead? There’s a whole lot of hyperbole in your comments. He definitely cheated in online play as chess.com and Hans himself has said. Don’t think there’s been any proof of OTB cheating so far and his OTB play seems to be pretty realistic at this point.

I don't understand the comments regarding delayed live stream. Splitting video feed, visually analysing a board from it, and feeding it feeding into an engine, are all rather straight forward things to do. And delayed feed for conspirators seems redundant.

If the stream is delayed such that the previous move is being broadcast as the current move is played, than a cheater would need to communicate with their collaborators in duplex. A transmitter is a lot easier to detect than a receiver. The other alternative would be carrying the entire cheating apparatus on your person, which also presents a larger "cross section", if you will.

My argument was that you don't need a collaborator for online cheating. It is simple enough to automate everything from just the video feed, and would be undetectable by any software running on the machine.

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.

Oh I'm sure you could make such a device, but it's more to make it through security with.

>proving he cheated [...]

Sorry I missed the part where there was a proof. Could you pinpoint to it?

https://www.chess.com/blog/CHESScom/hans-niemann-report

We present evidence in this report that Hans likely cheated online much more than his public statements suggest. 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. We are presenting our findings here and will cooperate with FIDE on any further investigation.

...

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.

It doesn't matter. Nobody outright said that Hans cheated in the match (except for Hikaru, but that's commentary on youtube. He has the right to say that.)

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.

>Libel starts at "you are" not "I believe".

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.

But none of this is provably untrue. In fact, chess.com’s report gives evidence that Hans has cheated more than he has led on. In the report evened admits it.

Which is all that is asserted here.

I need help understanding how they “gave evidence”

In any case, I know this won’t be officially resolved in the court of public opinion.

In their report, Chess.com statistically showed why they believed that Hans was cheating on their site. They also shared that he admitted it, and why he said he did it (a higher rating gets more streams). That all they need to show, because that’s all they assert.

>that’s all they assert

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.

Invariably, I suspect that this trial will not prove anything. While I’m frustrated at the realization that Chess.com has a conflict of interest, I think halting Niemann’s career without proof of OTB cheating is absolutely foolish from the Carlsen camp. A far better solution is to tell Niemann he has been flagged, and his games will be watched for an extended time period with added scrutiny, he’ll need to explain why he made the moves accurately, etc etc. if after an extended period up against difficult opponents he proves he can’t function with the same fervor as he had against Carlsen, “let that speak for itself” as everybody seems to want to say wrt this case.

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.

>While I’m frustrated at the realization that Chess.com has a conflict of interest

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.

Chess.com is the authority on the data gathered on their site… which is their basis of kicking him off of their site. They’ve done nothing else.

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.

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