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Comment by czx4f4bd | Hacker News Reader

He confessed to cheating online, not over the board. People have used shoddy statistics to allege that he cheated over the board, but none of them have held up under scrutiny.

I'm not saying the guy is a saint, but low-effort cheating in low-stakes online games by looking at an engine in the background seems substantially different than what would be required to cheat completely undetectably in major tournaments with many people watching.

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That seems like a "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas" situation. If someone doesn't want to be accused of cheating in a high-stakes game then they shouldn't cheat in a low-stakes game.

> That seems like a "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas" situation. If someone doesn't want to be accused of cheating in a high-stakes game then they shouldn't cheat in a low-stakes game.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to agree with the assertion that dishonesty damages one's credibility.

On the other hand, there's degrees of dishonesty - should someone who (intentionally lied, and) denied going over the speed limit be automatically considered lying when he also denies premeditated murder?

It feels like a leap to compare the claim "This guy cheated in some low stakes chess games and shouldn't really be trusted in high stakes chess games" to the claim "This person committed a minor misdemeanour so they shouldn't be trusted when they claim they didn't kill someone"

How about:

This person cheated in an exam in middle school so shouldn't be trusted with exams in med school.

Because, yeah, when he cheated he was a kid. Kids frequently do stupid things.

but in the same sense those two things seem substantially different, the trajectory of his late blooming career success is also substantially different from that of just about everybody else playing and also calls out for explanation.

This idea has spread far, but isn’t true. Even the chess.com report shows that his trajectory was not much different than other juniors.

Anecdotally, in the past year I happened to be in the vicinity of Hans and noticed some behaviors. The guy is absolutely obsessed about chess, and is good at it. The simple fact that he can hang with the best in OTB bullet ( and shorter time controls ) proved to me he was legit, no question, he just really freaking loves chess!

Does he love it so much that he's willing to risk cheating to win?

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