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Comment by ChicagoBoy11 | Hacker News Reader

This has gotten so ridiculous to the point that I actually feel bad for Neimann.

He has admitted to cheating, there's no debate about that. But he maintains that he has cheated in two isolated incidents, at age 12 and 16. These are mistakes, and given he is a titled player, very serious mistakes.

But, beyond barring him from chess.com (a platform with whom his chief accuser has significant business ties), they've absolutely dragged his reputation through the mud many times over. All of this, it seems, based on a "feeling" that Magnus had OTB on a particular game (for which no evidence of cheating has been found).

It wreaks of witchhunt, and has damaged his reputation in a likely unrepairable fashion. I understand he's made mistakes, but it seems we've all tacitly agreed that it is ok to drag someone through the mud because he seems a bit obnoxious and made mistakes while a child. I hope we'd be better than that.

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I mean Chess.com has made a fairly strong claim that it's not just two incidents.

Also which part of the lawsuit [1] do you think was decided wrongly?

[1]: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65592749/niemann-v-carl...

Did you actually read the final decision [1]?

The case was dismissed by a federal court because the plaintiff failed to show a plausible Sherman Act antitrust violation and because the remaining defamation, libel, tortious interference, etc. claims should be litigated in state courts.

They didn’t actually determine whether the cheating claims were true or not. They didn’t even consider the question.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.moed.19...

When you said "at age 16" it made me feel the guy was 40 or so and it was long ago.

Not that the cheating took place only two year before the game against Carlsen, which is close enough to keep the same behaviors..

> only two year before

He's 20 today, and the convroversy was last year.

It seems more like three years, in a period of one's life where a person probably does the most changing.

(FWIW, I don't play chess or have side, it's just an interesting issue.)

Did he get caught then and suffer actual consequences? Because if not it's not as if character development happens automatically, especially if there are significant gains to be had from cheating.

I don't pretend to know what causes people to change, so I can't answer your question where it seems like you're implying that he would only change if that was the case.

All I know is that he admited to it, so if that's "getting caught", I imagine he has receicved consequences from his admission.

It wouldn’t be the same behavior, though. No one is able to really come up with a good explanation of how Niemann cheated in a game where he was being watched by a crowd of people. Hence the sex toy theory; one has to come up with some outlandish guesses to make it work. Cheating on an online chess game is a completely different beast.

It would be like if a team was losing to the Patriots, and they walked away and claimed that all the Patriots were on steroids, and their only evidence was that they deflated the footballs against an opposing team some years before. Is that evidence of unsavory behavior? Sure. Is it a carte blanche to throw any accusation at them and walk away when they win claiming they cheated? That seems insane.

No it would be like making the same exact accusation, as if the Patriots got caught using steroids two years before and now two years later you suspect they are still using them.

It's literally impossible for him to cheat in the exact same way. An online cheater tabs out to an engine to see the move and act accordingly. You simply can't do that in an in person match with a crowd of people watching. Hence why there’s talk about sex toys - people are trying to come up with some way that some sort of signal could be sent to Niemann while he was being watched by a crowd of people, without a single person noticing. It’s an entirely different level from tabbing in your browser to an engine while sitting at your computer at home.

It doesn't need to be a sex toy, obviously. $5 worth of parts from Ali Baba could be assembled into a signaling tool:

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Type-C-Bluetooth-5-0-...

There's even prebuilt solutions for things like poker:

https://www.cardslenses.com/remote-contorl-poker-game-vibrat...

https://elie.net/blog/security/royal-flush-an-in-depth-look-...

You don't need much of a signal.

At that level, a simple signal that "Your opponent made a mistake and there is a line greater than +3 right now! Look for it." would be a huge advantage.

If an archeologist gets caught trying to pass off an orangutan jaw as an ancient human bone, concedes that he's done so, then two years later announces that he found another ancient human skull, do you really care to waste your time figuring out what kind of monkey he used this time? He's a known liar, so throw his paper in the trash and forget about it.

It shouldn't matter how Niemann cheated this time, or even if he did at all. He already admitted to cheating in the past so ban him and forget about him.

I find it odd that Magnus didn't have a problem competing against Niemann up until the point he lost.

Conversely, Magnus loses against other people regularly, so why single out Niemann?

chess.com should release the cheating probabilities of every titled player who has ever registered and verified on chess.com . That would be the only fair thing to do. It should be in fact updated dynamically and visible on a player's profile at all times.

I agree, but the standard rebuttal is that this would allow cheaters to quickly learn the algorithm, which relies heavily on secrecy to disguise the tools they use to detect cheating. What say you?

Yeah, if you make your security features public, it is so much easier to circumvent them.

Whatsoever algorithm they use is some variation of taking the diff of engine moves vs. historically played moves vs. moves played at a certain rating. This is not complicated, contentious nor does it sound like it is worth of a trade secret.

Even if they do wish to use a private or proprietary standard to ban or suspend a user officially, they can still use a public standard (can even publish the code on Github for example) and show a standing statistic on a player's profile page using that public algorithm.

That would be an extremely uncreative implementation. Positional complexity, time taken, mouse position/movement/clicks/arrows drawn, piece 'touch' instances, and historical performance in similar positions are all things that could conceivably be easily tracked and potentially serve as legitimacy signals.

Particularly since the report says that dozens of other Grandmasters cheated as well[1], and we’re not even being told who they are.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-cheating-hans-niemann-rep...

That’s the thing about trust, ain’t it

We all did mistakes when we were teenagers, its part of the process. It takes courage to admit that. Whats the lesson to be learned here? Never be honest in the public ever again?

"Never be honest in the public ever again?"

Yes and demand for right to be forgotten to maintain the facade /s

Side note, but do you mean it reeks of a witch hunt? (Just making sure.)

I... did mean that. And, I have a suspicion I may have written it incorrectly many other times in the past, so thanks for pointing it out!

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