Dear Chess World

A key fact to understand in thinking about cheating in over the board chess: a strong player can defeat a <i>much</i> stronger opponent with just 1-3 hints per game indicating the strongest move. For example, most chess experts agree that a ~2600 rated player with 2-3 hints at key moments per game would be expected to beat a ~2800 rated player. Many people might assume that a cheater needs guidance every move, thereby requiring a potentially more obvious cheating mechanism. That is not the case.<p>Also, clever cheating devices have been found in over the board chess competitions. So, this is possible. Moreover, one needn&#x27;t carry a device on themselves. A cheater may have accomplices providing hints, if they carry a device.<p>It will be interesting to see how chess tournaments, as well as FIDE, chess.com, and other major chess institutions react to this situation. The potential for cheating has now been brought to the absolute forefront of chess discussion. And Carlsen&#x27;s actions have been questioned by FIDE in recent interviews, with FIDE staff condemning &quot;vigilantism&quot; of a kind.<p>Some set of resolutions seems necessary--perhaps standards for security in major chess tournaments, perhaps an alliance to share cheating or reliability data amongst major chess operations, perhaps a standard term in major chess tournament agreements that no previously identified cheaters (online or otherwise) will be allowed to play, and perhaps sanctions in some form against Carlsen (or Niemann, if concrete evidence against him emerges).

Imagine you know someone with a history of stealing cars and other valuable objects. He has been caught multiple times. Now you see him with a shiny new car that you’re pretty sure he can’t afford.<p>Did he steal it? Not necessarily — it’s entirely possible that he got a higher-paying legit job and saved up for it, or inherited money from a relative, or got it legally in some other way. He shouldn’t be convicted of a new crime with no other evidence just because he committed similar crimes in the past.<p>However, it would be entirely natural for a reasonable person to assume that theft is the <i>most likely</i> explanation of the facts, and to avoid trusting that person.<p>This is basically what happened with Hans. He has been caught cheating multiple times, and then had an unusually fast rise in rating. Is that rise impossible? No. But it’s consistent with cheating, and given his history, cheating is the simplest explanation.<p>So it would be totally normal for Magnus to refuse to trust such a person even though it can’t be conclusively proven that he’s still dirty. But even then, Magnus agreed to play against him, until further circumstantial evidence came to light and it just got to be too much.<p>So, is it possible that Hans is clean? Sure. If that’s indeed the case, do I feel sorry for him? No. He made the choice to destroy his own reputation when he cheated multiple times. If he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt now, it’s on him.

I believe people might be seriously underestimating just how good Magnus may be at detecting cheating.<p>Dude probably trains with computers regularly. He has a better memory than 10 average Joe&#x27;s combined. He&#x27;s been the absolute #1 of the world for what, 10 years now?<p>He wouldn&#x27;t risk his whole reputation for nothing.<p>I personally take his suspicions very seriously, though I agree that evidence has to be presented sooner or later.

Some interesting meta observations for the few people who read my comment in this already enormous thread. I noticed that opinions on the issue seemed split rather 50&#x2F;50 until I started seeing the same couple of names over and over on the &quot;no evidence of cheating&quot; side. And in fact, searching the HTML document for this page for a particularly prolific name yields that they make up about 10% of all posts in the thread.<p>I&#x27;m not sure why someone would respond to dozens of all comment threads, but the different tones of voice, presented familiarity with the topic, between posts are disconcerting. I&#x27;ve never accused anyone of being a bot or shill (nor am I now) because I&#x27;ve seen starry-eyed true believers of just about every cause, idea, and entity, but this behavior is exceptionally unusual.

This whole situation is _not_ a Hans problem…it’s a FIDE problem. They don’t know how to reliably adjudicate claims of cheating, so it ends up being a massive game of “he said he said.” As the game gets more popular, they have a tremendous amount of work to do to guarantee game integrity – not unlike the work baseball had to do with steroids.<p>If other world top-50 players even <i>think</i> Hans cheated and got away with it, it creates an open door for lots more unscrupulous players to look for their own cheating schemes. We need to stop being so focused on a 19-year-old child and start asking chess organizers some hard questions about what they are planning to do to guarantee clean chess.

Here is a crazy idea.<p>If you get caught cheating, even once, you should be banned for life.<p>Otherwise we end up in a lose-lose situation.<p>It’s almost impossible for Magnus to prove Niemann cheated on that game.<p>It’s impossible for Niemann to prove he didn’t cheat.<p>But shouldn’t matter. He was caught cheating before, he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete again.<p>I don’t remember Ben Johnson or Lance Armstrong getting a pass<p>Edit: Replies seem to focus on my examples. Forget about them. Proposition stands. If you are old enough to compete you are old enough to be banned for life if you cheat. Online or OTB.

Magnus isn&#x27;t trying to be judge, jury and executioner by refusing to play Hans. He has stated before that merely having suspicions (e.g. based on past cheating as in Niemann&#x27;s case) about your opponent possibly cheating completely ruins one&#x27;s mentality during a game.<p>He simply wants to avoid going through that, which imo is understandable.

There are two things that must be understood before making any judgement on this case:<p>1. It is solidly within the realm of possibility that a person who spends all his time devoted to succeeding in tournament chess would be able to devise a cheating method that cannot be easily detected by standard protocols<p>2. It is impossible to prove a negative, so it is impossible to disprove Magnus&#x27; claims<p>With these things being said, it is both possible that Hans didn&#x27;t cheat and we&#x27;ll never know for sure, or that he did cheat and we&#x27;ll never know how. Given these facts, the most productive analysis would be to find just how unusual Hans&#x27; performance, both in the game and prior, really was.<p>A few things could be determined:<p>1. How many other high level players have a history of cheating? Have any players who have once cheated in a lower stakes match later been proven to have cheated in a higher stakes one?<p>2. Based on improvement per game played, how unusually rapid was Hans&#x27; development in the past 2 years? Are there other players which have progressed as rapidly as he has despite having progressed slower earlier in their careers?<p>3. Do all the engine correlation analyses that implicate Hans not fire warning signals when analysis any other game by confirmed non-cheaters? Do they signal cheating in a similar way when analyzing games of proven cheaters?

Hans is clearly cheating. Comparing his past games against what an engine would do is pretty damning. Chess engines are far superior to players and the best players in the world top out in the high 70s percent correlations (Magnus averages around 70%).<p>Hans has a string of games at 100% correlation[0], meaning he&#x27;s playing perfect games. Past players who achieved this later went on to admit to cheating[1]. Magnus knows this because he owns part of chess.com and presumably sees the data.<p>Magnus has a lot riding on his statement. He wouldn&#x27;t make it unless he was sure.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jfPzUgzrOcQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=jfPzUgzrOcQ</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;S%C3%A9bastien_Feller" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;S%C3%A9bastien_Feller</a>

In case you haven&#x27;t seen it, some new evidence surfaced yesterday: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;jfPzUgzrOcQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;jfPzUgzrOcQ</a>

Chess is, in a way, doomed. At this point cheating by a smart perpetrator is nearly impossible to detect. - Miniature devices can even be implanted. You can probably already have a chess engine onboard your body. - Accomplices of a cheater only need to transmit a few bits of information to be useful - making cheating cheap when audience is allowed. - Statistical methods will not be able to detect a player increasing their apparent skill by a small margin (help with occasional moves, successively picking suggestions from a varied group of chess engines so that adherence to one engine cannot be proven)<p>Given this, we will be left with cheaters getting caught rarely through obvious slips in op-sec (device falls out, gets picked by a detector through unlucky occurrence)<p>or<p>We will be forever accusing people of cheating. They will deny it. We will ask them to explain why they made certain moves. They will fail to explain themselves sufficiently... Are we here yet?

It’s a deeply unsatisfactory situation, because on one side we expect evidence for such a serious accusation, and on the other side we know such evidence is all but impossible to gather retrospectively.

I have no opinions on the actual event given I have no clue what the details are.<p>But accusing someone of cheating without any concrete evidence doesn’t sit well with me. It creates a situation where it declares all exceptional cases impossible. It’s impossible for growth. It’s impossible that someone could lose to a weaker player.<p>I suspect that people are able to say “even without concrete evidence, this is astronomically unlikely and the simplest explanation by far is that they cheated.”<p>Nevertheless, it all just doesn’t quite sit right with me. There’s something manifestly unpalatable about saying, “they cheated because surely nobody could ever do that.”<p>Please don’t see this comment as something that warrants explanation for why the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. I’m not really interested in the merits of this specific case. I’m also probably doing a poor job communicating this feeling I struggle myself to understand.

Why are known cheaters even allowed to participate in top level tournaments? It’s insulting to all the other chess players.<p>Magnus is setting the right example by refusing to play Niemann

For all the people defending Hans, he has admitted to cheating in real, official, prize money online tournaments, and chess.com believes that in his apology he still lied about the extent of his cheating.<p>Maybe Hans did cheat OTB, maybe he didn&#x27;t, but the tough part about reputation is it is very hard to build and very easy to break. And Hans had proven to the world that he <i>would</i> cheat.<p>I personally don&#x27;t think Hans did cheat in that particular tournament but at the same time I don&#x27;t think he deserves too much sympathy. Cheaters literally destroy the game, and Hans at the very least was a cheater.

It&#x27;s very remarkable that Carlsen is suspicious of Niemann&#x27;s game against him in Sinquefield, since there&#x27;s a clear consensus among other top chess players that there was absolutely nothing unusual about it (or at least about the moves played).

&quot;<i>I had the impression that he wasn&#x27;t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.</i>&quot;<p>That&#x27;s a mere gut feeling, how on earth is Niemann supposed to defend against such a vague allegation? Magnus is a world-class competitor not only in chess but also in fantasy football and even quite decent at poker, so it stands to reason that he knows a thing or two about statistics and game theory. I was hoping he&#x27;d have far more concrete evidence than what he shared in this statement (like maybe he was playing a game that he&#x27;d deliberately prepared to test how long Niemann will take to compute certain hard-to-spot key moves; even that would still be extremely vague, but at least give Niemann something to concretely address). He is such an outstanding brain that I&#x27;m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he needs to produce concrete evidence.<p>In the end Magnus hints that he has more to share, and I hope he will do so soon. Otherwise I don&#x27;t see how we could get to any sort of satisfying resolution here (short of Niemann suddenly confessing, which seems unlikely, and we still don&#x27;t have evidence that he has anything to confess at all).

The questions I have about this are pretty basic:<p>1. <i>How</i> would Niemann have cheated? The shoe computer theory is a bit far fetched - are devices that small capable enough? Is he suspected of having an accomplice?<p>2. Why didn&#x27;t Magnus just say something right away? He could have easily made his accusations at the moment to event organizers - quietly - and they could have had Niemann remove his shoes or something. Instead he threw a tantrum. Obviously this isn&#x27;t just about Hans.<p>Personally, I think Niemann is just a 19yo kid who has made mistakes and Carlsen is a 31yo professional who is absolutely <i>hammering</i> this kid to make a larger point. He may be frustrated, but taking it out on Hans is a bit much. The imbalance of power here is just off the charts.<p>Even if Hans somehow cheated in that OTB game - of which there isn&#x27;t a shred of real evidence - Magnus is the leader of the chess world and needs to accept that responsibility and react in a <i>mature</i> way. He should have taken the high road, simply said &quot;I don&#x27;t know what happened, but it was highly unusual. Let&#x27;s guarantee that this doesn&#x27;t happen in the future,&quot; and directed his frustrations totally at the event organizers rather than encouraging the <i>entire world</i> to attack this one kid.

This is a farce. All credibility has been lost when you have to scan players like you scan people when entering a plane.<p>Chess is touted as an ingenious game when it is little more than a brute-force search with simple prune and huge amounts of memorization.<p>I would argue that most GMs would easily play up to 200-300 elo points below their current level with little to no practice. But they spend decades of their lives memorizing and memorizing just to get the highest rating they can. And it is diminishing returns --- if you spent 1000 hours memorizing to get 100 points, the next 1000 hours will only get you 50 points. And when you reach your peak --- be prepared to keep memorizing forever just to stay there and inevitably drop when you reach a certain age.<p>What a waste of intelligence.<p>It is telling that nobody is pushing for chess960. This would greatly devalue memorization and make chess a brute-force-search-with-simple-prune game once again, as it was meant to be. But that&#x27;s exactly the problem; if you are at the top after doing all this memorization you don&#x27;t want to throw it away! In fact, your memorization might be better than your calculation in which case you will be surpassed by other players.

Magnus is not doing this in the best possible way.<p>If Hans is cheating (possible, especially given his past) Magnus should act and use his connections in the Chess world to catch him cheating.<p>Suspicion is not proof.<p>Using his reputation as leverage can work to destroy Hans&#x27;s reputation, but there is a high risk of collateral damages.<p>He should be smarter than that.

Hungary already solved this, it&#x27;s harder to cheat in a bath in swimsuit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.awl-images.com&#x2F;cache&#x2F;pcache2&#x2F;00042940.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.awl-images.com&#x2F;cache&#x2F;pcache2&#x2F;00042940.jpg</a>

What i think should happen is, Hans should play in tournaments which have much more security, and play against Magnus. If he did cheat it should be really obvious because his performance will suddenly drop. If he didn’t than he will play the same, but now with the added security he won’t have to face unbacked accusations, and there is no excuse for Magnus to refuse to play with Hans like he has been doing now.<p>Even if Hans really did cheat, if there is no credible evidence you can’t fault him. And IMO it’s not enough that he cheated many years ago. Right now all the criticism he’s getting is unfair because it’s based on <i>speculation</i>.

In this thread, people who have no idea how chess engines work, hell, even just how the game of chess works, are taking centipawn analysis, engine correlation and various other metrics to support their claims. Anyone who has studied with engines for a decent amount of time knows those numbers themselves are often misleading as just statistics.<p>To be clear, I&#x27;m not supporting either side of the debate, I&#x27;m just stating that people are throwing in numbers in a confident and convincing tone without understanding what those numbers mean.

It&#x27;s not convincing to say that Hans was cheating because few people can beat Magnus playing black when Magnus was playing poorly in that game. I still feel like more information that could come out at any moment that could swing the situation in either direction, and this statement doesn&#x27;t say much. I wish Magnus and chess.com would come out with whatever extra information they have.

Speaking seriously, how plausible is a teledildonics-based ruse? (context: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23094477" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23094477</a>)<p>Would a thoughtfully designed device be detectable via the pre-screening methods at OTB tournaments? You only need to send a few bits of information to swing a chess game.

Anyone who has played online video games long enough won&#x27;t find this story about a known cheater getting caught again surprising. Its almost remarkable to see the same commentary and excuses being used for a counterstrike (fill in your multiple player game here) cheater playing out with a &quot;proper&quot; game like chess.

So Magnus can&#x27;t prove it (yet?) but has a strong feeling about it.<p>It reminds me of other cases in cycling or athletics...<p>Let&#x27;s hope the truth also triumphs this time.

Nitter &#x2F; Regwall &#x2F; Dark patterns: &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;MagnusCarlsen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1574482694406565888" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;MagnusCarlsen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1574482694406565888</a>&gt;

It seems like if Nieman wants to clear his name he should offer Carlsen explicit permission to say whatever it is he can&#x27;t. If Magnus is bluffing and that information doesn&#x27;t amount to much he&#x27;d wind up looking a lot better.

they should play a game inside one of these: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ets-lindgren.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;shielding&#x2F;rf-shielded-enclosures&#x2F;11003&#x2F;1100303?page=Products-Item-Page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ets-lindgren.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;shielding&#x2F;rf-shielded-...</a>

This situation is creating an entirely new meta in the chess world. It’s clearly advantageous to have others think you’re cheating. Players should start deactivating their chess.com accounts, start a rumor that they’ve cheated, and then take advantage of other players’ mental state during competition. The only downside is that a top GM could shadow an you by claiming you cheated without providing any evidence.

The discussions in this thread remind me a lot of the Mike Postle Poker scandal: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21161043" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21161043</a><p>It was a similar case where cheating was theoretically possible and alleged, but could not be proven. Only difference is that the Mike Postle case was a far bigger statistical anomaly.

This is way too much accusation without any evidence, and a terrible blow to Carlsen&#x27;s sterling reputation. What he should have said was:<p>&quot;Niemann is an admitted chess cheater, and has cheated even more than he has admitted to, per Chess.com&#x27;s recent statement. Cheating destroys the game and I refuse to play against known cheaters. I will not play Hans Niemann or any other known cheaters.&quot;

It reminds me of the outcry from Trevor Bauer over the MLB not enforcing the illegal substance rule for pitchers. He had to take matters into his own hands until the league decided to enforce the rules.

The bigger question to me is why Nieman, who had admitted cheating in the past, was admitted to the tournament in the first place.

This is carefully worded to never claim cheating at the Sinquefield Cup but heavily imply it.

Some evidence supporting his claim would be nice.

Meta: The top displayed &quot;replies&quot; to his post are indicative of how utterly trashy Twitter is.

I dont play chess that much but I think this discussion is somewhat interesting, because all the hobby analysts and human lie detectors come out with things like: look how this guy nervously swallowed, look at this timestamp what is he doing why is he leaning forward and all that stuff. it goes up to the point where even intelligent people will believe that there must have been some device in his shoe, or elsewhere, putting a theory out there as the truth that, now, afterwards, can&#x27;t be proved, but - more importantly - cant be disproved. That stuff is really dangerous.<p>It is dangerous, because people who do that know exactly they will not be able to provide evidence for their hypothesis to be true, but the other side won&#x27;t be able to provide evidence either. So they rely solely on their convincing powers, and persuading others into their own belief system instead applying to reason.<p>I think, if at all, that all just proves one thing, something that scientists knew all along: if you want your thesis to be true, you will start interpreting reality in a fashion that supports your hypothesis. We don&#x27;t do science like that for precisely this reason.<p>After all this, I think Magnus really ridiculed himself with this. His strongest evidence is &quot;he wasn&#x27;t tense&quot;? Really, though?

How did Niemann cheat? Magnus uses Niemann&#x27;s outplaying as evidence but is there anything concrete?

I&#x27;m actually curious what the Chess.com statement would be - they seem to have some bombshell that&#x27;s coming soon. Also curious how Hans&#x27; will react to all of this.

These situations are never great.. there&#x27;s no &quot;best way to handle things&quot; when the drama reaches a certain level.<p>Carlsen specifically mentions that there are Niemann details he can&#x27;t or won&#x27;t reveal. Niemann could release him from that confidence, but I think Carlsen&#x27;s reputation is strong enough that doubting this doesn&#x27;t seem reasonable.<p>Personally, I think shading Carlsen, in isolation, seems misguided to me.

This is probably naive question, but if the main concern here is remote assistance (at least that is my impression without following this too closely), why not just flood the room with wide spectrum EM jamming? I mean, let Niemann have his bluetooth buttplug if nothing can communicate with it.

At this time, and with the different claims (use of sex toys as a cheating device, &quot;I can&#x27;t name specifics&quot; wink wink), and with the pacing this comes up (every 7-10 days), I get the distinct impression that this is more about character assassination than honesty in chess tournaments.

This is easy to check&#x2F;prove. Make them pass an x-ray machine and play alone in a Faraday cage. No external signal will pass while the cage still can send video through cables. This can be deployed automatically by organizers in next public event and is quite cheap, no more than a few thousand dollars.

Carlson should just challenge Niemann to a 30 game over the board televised match in their shorts (no shoes, no shirt) at Madison Square Garden. With the revenue generated from ticket sales and advertising, they could both retire and international chess can put this episode behind them.

I don&#x27;t particularly mind Carlsen&#x27;s actions (leaving the Sinquefield cup and resigning a game against Niemann in the Julius Baer Cup).<p>I also watched Niemann&#x27;s games in the Julius Baer Cup, and he certainly has an uncanny ability to switch on some form of an afterburner against people like Aronian, Ivanchuk, Pragg and Duda. Perhaps he is that talented, but I can understand that the top players do not feel at ease.<p>On the other hand I&#x27;m not too happy about chess.com turning into some form of credit rating agency for top chess players. If I were above 2500, I wouldn&#x27;t play there. Too much to lose if their proprietary algorithms misfire.<p>As a European, I&#x27;d certainly issue a GDPR information request for my cheating score, followed by a deletion request for all personal data.

Here is Niemann&#x27;s statement <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CJZuT-_kij0&amp;t=921s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CJZuT-_kij0&amp;t=921s</a><p>In my opinion, it&#x27;s more probable that Magnus is not just a chess player anymore. He is a chess tycoon that has a huge stake in chess business and a huge fanbase. And he is using that power frivolously.

So now they just need to set up a match that takes place in a Faraday cage, and check each player using a full-body scanner. I&#x27;d watch that!

Can any radio people chime in? What would be a reasonable ( affordablish ) way to detect signals at an over the board tournament?

So basically, no concrete proof (yet), except the fact that Niemann has past history of cheating in online chess.

Saying he needs legal permission to say more seems ridiculous. Hans&#x27; reputation is in the gutter and Magnus has accused him of cheating. That&#x27;s likely enough grounds for legal action and why would the most powerful chess play in the world be afraid about facing some kid in court?

I&#x27;m not very interested in chess, but I think I came up with the perfect option for cheating. You swallow a tablet with a radio receiver and a vibration motor, having studied the Morse code before this. You can even play naked, as Hans suggested. Happy discovery.

You might have a stockfish, buttfish, or whatever hidden somewhere on your body. But how the game position is transmitted to the said device is a hard problem and just handwaved away as a triviality.

Until it is proven that your opponent cheated you need to be more gracious in your defeat.

Perhaps an interesting piece of this is that high-level play is becoming so close to computer play that cheating is increasingly difficult to uncover. I feel that something in the sport has become lost from all this.

As an outsider, this debate has been entertaining for me. This is happening in online tournaments with money at stake. Is it just me, or are you basically just begging for some sort of shenanigans to occur?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;MagnusCarlsen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1574482694406565888" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;MagnusCarlsen&#x2F;status&#x2F;1574482694406565888</a>

maybe humans just need to invent a new game that computers aren&#x27;t good at. Arimaa was cool but then got beat by computers soon after gloating how it&#x27;s resistant to alpha-beta pruning etc.

I’m a Magnus fanboy. He’s been and continues to be a great champion. He’s up there in the pantheon with Kasparov, Anand and Fischer. We’re lucky to have him. That kinda settles this for me.

Do they do any tests for substances? How about nootropics which are known to boost brainpower, are these banned just doping in athletics? Would nootropics be considered cheating??

This is highly disappointing.<p>For one thing, the fact that Carlsen is making this statement now and not weeks earlier is embarrassing.<p>For another, the evidence he presents is disappointingly weak. I can understand being suspicious of online games. Fair enough. But the evidence for cheating offline is:<p>1) Rapid progress in OTB chess. This rapid progress is still much less rapid than many other players and involved Hans quite clearly spending nearly 2 years only focused on chess during and after the pandemic. 2) Him competing as black in a way only a handful of players could. I’d argue there is almost no one who stands even a 10% chance of beating Magnus as black OTB. But, if all the GMs playing Magnus had a 0.1% chance, then there’s a 1&#x2F;2000 chance he loses, and the loss is not likely to be to one of the top players simply because there are far more non top players. 3) Lack of nervousness. Well, it’s hard to see how Magnus would be beat by someone who was nervous. On 1 hand, Hans had nothing to lose and be nervous about. On the other hand Magnus had a ton of pressure on a quest for 2900.<p>At the end of the day, Hans didn’t play a brilliancy to beat Magnus. He simply played normal decent moves. The game itself presented no evidence of cheating.

Interesting how in the 90s the concern was GM&#x27;s where helping the machines (Kasparaov vs Deep Blue), and today the concern is the machines are helping the GMs.

Naked chess in a Faraday cage. Problem solved.

Wouldn&#x27;t installing a few RF sweepers and audio recorders in the play area account for any feasible methods of cheating?

<p><pre><code> I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann </code></pre> What? I&#x27;d like him to explicitly state what rule&#x2F;law&#x2F;agreement prevents him from saying more. He explicitly accused him of cheating. I can&#x27;t imagine what would prevent him from providing details.

Is it possible to put a computer in a shoe, that would be powerful enough? Or does it take a large computer to beat a GM?

Hypothetically, using AlphaGo as your cheating engine could produce moves which are undetectable to originate from an engine.

I am disappointed with Magnus. He is misusing the weight of his reputation even if cheating is a big deal in chess.<p>The first mistake was still choosing to play when he had reservations once Hans was invited. The second mistake was quitting the tournament and messing up the standings once he lost. The third mistake was making an insinuation through a tweet. The fourth mistake was resigning in two moves his next game with Hans.<p>Even though Hans is suspicious and untrustworthy, Magnus is taking on himself the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. If he is concerned about cheating being an issue, proactively bring up the issue, don&#x27;t do it re-actively.

A search of these comments reveals possibly the first violation of Godwin&#x27;s Law ever recorded.

The fact that cheating is now on the agenda in chess is so lame.<p>My chess.com rating is only 864 and after making a move that won me the game my opponent said they were going to report me because &quot;I played an unusual tactic.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s taking all the fun out of the game.<p>Edit - to clarify that cheating being on the agenda is a sad state of affairs, not that Carlson calling it out is sad.

What’s the split in the chess community like here? Do most people agree with Magnus?

Hope he has something better up his sleeve than “he wasn’t concentrating right”

Maybe in future the players have to play in an isolated (no spectators) but monitored environment (cameras), naked (minimum clothing provided if absolutely necessary). Then it&#x27;s only prisoner wallets to consider, which full body scanners can sort out.

We need a TSA body detector before a match between Magnus and Niemann.

I last played chess in high school. I&#x27;m following this for the drama.<p>I guess &quot;over the board&quot; chess means an IRL chess game.<p>Can someone explain how the fuck someone would be able to do this and not make it obvious? Why is this being continually glossed over?<p>Am I dumb?

I have sympathy with Magnus.<p>Once a cheat, not always a cheat ... but you built the reputation of being a cheat and that&#x27;s all on the cheat.<p>It&#x27;s on the cheat to literally bend-over backwards (lol) to assure people they have changed.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I am seriously aghast at how so many people defend (or even fully support) this type of behavior. This is disgusting.<p>I want to emphasize, that it is disgusting regardless of Carlsen being right or wrong in his suspicions, it isn&#x27;t really important, and I would stand by it even after Niemann being proven guilty. This really should be simple: either a player is caught cheating and then he is banned (or awarded a prize, or whatever this particular federation does with cheaters). Public statement must be given by federation and&#x2F;or organizers, after which players may be allowed to speak up. <i>Or</i> a player isn&#x27;t caught, and then you keep your fucking opinion to yourself (except of informing the arbiters, of course), however great champion you may be. In fact, the greater you are, the more responsibility you have, and even if you are borderline sure the opponent has cheated (but have no legal proof) — you really should be mindful of possibility that your are mistaken, and of what consequences your (however &quot;legally non-binding&quot;) allegations may bear, given how prominent you are.<p>I.e., this is an issue that must be dealt by organizers — not players, not reddit users and surely not youtube bloggers.<p>Otherwise, what happens is that somebody totally innocent (and I&#x27;m not talking about Niemann — the point is, that it really could have been ANYBODY) can be publicly executed on a whim of a great King of Chess. Seriously, just think about it. A person&#x27;s whole carrier may be ruined, he may be driven to a suicide, just because… Magnus has <i>suspicions</i>? Does it sit well with you?<p>Also, all of this is far beyond the question of if a suspect has cheated in the past. I mean, I think it&#x27;s fair to say that refusing to play somebody who the federation&#x2F;organizers do not ban, can (and should) be considered ill sportsmanship and be frowned upon — but this is just my personal opinion and means nothing. This said, I guess it should be acceptable that one may publicly refuse to play a person who is known to have cheated in the past (or for any other reason — and the criteria of refusal being potentially arbitrary is why I find this problematic). But then you kinda should make this statement <i>before</i> you play them, or at least make a note to yourself to do it <i>after</i> the tournament has finished, instead of throwing a tantrum just after you lose a game to that person (a game that you played really poorly, according to many respectable experts in the field, by the way… which isn&#x27;t the point of course).<p>But, obviously, one cannot (and shouldn&#x27;t) be expected to make the best and most moral decision all of the time. Which is why this should be handled (and even enforced) by the arbiters&#x2F;event organizers&#x2F;federation. And it would be too kind to say that it wasn&#x27;t — it was literally the opposite of that! They were throwing fuel to the fire all way along! This is obscene.

For me, this weakens Magnus&#x27;s case.<p>Obviously there&#x27;s more information that isn&#x27;t being disclosed, and until the definitive information comes to light we&#x27;re all going to be left in the dark.<p>Nonetheless, addressing this statement, it basically reveals that Magnus couldn&#x27;t trust Hans before the tournament and especially the game they played in which Magnus lost as white.<p>Essentially, there isn&#x27;t a game where Magnus loses to Hans and doesn&#x27;t see cheating. He&#x27;d probably suspect cheating even if he won so long as there was some &quot;unusually good play&quot; from Hans.<p>So, excluding cheating as a possibility, the probability of Magnus strongly suspecting cheating given that he loses to Hans, however unlikely, looks like about 100%.<p>I haven&#x27;t been following this closely (so please correct any details), but Hans&#x27;s defence of how well he played in the game seems consistent with him playing unusually well and Magnus&#x27;s observations. IE, Hans claims that he happened to prepare the opening Magnus played because he was trying to think of ways Magnus would play unpredictable openings, which is something, AFAIK, Magnus tends to do. It also seems plausible that Hans would prepare much more for the game against Magnus than anyone else. That combined with some luck and having a good day all seems consistent with not only winning unexpectedly but a relatively unusual demeanour.<p>And on the demeanour points Magnus makes, can we take a moment to imagine being him in the game: already suspecting cheating, running into someone who seems prepared for your &quot;unusual&#x2F;unexpected opening&quot; and then being down as white ... what would you see on the other side of the board? How could you not read into any tick or gesture? Moreover, how focused are you? Would this not be the set of circumstances where you&#x27;re going to play unusually badly? My vague understanding is that Magnus did indeed make some blunders in the game. The question for me is how well did Magnus play relative to his own level?<p>Overall, on the general point of cheating, Magnus is probably very much on point. His unilateral action on this seems on par with World Champions thinking they&#x27;re as big as the game itself, for better or worse. On the specific point of whether Hans cheated in this game, I think that &quot;innocent until proven guilty&quot; is the only thing that will keep things together because if Magnus is wrong and Hans is bullied out of the game because of this then it will only contribute to the ugliness of a cheating crisis not remove it, IMO. That a cheating accusation is as ugly as this has been already is already a black mark against all those involved in managing the sport. Should it turn out that Hans did cheat, for instance, it&#x27;s not a good look that the undisputed world champion had to or felt he had to forfeit a tournament and a game in another tournament to make his point.<p>Otherwise for the sport of Chess, it&#x27;d be a sad sport indeed if exciting and unexpected moments like Magnus&#x27;s loss to Hans can&#x27;t exist in it and the difference between &quot;great&quot; and &quot;cheater&quot; is whether you get help from a computer before or during the game.

&quot;GREATES CHESS PLAYER ALIVE&quot; = larper, everyone is larping today, nobody true.

Dear Chess World,<p>At the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I made the unprecedented professional decision to withdraw from the tournament after my round three game against Hans Niemann. A week later during the Champions Chess Tour, I resigned against Hans Niemann after playing only one move.<p>I know that my actions have frustrated many in the chess community. I&#x27;m frustrated. I want to play chess. I want to continue to play chess at the highest level in the best events. I believe that cheating in chess is a big deal and an existential threat to the game. I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over the board chess. When Niemann was invited last minute to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event. I ultimately chose to play.<p>I believe that Niemann has cheated more - and more recently - than he has publicly admitted. His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn&#x27;t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do. This game contributed to changing my perspective.<p>We must do something about cheating, and for my part going forward, I don&#x27;t want to play against people that have cheated repeatedly in the past, because I don&#x27;t know what they are capable of doing in the future.<p>There is more that I would like to say. Unfortunately, at this time I am limited in what I can say without explicit permission from Niemann to speak openly. So far I have only been able to speak with my actions, and those actions have stated clearly that I am not willing to play chess with Niemann. I hope that the truth on this matter comes out, whatever it may be.<p>Sincerely, Manus Carlsen - World Chess Champion

A newer post, but more comments at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32987630" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32987630</a>

I’m glad Magnus has now acknowledged he is on a personal crusade against a teenager with absolutely no proof to bake him except his own feelings. I think we can safely assume this is the moment people will remember as him losing the plot.<p>I now wait to see if FIDE will do what they should and sanction him but I am not sure I have faith.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ben_finegold&#x2F;status&#x2F;1574506362658181120" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ben_finegold&#x2F;status&#x2F;1574506362658181120</a>

I&#x27;m not sure I have ever understood the Magnus hype. This whole thing... It makes me certain he did not deserve it. Unless he&#x27;s proven right somehow... But generally as a sportsman it&#x27;s not up to you to play referee. Maybe they should take bullying in chess just as seriously as cheating.

Isn&#x27;t it time to just abandon chess as a competitive sport? It&#x27;s (mostly) a solved game for f* sake, move on. I will probably be downvoted to oblivion, but I&#x27;m absolutely serious and would love constructive commentary.<p>What&#x27;s the big appeal of chess? We (as humans) can&#x27;t beat computers. It&#x27;s probably useful for further research, but I see absolutely no value in (human) competitions.