This report provides a detailed background of Hans' potential cheating, and detailed breakdowns of certain aspects of chess.com's cheat-detection methodology, including previously unknown (or little known) methods such as window focus change event monitoring and post-focus-change move analysis.[1]
The report also reveals Niemann's engine move correlations alongside over two dozen chess Grandmasters who have admitted to cheating on chess.com. The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Perhaps it is a good thing that this scandal is highlighting the issue, and given how widespread cheating may be, perhaps chess tournaments both online and physical need to take cheating much more seriously than they apparently have been.
There is also an interesting analysis of Hans' rating improvement history, his over the board tournament performance and key game analysis, and a rundown of key moments in his game against Carlsen in the Sinquefield cup. Each raises concerns.
Chess.com's report also makes it clear that Niemann lied outright about his history of cheating in post-Sinquefield interviews, as he admits in communications with chess.com Fairplay staff to much broader cheating.
All in all, the report raises many concerns and it seems reasonable for the chess community to demand much higher standards of cheat prevention and detection across competitive venues. How long might cheating issues have gone on merely rumored vs fully investigated or acted upon, had this intrigue not developed due to Carlsen's withdrawal from Sinquefield '22?
[1]Tangentially, this induces an obvious concern about cheat and cheat-detection arms races. A clever cheater might scrutinize this report and refine their cheating plan. For example, they might recognize the need to use a second device (such as a phone) to cheat. They might use the data corpus presented in this report to establish limits on how often they use chess engine moves per game, and they might manage their ratings progress over time carefully, so as to stay in acceptable ranges of engine move correlation, rate of improvement, etc.
> [1]Tangentially, this induces an obvious concern about cheat and cheat-detection arms races. A clever cheater might scrutinize this report and refine their cheating plan. For example, they might recognize the need to use a second device (such as a phone) to cheat. They might use the data corpus presented in this report to establish limits on how often they use chess engine moves per game, and they might manage their ratings progress over time carefully, so as to stay in acceptable ranges of engine move correlation, rate of improvement, etc.
Important point I'd say. I really can't shake my personal feeling that chess as a sport is just simply dead, especially as an online e-sport. Especially in combination with the possibility that there's plenty more cheating that they're not catching/detecting.
Taking this report along with Hans's admission to only cheating twice, for example, and accepting Chess.com's assessment as accurate, it would seem that Hans's mistake was to confess only to the instances of cheating that he thought had been caught. Which indicates the mentality and experience involved where the actual game is not getting caught and many, just as Hans was before beating Magnus, are playing it successfully.
> I really can't shake my personal feeling that chess as a sport is just simply dead, especially as an online e-sport. Especially in combination with the possibility that there's plenty more cheating that they're not catching/detecting.
Online chess is bigger than ever, and some kind of botting/cheating is possible for virtually every e-sport (indeed I'd say many are easier than chess). This is a major scandal that should have serious consequences, but there's no reason for it to be the end of online chess.
I guess I’m not as cynical. I picked up chess again when I was deployed (I was on the chess team in high school) and have been closely following this drama, and my sense is that perhaps we all admit that online chess is dead, but a return to analog chess is possible and, perhaps, preferable. I know this begs the question of defeating cheats in irl play, but shouldn’t that be an easier problem to solve?
> I really can't shake my personal feeling that chess as a sport is just simply dead, especially as an online e-sport.
This sent me musing whether we are actually witnessing the emergence of a new type of gamesmanship. If we don't end up killing each other in another global war (sadly there won't be subsequent volumes about "the war no one wanted"), then having men and machines team up in competitive environments is a given. (This is already happening, no doubt, in military settings.)
Maybe new games can be devised, or existing games modified, that can't default to games that are machine vs machine with the human teammates reduced to secretaries in the game. Games designed with AI teammate already in mind. The human role can't be just physical. I wonder what that would be like.
One of the most interesting (but inconclusive) points they found was how Hans' evaluated strength dropped after they introduced the 15 minute broadcast delay.
Except, introducing the 15 minute broadcast delay just happens to coincide with Magnus scandalous withdrawal, Hans being especially carefully searched and being stared at by everyone (that is, if we trust how it was evaluated over a couple of games in the first place).
So, again, even though some statement from chess.com was expected, this one probably does more harm than good. Heavy implications, winking and chuckling, but nothing that would allow one to close the case (quite naturally). All of this historical progress evaluation was done by people a month ago already, and did achieve as much as this one. This one is "official" though, so pours another barrel of fuel into the fire.
That said, I wonder why 15 minute (or even more) delay isn't standard in events like that. Seems like the least you could do, given how questionable chess in 2022 is in the first place.
Another player decreased by 10 vs 15 for hans. Other players increased by a similar amount to hans. It could easily be noise. Hans under the most public scrutiny and criticism of his life, so you would expect his play to suffer.
I kind of suspect magnus misplayed because he knew that Hans cheated so much online.
Does engine correlation actually prove anything though? Some of the 'statistical analysis' that has been posted on twitter regarding it in the last week has been against hundreds of engines, so 'engine correlation' seems to mean "the move made matched against at least one engine that would have made that move" I think?
1) You can look at the "strength" of individual moves. Someone who plays at 2000-level normally but magically coughs up 2600-level moves when in trouble is probably cheating (watch some of the live chess streamers--you'll regularly see this in real time). Computers are quite good at estimating the strength of a move after the fact.
2) Quite often there are certain "play lines" that computers will play that humans simply can't find over the board.
For example, a computer can take a defensive "play line" that is littered with traps with only a single non-losing path for 30+ moves and work it out really quickly (there is only one non-losing path to take so it prunes the search space mega fast) and play it perfectly. A human playing such a line is almost always cheating--humans simply can't run those kinds of lines in real time.
If you look at computers analyzing even the highest end games, you see the humans making quite a few mistakes that the computers will spot and take advantage of immediately. Someone who walks down these kinds of paths regularly is a statistical anomaly.
That having been said, given the current crop of computer-trained chess kids, it IS possible that we'll grow a prodigy that can run those kinds of lines. However, it doesn't seem like that person exists, yet.
Am not a statistician, but at least in an online analysis I saw, seems like correlation can effectively identify players who are playing too much like a computer. Because they don't just run correlations on Niemann, but on all the top players, and do comparisons (and for certain long stretches of tournaments, Niemann's is playing way, way above how anyone else has ever played).
This is video explains it pretty well, and seems like a very compelling argument (at least to me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjtbXxA8Fcc - and just know that the woman talking is a bit hard to understand because of her accent.
... oh, and to address your point about 100's of engines, my first thought was that are only a handful that everyone uses (Stockfish?) (and also, just guessing, but I get the impression that most top engines recommend similar moves, but again, just a guess!).
Chess.com explicitly states in the report that that sort of methodology does “not meet our standard” for cheating detection. If they don’t feel comfortable using it, I certainly don’t.
> Does engine correlation actually prove anything though?
It probably doesn't, and for many reasons, both because the more engines you add the greater the chance of falsely accusing someone (so an analysis that features hundreds engines is probably worthless), but worse than that, you can manipulate the result of the analysis through the selection of engines
I don't think engine correlation necessarily proves anything, on its own. It's worth remembering, though, that chess.com's report a) presents more than merely raw engine correlation, and b) its correlations do not seem to match against hundreds of engines.
But even with all the evidence presented, "proof" is a tricky thing. To what standard would we be trying to prove a claim?
Does this report prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Niemann cheated? I'd say no, but others may disagree.
How about to a preponderance of evidence? Perhaps. But even that is hard to say when no one has yet presented a rigorous defense or set of counterpoints.
In any case, my post wasn't meant to say that Niemann cheated per se. I have no idea, and chess.com themselves may not be able to actually prove whether he did. But I found the report interesting, even beyond the current issue surrounding Niemann and speaking to potential cheating in high-level chess more broadly, and if you re-read my post, I tried not to state anything definitive about whether Hans actually cheated or not.
Not anymore than elevated testosterone levels are "proof" of performance enhancing drugs. Engine correlation is a marker and when combined with other markers, can be meaningful.
What it mostly shows is that Hans move strength is unnatural.
Further evidence to support this is that he often plays bad moves. That is, moves that are considered blunders, with a high frequency. This is either an attempt to cover up the engine moves or representative of his actual capability. For instance, the report mentions that in a post-game analysis he suggested a move that would be an obvious blunder. When the interviewer pointed this out, Hans wasn't fully convinced until he was shown the engine analysis. So he also is showing a habit of deferring to what the engine suggests.
> The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me.
A few weeks ago my daughter very proudly announced that she managed to "outsmart" (=hack) her online test app used by her class. I was shocked and asked why she would do that, she's smart enough to get an A without that. She seemed obviously puzzled by my question and my lack of enthusiasm about her "achievement" she was so proud of (it involved some JS modifications). I guess is it's just another kind of thrill.
> A few weeks ago my daughter very proudly announced that she managed to "outsmart" (=hack) her online test app used by her class. I was shocked and asked why she would do that, she's smart enough to get an A without that. She seemed obviously puzzled by my question and my lack of enthusiasm about her "achievement" she was so proud of (it involved some JS modifications).
I wonder if maybe it was the chance to solve a different challenge than the one before her (the test), which if she could already get an A maybe wasn't the right challenge?
She should be proud in the sense that real world problem solving and valuable technical skills is a lot more important than any school test. That said she will have to learn not to let arrogance and risk-taking be her downfall.
> two dozen chess Grandmasters who have admitted to cheating on chess.com. The fact that online cheating is so widespread
chess.com globally has more than 93M members. There is cheating, but a dozen admissions can't be accurately described as "so widespread." Research has shown fewer than 0.02% cheat. While this is mildly shocking, your statement based on 12 grandmaster admissions is a sweeping generalization.
This is how many grandmasters admitted cheating, not how many players globally have admitted it.
As of 2021 there were 1,315 active grandmasters. [0]
24/1,315 = ~1.8% of grandmasters admit cheating (give or take a few depending on how many play online chess or are still active). In my opinion, that is a serious problem.
The one thing that baffles me with SEO is how it's just guesswork yet is a massive business. It's like promising to someone that you'll get their name listed sooner in the phonebook without any control over the phonebook itself, and then that person pays you to do it.
It's no different, since we have no control over Google's ranking mechanism and they won't explicitly tell you what the algorithm is (and change the rules daily), so it's just guesswork.
Baffling an entire colossal "industry" is built from guesswork.
They say they estimate that less than 0.14% of players on chess.com ever cheat, so it may be less than everyone assumes just due to this current drama.
They also claim 100 million subscribers, so that's 140,000 cheats. Since if you're cheating you probably do quite well (I pity the engine that could lose to me!), that's likely most of the high-rated players on their site.
And actually this tallies quite well with my experience of amateur physical sport, where at the lower levels everyone's honest and sporting and it's all great fun, but as soon as you get to the point where people are putting their heart and soul into the game, everyone's cheating, everyone knows everyone else is cheating, and anyone who's not cheating might as well give up and go home, as far as winning things is concerned.
Once you put money on it, and you're playing against people you're never likely to meet in real life, Jesus I can't imagine what it's like.
This number seems wildly low to me. I've been playing on chess.com for 2 years and have run into ~30 cheaters. I know they were cheating because chess.com told me they were. I've suspected a handful more of cheating who may not be as they were never banned. Either way this number doesn't seem correct.
It's chess, it's not heart surgery exams. The cheating sucks, but anti-cheat measures are infinitely worse. There is no better way to suck the fun out of something than demanding you submit to a patdown and metal scan or a rootkit before you can participate.
It's just soccer, bicycle racing, weight lifting, sprinting, marathon running, ..., no need to submit to a urine and blood test, if you want to compete in the olympics. That sucks the fun out of it. /s
>The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me.
Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning.
Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate.
These aren't games of pleasure, played for the sake of playing chess. These are games played for the sake of winning. Prize money, ELO, fame and renown, etc. When the only thing that matters is winning, you gain nothing by playing honestly.
If your attitude about chess competition was applied toward you in all of your routine irl activities, you would be extremely unhappy.
The cop does better in his job by meeting his quota of speeding tickets, so it objectively makes sense that he would issue you a speeding ticket every day with no evidence and over your strenuous objections... except you wouldn't object because the cop is working the system rationally. Yeah, right. Anyway, the lawyer you hired to work through this issue in court would of course inflate the number of hours he worked on your case, because why wouldn't he, he'd be an idiot not to!
Can't wait for you to apply for you YC investment, you make a great business partner, so rational and all.
A game is defined by its very specific set of rules. This can easily be seen in chess, which has a huge variety of variants. Or how one, minor rule change in baseball and you've got people wondering if the Hall of Fame even make sense anymore.
Once a set of rules are defined, competitions and tournaments within those rules are meant to determine the best people in that game.
When a player cheats, and rationalizes it as "only matters if you get caught", that means the cheater is playing by different sets of rules from his opponent. They are playing literally different games. If the two opponents are playing different games, it completely undermines the purpose of the competition.
Legitimate would mean condoning cheating. Which then means everyone should be allowed to use engines, which then would mean engine vs engine, which we already have.
I don't agree with blanket statements like that but I think there's a kernel of truth in your mindset that many people are oblivious to.
Chess, as a competitive game with meaningful stakes, is obsolete. It became obsolete when the first computer outplayed the reigning human champion, and it's been gradually becoming more obvious. Recent events have started to demonstrate precisely why: people are becoming better at cheating at chess way faster than they're getting better at playing chess.
All of those things you can get by cheating. But cheating is never winning. The whole point of a game or sport is that it ceases to be a game when you go outside the rules.
Yes, many can square this circle in their own heads and convince themselves that anything goes. Some, like Lance Armstrong, will enrich themselves enormously. But none of them will have “won”.
> The conventional wisdom is that if you are not a GM by age 14, it is unlikely that you can reach the top levels of chess.
> While that statement may seem discouraging, it has been borne out in modern chess.
> Greats like Fischer, Kasparov, Carlsen, and almost all of the modern GMs who have been established as top five players, were notable GMs by age 15 at the latest
In my opinion, this sort of ad-hoc stereotyping weakens the rest of the analysis. There are plenty of counterexamples.
Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19 and is still ranked World No. 9 currently (at age 52). Ding Liren (Current No. 2) became a GM at 17. Grischuk (currently No. 17, peak No.3) became a GM at 17. All three have crossed 2800 ELO at some point.
I hope this is not the sort of analysis that chess.com has run in the other 71 pages of the report.
Also, according 2700chess.com he was #96 in the world with a rating of 2520 on January 1988. That's right after turning 18. Growing up in India (before the chess boom). Before chess engines existed. 6 months later he was #49 in the world.
https://2700chess.com/players/anand
A year earlier (at 17), he had won the world junior chess championship (U-20). Not exactly a "strange meteoric rise" for Anand. The "GM at 18".
Unlike Anand, no achievements of note until then (ok, he was 9th at U-16 World Youth Chess Championships in 2019). A year later he's a top 40 player, hanging out with the best and beating the (incredibly dominating) world champion with the black pieces. Make it make sense.
Also, take a look at this analysis of correlation between average (and stddev) of move accuracy vs rating:
Yea generally I wouldn't characterise the report as being a glimmering indication of the scientific quality of the chess.com cheat detection team.
Even the graphs look a lot like copy-paste jobs from excel, which is fine obviously, but not the sort of thing I'd expect competent scientists/data-scientists/developers to be doing, especially for a big public report where some of the formatting issues are just about readability and basic presentation quality. Like Figures F and G (page 14) ... why are they styled so differently? Same question applies to many of the graphs, which isn't to mention label font sizes either.
Beyond that, yea I'd say good amounts of the data and logic are pretty basic and wouldn't be surprising from an amateur on the internet. The main thing chess.com have seems to be their Strength Score algorithm, which IMO is probably developed and maintained by a team different from the one that prepared this report.
> > The conventional wisdom is that if you are not a GM by age 14, it is unlikely that you can reach the top levels of chess.
This is confusing correlation and causation.
One thing that people don't realize is the sheer amount of money required to become a "GM". You have to get a certain number of "norms" from FIDE and the requirements list is a PITA:
https://chessgoals.com/how-to-get-a-grandmaster-norm/
If you don't have a lot of money and a lot of free time to go to a lot of chess tournaments around the world, you are not getting a "GM" title in this day and age. This favors children (few time constraints) with rich parents (lots of coaching along with the ability to travel).
The problem is that if you aren't a "chess prodigy" by 15 it generally isn't worth continuing to pursue--what does sinking the resources into being a "GM" get you at the end? If you're one of the "Chess Gods", you have entry into the tournaments anyway, and, if you're not, it doesn't really matter.
That's why I quit playing seriously when I was still an underclassman. It was overwhelmingly obvious that merely being well above average was completely irrelevant, and there was absolutely no practical reason for me to play chess whatsoever. Although it did subsequently get me laid once or twice, which in retrospect still surprises me.
The trouble I have is, that Hans is 19. Given the accusations and his own confession, he is a life long cheater in contrast to traditional GMs. Hans confessed to have cheated at age 12 and 16.
Since cheating is arguable habit forming, he simply based his career on cheating. Where others put in the mileage, he invested in his cheating expertise.
He cheated as a child during a stressful period that children still need to figure out how to deal with. I think it’s very unreasonable to cancel someone over things they did as a child, much less to cancel them IRL over things they did as a child in an online game.
Another explanation is simply that, if you reach early adulthood without deciding to devote your life to becoming good at chess, you are unlikely to do it later. Becoming among the best in the world at anything requires not only natural talent but also focused, almost monomaniacal work, and if you haven't started doing that (for chess) by your mid-teens, it's hard to see why you would start.
If, for some reason, you decided to drop your budding music/engineering/whatever career at age 20 to focus entirely on chess, and you had the natural aptitude to be able to become a GM, perhaps it could happen. But rarely would a person decide to do that, if they had not prior to that point.
Brain plasticity is real. If I dropped everything and devoted my life to studying Chinese I would still never learn to speak it as well as a child who grew up in China.
I think both effects have something to do with it.
Most of the sports starts tend to start very very young. Some more true than others, like how most ice skating Olympic winners are sub 18. More true for classical music as well.
But not all of them have immediate success. Look at someone like Kurt Warner. It took him until his senior year to start at the University of Northern Iowa. Then he plays 3 years for the Iowa Barnstormers in Arena Football and 1 year for Amsterdam in NFL Europe.
Finally he gets on a NFL roster as 3rd string for St Louis. Cleveland skips picking him in the expansion draft. The Rams sign a different starting QB and trade away #2 QB leaving Warner as the backup. The starter gets hurt and with basically no first team practices Warner gets named the starter.
After all that and starting for the first time in the NFL at age 28 he has one of the best statistical seasons ever for QB and wins the MVP and Superbowl. Goes on to win the MVP again and has a 10 year HOF career.
If we apply Chess.com's logic he's the biggest cheater that ever cheated. But obviously he's not because you can't really cheat at QB in the NFL.
So page 9 from the last paragraph is interesting. Chess.com basically indicate that apart from Hans, a number of highly rated players (including higher than Hans) have been caught and admitted to cheating.
I haven't gone over the report thoroughly, but it's clearly focused on Hans's conduct and not so much on the state of play regarding online cheating, which is, even by Magnus's statement, the chief focus of all of this.
As an outsider to the chess world, this revelation of rampant online cheating is the main story.
First, not surprising, right? Using a computer engine is part of learning and preparing in chess (AFAICT). What other sport has a similar issue where an extremely useful and essential and highly available tool in the sport is considered cheating based entirely on using it within the narrow window of a game? Of course it was going to leak into play in online games where you only have the data feed of moves and nothing else connecting the players.
Second, that it's common amongst the elite of the sport is huge. Either online chess is somewhat dead on arrival as a sport and was never taken seriously by many players (which makes sense to me given how integrated computer engines are in the sport) ... or the chess world needs to go through some sort of cultural revolution here.
Third, chess.com have a conflict of interest in this meta-discussion, I presume, as they have commercial interests in the survival of online chess.
Fourth, the OTB cheating question still seems open and it seems plausible to me that a good chess player would cheat online for followers and income and entrance to tournaments and then use OTB as the real testing ground. My bias here is that I suspect cheating in OTB is just crazy by comparison as you'd have to carry some sort of device that would stand as hard evidence of cheating while in online play the proof is always circumstantial and so easier for a cheater to convince themselves they won't get caught. Which gets back to my second and third points about how online chess maybe doesn't make much sense and chess.com aren't quite seeing the forest for the trees on this.
> Using a computer engine is part of learning and preparing in chess (AFAICT). What other sport has a similar issue where an extremely useful and essential and highly available tool in the sport is considered cheating based entirely on using it within the narrow window of a game? Of course it was going to leak into play in online games where you only have the data feed of moves and nothing else connecting the players.
Pretty much every e-sport with hidden information has this issue. CS:GO, DotA2, SC2. They all have replay analyzers to reveal the map and let you look back to figure out how to play better. But if there was a way to use them in game (map hacks), it'd invalidate the game.
Trying to think of an example in 'physical' sports (give me some rope here)... in baseball you start by using light aluminum bats, then in college they impose weight rules on non-wood bats, then in the MLB they impose weight rules on wood bats. However, pro players sometimes train with non-regulation bats to work on bat speed or for pregame warm up. Rarely, a training bat will accidentally get used during a game. If such a bat breaks during the game, it will reveal itself as a hollowed or corked bat. The consequences, esp with regard to public perception, for such mistakes are severe.
Some of the Dota cheats use methods in which subtle bits of what should be private information are made public, although not always in a nice/easy way for humans to see. For example some animations and particle effects are visible through the fog of war. Another interesting situation (which I think was recently fixed?) was a bitmap stored on a unit (for example, your hero) for visibility checks by each faction (as in, which factions could see you). You could thus tell if you were visible, and hence detect enemy vision.
> Second, that it's common amongst the elite of the sport is huge. Either online chess is somewhat dead on arrival as a sport and was never taken seriously by many players (which makes sense to me given how integrated computer engines are in the sport) ... or the chess world needs to go through some sort of cultural revolution here.
Really? My takeaway is that chess.com is doing a better job of detecting cheaters than FIDE, who seem to have been asleep at the wheel with Niemann
> Fourth, the OTB cheating question still seems open and it seems plausible to me that a good chess player would cheat online for followers and income and entrance to tournaments and then use OTB as the real testing ground.
This seems wildly implausible to me. Niemann‘s OTB rise would be indicative of a not just significant but utterly world historic chess mind, head-and-shoulders above Fisher and head-shoulders-and-entire-torso above every other player in history. When led into uncharted territory by the world chess champion, Magnus indicated that Niemann seemed utterly and completely untroubled - and yet he’s, what, running stockfish in another window for $1000 prizes online and getting himself caught dozens of times? Why? Why take the risk against opponents he should beat in his sleep? These should have been sleepwalk games for this Fisher++ genius who’s totally untroubled by a 5 time world chess championship, but he’s for some reason making obviously weaker moves when not switching windows when his unaided moves shouldn’t have been screamingly weaker than the aided ones given his singularly extraordinary chess rise.
It beggars belief. His world historic rise in rating alone is ludicrously over the top. Kid’s an obvious fraud.
They didn’t find any instances of cheating after August 2020. At that point his OTB ELO was only around 2450. It’s only after his last known instance of cheating that he improved into the truly great level.
> In conclusion, while we cannot definitively prove that Hans’ rise in strength is entirely “natural,” we have also found no indications in the game data to suggest otherwise. While some have suggested that a move-by-move analysis by humans may surface some oddities in move choice or analysis, there is nothing in our statistical investigation to raise any red flags regarding Hans’ OTB play and rise.
Yup that part stood out to me as well. There are dozens of "Anonymous Confessed GM"s on the cheating list, most of them with a rating much higher than Neimann's. And this doesn't even mention the players who are flagged by their algorithm but haven't admitted their guilt. Given the very high ELO range of the offenders (2600-2700), it's clear that a lot of the most popular names in chess are involved. Why not name all of them? Shouldn't they receive the same amount of scrutiny, public criticism and punishment as him?
Yea, it definitely seems a bit suspicious and unfair, which fits frankly with the sport going through growing pains on this.
Seems like you gotta beat Magnus for your cheating to matter?! Snark aside, Magnus’s behaviour makes some sense, he wants this to be addressed. But the manner in which it is happening, his conduct included, is just poor form for the sport, even if it was the best overall move Magnus could make.
I wouldn't take this to mean that everybody cheats, or everybody at the top cheats, as a sibling comment has stated. Wikipedia cites the number of grandmasters as "almost 2000" so even 100 GM cheaters is still a small amount (modulo the ones no longer living I guess, who likely are not playing on chess.com). Elsewhere in the report chess.com gives a figure for number of players they believe have cheated on the site from total player base of 0.14%.
As I understand it, Hans decided to take the issue public and made questionable statements about his credibility, which in turn weighs upon the credibility of chess.com's decision to kick him out of an upcoming $1M tournament.
> Using a computer engine is part of learning and preparing in chess (AFAICT). What other sport has a similar issue where an extremely useful and essential and highly available tool in the sport is considered cheating based entirely on using it within the narrow window of a game?
In Magnus' recent interview with Lex Fridman, he said though members of his team utilize engines in preparation, it's not something he personally uses very much if at all in his training. In fact he seems to think training against engines can be detrimental.
Lex: How much do you use engines like Leela and Stockfish in your preparations?
Magnus: My team does. Personally, I try not to use them too much on on my own because I know that when I play you can obviously cannot have help from from engines and often I feel like often having imperfect or knowledge about a position or some engine knowledge can be a lot worse than than having no knowledge. So I try to look at engines as little as possible.
Lex: So yeah, so your team uses them for research for generation of ideas but you are relying primarily on your human resources.
Mangus: Yeah, for sure... I can evaluate as a human. I can know what they find unpleasant and so on and it's very often the case for me to some extent... And so then looking at the engines doesn't necessarily help because at that point you're facing a human, you have to sort of think as a human.
Thanks ... didn't listen to that interview. Also, I'm not a chess person, so everything is AFAICT.
But ...
1) Magnus is one of the greatest ever, so he doesn't count as an example;
2) From excerpt, his *team* does use engines, and he *uses his team*. So his use of engines is one degree removed compared to others, which hardly matters, especially given point 1 above.
Anyone who has taught a technical subject in the university knows that something like 1/5-1/2 of the audience is inclined to teach when there is not much risk, even when there is very little (a grade on an exam) at stake. When there is money at stake the inclination increases. When the marginal benefits of cheating are high is when cheating is most likely. This occurs in any competitive context that is a subculture (i.e. not football) in which the, say, top ten or one hundred are well compensated ($5000+) but no one else is.
Cheating is particularly easy in any online context and those who dismiss the notion that online sports and gambling aren't infected with it are simply naive. People cheat in competitive bass fishing where all you have to do is cut the fish open to catch them ...
The is a subtext in the report suggesting "When players play on the largest online site cheating can be detected and regulated; it is very hard to apply the same level of analysis to OTB matches." It is possible that aligns with chess.com's interests.
> At the outset, we want to make clear that while these events highlight a critical topic in chess—cheating
the vast majority of chess games do not involve any cheating. We estimate that fewer than 0.14% of
players on Chess.com ever cheat, and that our events are by and large free from cheating. We firmly
believe that cheating in chess is rare, preventable, and much less pervasive than is currently being
portrayed in the media
How rare is cheating in contexts where there is money at stake?
Your average person playing blitz while seated on the toilet has little incentive to cheat, particularly if it involves setting up real time access to a powerful engine ... One expects almost no cheating in such an environment.
What if the numbers are: 1/700 cheat, but 1/7 GMs cheat ...?
“Our investigation has revealed that while there has been some noteworthy online play that has caught our attention as suspicious since August 2020, we are unaware of any evidence that Hans has engaged in online cheating since then.”
So he was re-banned for absolutely no reason.
He kept his side of the deal, i.e. not cheat again on chess.com platform. Chess.com didn’t keep theirs.
[Edit: This paragraph is wrong] As I see it he was largely banned for lying about his past cheating... which makes a lot of sense given that one of the conditions they impose for reinstating the account is telling the truth about the cheating (at least privately).
Either way, chess.com kept their side of the deal, their side of the deal was "and we can ban you at any time in the future for any reason or even no reason whatsoever". Frankly that strikes me as a very fair term in a deal for reinstating a admitted cheaters access to your tournaments with large cash prizes...
The famous interview where (we now know) he lied came after he was banned again by chess.com.
As stated in the report, the reason he was banned again was that the insinuations from Magnus caused the chess.com team to reevaluate whether or not they could trust him not to cheat going forward, especially with an upcoming tournament with a million dollar prize on the horizon. After this reevaluation, they decided their previous leniency was unwarranted.
If somebody has a prodigious history of not playing by the rules, there is no reason to think they'll ever reform, and it isn't worth the reputational damage to the game both within (Magnus) and without (the public's perception of high-end chess). This has been a fiasco when they should have just banned Neiman once it became clear that he's been consistently cheating for years.
Where was this report say 1 month ago, before a certain Magnus Carlsen lost to Niemann over the board?
Is Chess.com gonna reveal similar reports for every other player or is this privilege only for those who are accused by a chess.com part owner of OTB cheating.
This report is incredibly underwhelming. I only see Hans cheating before 2020-08-12 from the same chart the WSJ published earlier today. To me it seems he was banned again this year for the same offenses yet complied with chess-com terms (save for not sending an email).
I think the thing I'd like to have clarified: Why does chess.com care about the results of an OTB game?
I can understand their online tournaments being something they care about and why they might rescind an invitation based on these allegations but there's something very strange about them taking it upon themselves to ban him from the platform as a result of his play against someone whose company they're in the process of buying.[1]
It seems to me as though they're inserting themselves into this unnecessarily with their analysis too. They spend a great deal of time explaining their rationale in a few places and then toss in a "In our view, no conclusions should be made from this data." at the end of it. If no conclusions should be drawn, don't bother sharing the data; it's useless. By sharing it in this manner, they are attempting to pretend it's reliable and effectively make the accusation with an out to claim they didn't.
This part too:
And while Magnus’ actions prompted us to reassess the situation, Magnus did not talk with us in advance about our decisions or ask for, or directly influence, those decisions at all.
An uncharitable reading is that this is a very honest statement. Magnus may not have directly influenced their decisions but I think it would be hard to argue they don't have a vested interest in this for the reasons above. IMO this is a clear conflict and they should have simply withdrawn his invitation, even suspended him from their platform, but refrained from commenting on the over-the-board controversy entirely.
> It seems to me as though they're inserting themselves into this unnecessarily with their analysis too. They spend a great deal of time explaining their rationale in a few places and then toss in a "In our view, no conclusions should be made from this data." at the end of it. If no conclusions should be drawn, don't bother sharing the data; it's useless. By sharing it in this manner, they are attempting to pretend it's reliable and effectively make the accusation with an out to claim they didn't.
I agree. Inline with your comments, the report has to me a bit of the vibe of an PR department scrambling to get ahead of the story. The poorly and inconsistently formatted graphs indicates they were pulled out of various documents written by various people at different times. And the spray and prey arguments that don't go any where make it seem like they're desperate to appear as objective and unbiased as possible ... which indicates that they are very biased in their urge/need to respond to the "Magnus refuses to play with Hans" situation.
If their cheating detection is so good, wouldn't it be reasonable for chess.com to say to Magnus that you don't have to worry about cheating in our tournaments so you'll play whoever you're paired with and you can leave it up to us to ban people because we know what we're talking about. Why ban Hans now, right after Magnus's ultimatum?
>I think the thing I'd like to have clarified: Why does chess.com care about the results of an OTB game?
They run money tournaments and hope to have top GMs join and advertise their service by playing, streaming, and commentating the tournaments. You really don't see why they would prefer not to have an OTB cheat invited to these events?
Not to say that Hans has been proven to be a cheat, but it does explain why they have to care about cheating in any event, anywhere.
This is my general take on it. As I posted on Twitter:
As one example, chess.com thinks it’s suspicious that Hans became a grandmaster at 17 instead of a younger age (page 15 of the report), but keep in mind that the legendary Joseph Henry Blackburne didn’t learn to even how to play chess until he was 17. More recently, world champion #15 Vishy Anand did not become a grandmaster until he was 18.
Point being, it argues like a polemic, not a fact-finding report. They themselves admit this. On page 19: “Chess.com is unaware of any concrete evidence proving that Hans is cheating over the board or has ever cheated over the board”.
My personal hurdle, which has not changed in the last month, is real evidence of online cheating on or after June 20, 2021 (Hans’s 18th birthday), or real evidence of over the board cheating. Understating the extent of his online cheating in his September 6 speech is not evidence of recent cheating. I don’t like it, but it might not even be deliberate lying, but a combination of a foggy memory and nerves.
Regardless, while apparently guilty of online cheating when he was 17 or younger, and possibly guilty of understating the extent of his juvenile delinquency, I see no need to ban him from playing over the board chess with the evidence we have on the table. To ban someone as an adult for something done while a juvenile is generally considered immoral, and to ban someone without solid evidence is also considered immoral. This is a line I draw in the sand and will hold to.
This is something I don't understand, why should FIDE accept any evidence from Chess.com, a completely separate corporate entity? That Hans cheated on chess.com is a fact at this point, but I don't see why that means he should be banned from real OTB tournaments or even from competitor online chess websites like Lichess.
Talk about a buried lede, I can't believe that they allow caught cheaters to simply reset in rankings and never publicly name them. Can you imagine any other sport operating that way?
Readit News
The report also reveals Niemann's engine move correlations alongside over two dozen chess Grandmasters who have admitted to cheating on chess.com. The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Perhaps it is a good thing that this scandal is highlighting the issue, and given how widespread cheating may be, perhaps chess tournaments both online and physical need to take cheating much more seriously than they apparently have been.
There is also an interesting analysis of Hans' rating improvement history, his over the board tournament performance and key game analysis, and a rundown of key moments in his game against Carlsen in the Sinquefield cup. Each raises concerns.
Chess.com's report also makes it clear that Niemann lied outright about his history of cheating in post-Sinquefield interviews, as he admits in communications with chess.com Fairplay staff to much broader cheating.
All in all, the report raises many concerns and it seems reasonable for the chess community to demand much higher standards of cheat prevention and detection across competitive venues. How long might cheating issues have gone on merely rumored vs fully investigated or acted upon, had this intrigue not developed due to Carlsen's withdrawal from Sinquefield '22?
[1]Tangentially, this induces an obvious concern about cheat and cheat-detection arms races. A clever cheater might scrutinize this report and refine their cheating plan. For example, they might recognize the need to use a second device (such as a phone) to cheat. They might use the data corpus presented in this report to establish limits on how often they use chess engine moves per game, and they might manage their ratings progress over time carefully, so as to stay in acceptable ranges of engine move correlation, rate of improvement, etc.
Important point I'd say. I really can't shake my personal feeling that chess as a sport is just simply dead, especially as an online e-sport. Especially in combination with the possibility that there's plenty more cheating that they're not catching/detecting.
Taking this report along with Hans's admission to only cheating twice, for example, and accepting Chess.com's assessment as accurate, it would seem that Hans's mistake was to confess only to the instances of cheating that he thought had been caught. Which indicates the mentality and experience involved where the actual game is not getting caught and many, just as Hans was before beating Magnus, are playing it successfully.
Online chess is bigger than ever, and some kind of botting/cheating is possible for virtually every e-sport (indeed I'd say many are easier than chess). This is a major scandal that should have serious consequences, but there's no reason for it to be the end of online chess.
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This sent me musing whether we are actually witnessing the emergence of a new type of gamesmanship. If we don't end up killing each other in another global war (sadly there won't be subsequent volumes about "the war no one wanted"), then having men and machines team up in competitive environments is a given. (This is already happening, no doubt, in military settings.)
Maybe new games can be devised, or existing games modified, that can't default to games that are machine vs machine with the human teammates reduced to secretaries in the game. Games designed with AI teammate already in mind. The human role can't be just physical. I wonder what that would be like.
So, again, even though some statement from chess.com was expected, this one probably does more harm than good. Heavy implications, winking and chuckling, but nothing that would allow one to close the case (quite naturally). All of this historical progress evaluation was done by people a month ago already, and did achieve as much as this one. This one is "official" though, so pours another barrel of fuel into the fire.
That said, I wonder why 15 minute (or even more) delay isn't standard in events like that. Seems like the least you could do, given how questionable chess in 2022 is in the first place.
I kind of suspect magnus misplayed because he knew that Hans cheated so much online.
2) Quite often there are certain "play lines" that computers will play that humans simply can't find over the board.
For example, a computer can take a defensive "play line" that is littered with traps with only a single non-losing path for 30+ moves and work it out really quickly (there is only one non-losing path to take so it prunes the search space mega fast) and play it perfectly. A human playing such a line is almost always cheating--humans simply can't run those kinds of lines in real time.
If you look at computers analyzing even the highest end games, you see the humans making quite a few mistakes that the computers will spot and take advantage of immediately. Someone who walks down these kinds of paths regularly is a statistical anomaly.
That having been said, given the current crop of computer-trained chess kids, it IS possible that we'll grow a prodigy that can run those kinds of lines. However, it doesn't seem like that person exists, yet.
This is video explains it pretty well, and seems like a very compelling argument (at least to me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjtbXxA8Fcc - and just know that the woman talking is a bit hard to understand because of her accent.
... oh, and to address your point about 100's of engines, my first thought was that are only a handful that everyone uses (Stockfish?) (and also, just guessing, but I get the impression that most top engines recommend similar moves, but again, just a guess!).
It probably doesn't, and for many reasons, both because the more engines you add the greater the chance of falsely accusing someone (so an analysis that features hundreds engines is probably worthless), but worse than that, you can manipulate the result of the analysis through the selection of engines
There's a number of topics about that on /r/chess, like https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xtwzfe/fm_ingvar_joh... https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xtwzfe/fm_ingvar_joh... etc
But anyway this isn't the analysis that Chess.com does anyway
But even with all the evidence presented, "proof" is a tricky thing. To what standard would we be trying to prove a claim?
Does this report prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Niemann cheated? I'd say no, but others may disagree.
How about to a preponderance of evidence? Perhaps. But even that is hard to say when no one has yet presented a rigorous defense or set of counterpoints.
In any case, my post wasn't meant to say that Niemann cheated per se. I have no idea, and chess.com themselves may not be able to actually prove whether he did. But I found the report interesting, even beyond the current issue surrounding Niemann and speaking to potential cheating in high-level chess more broadly, and if you re-read my post, I tried not to state anything definitive about whether Hans actually cheated or not.
What it mostly shows is that Hans move strength is unnatural.
Further evidence to support this is that he often plays bad moves. That is, moves that are considered blunders, with a high frequency. This is either an attempt to cover up the engine moves or representative of his actual capability. For instance, the report mentions that in a post-game analysis he suggested a move that would be an obvious blunder. When the interviewer pointed this out, Hans wasn't fully convinced until he was shown the engine analysis. So he also is showing a habit of deferring to what the engine suggests.
A few weeks ago my daughter very proudly announced that she managed to "outsmart" (=hack) her online test app used by her class. I was shocked and asked why she would do that, she's smart enough to get an A without that. She seemed obviously puzzled by my question and my lack of enthusiasm about her "achievement" she was so proud of (it involved some JS modifications). I guess is it's just another kind of thrill.
I wonder if maybe it was the chance to solve a different challenge than the one before her (the test), which if she could already get an A maybe wasn't the right challenge?
When you’re bored you try to learn how the system works - it’s a valuable skill.
chess.com globally has more than 93M members. There is cheating, but a dozen admissions can't be accurately described as "so widespread." Research has shown fewer than 0.02% cheat. While this is mildly shocking, your statement based on 12 grandmaster admissions is a sweeping generalization.
This is how many grandmasters admitted cheating, not how many players globally have admitted it.
As of 2021 there were 1,315 active grandmasters. [0]
24/1,315 = ~1.8% of grandmasters admit cheating (give or take a few depending on how many play online chess or are still active). In my opinion, that is a serious problem.
[0] https://chessdelta.com/how-many-chess-grandmasters-are-there...
This exists in every domain, and is - perhaps - inevitable. Look at what SEO has done to web search.
It's no different, since we have no control over Google's ranking mechanism and they won't explicitly tell you what the algorithm is (and change the rules daily), so it's just guesswork.
Baffling an entire colossal "industry" is built from guesswork.
And actually this tallies quite well with my experience of amateur physical sport, where at the lower levels everyone's honest and sporting and it's all great fun, but as soon as you get to the point where people are putting their heart and soul into the game, everyone's cheating, everyone knows everyone else is cheating, and anyone who's not cheating might as well give up and go home, as far as winning things is concerned.
Once you put money on it, and you're playing against people you're never likely to meet in real life, Jesus I can't imagine what it's like.
They conclude that while there are several unusual things about his OTB play, there is not enough for them to conclude he probably cheated.
Basically the biggest takeaway here is that he definitely publicly lied about the extent of his cheating prior to his original ban.
Dead Comment
if you have ADHD you are naturally a cheater! or if you have some important reason to check your email periodically.
same applies to online tests of various sorts.
Not to me. When the stakes of winning are so damn valuable, sometimes literally so, it would be patently stupid to not cheat and increase your odds of winning.
Remember: Cheating is only a problem if you're caught. If you're never caught, cheating is completely legitimate.
These aren't games of pleasure, played for the sake of playing chess. These are games played for the sake of winning. Prize money, ELO, fame and renown, etc. When the only thing that matters is winning, you gain nothing by playing honestly.
The cop does better in his job by meeting his quota of speeding tickets, so it objectively makes sense that he would issue you a speeding ticket every day with no evidence and over your strenuous objections... except you wouldn't object because the cop is working the system rationally. Yeah, right. Anyway, the lawyer you hired to work through this issue in court would of course inflate the number of hours he worked on your case, because why wouldn't he, he'd be an idiot not to!
Can't wait for you to apply for you YC investment, you make a great business partner, so rational and all.
Once a set of rules are defined, competitions and tournaments within those rules are meant to determine the best people in that game.
When a player cheats, and rationalizes it as "only matters if you get caught", that means the cheater is playing by different sets of rules from his opponent. They are playing literally different games. If the two opponents are playing different games, it completely undermines the purpose of the competition.
100% disagree.
Legitimate would mean condoning cheating. Which then means everyone should be allowed to use engines, which then would mean engine vs engine, which we already have.
Human vs human no augmentation.
I don't agree with blanket statements like that but I think there's a kernel of truth in your mindset that many people are oblivious to.
Chess, as a competitive game with meaningful stakes, is obsolete. It became obsolete when the first computer outplayed the reigning human champion, and it's been gradually becoming more obvious. Recent events have started to demonstrate precisely why: people are becoming better at cheating at chess way faster than they're getting better at playing chess.
Yes, many can square this circle in their own heads and convince themselves that anything goes. Some, like Lance Armstrong, will enrich themselves enormously. But none of them will have “won”.
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> While that statement may seem discouraging, it has been borne out in modern chess.
> Greats like Fischer, Kasparov, Carlsen, and almost all of the modern GMs who have been established as top five players, were notable GMs by age 15 at the latest
Wow.
Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19 and is still ranked World No. 9 currently (at age 52). Ding Liren (Current No. 2) became a GM at 17. Grischuk (currently No. 17, peak No.3) became a GM at 17. All three have crossed 2800 ELO at some point.
I hope this is not the sort of analysis that chess.com has run in the other 71 pages of the report.
At the age of 18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand#Early_chess_...
Also, according 2700chess.com he was #96 in the world with a rating of 2520 on January 1988. That's right after turning 18. Growing up in India (before the chess boom). Before chess engines existed. 6 months later he was #49 in the world. https://2700chess.com/players/anand
A year earlier (at 17), he had won the world junior chess championship (U-20). Not exactly a "strange meteoric rise" for Anand. The "GM at 18".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Junior_Chess_Championshi...
Meanwhile, at the same age of 18 (already during his covid boost), on July of 2021, Hans Niemann was #20 among all juniors (U-20), with a rating of 2571. Close to #300 on the global rating list: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2093596/tophttps://ratings.fide.com/profile/2000059
Unlike Anand, no achievements of note until then (ok, he was 9th at U-16 World Youth Chess Championships in 2019). A year later he's a top 40 player, hanging out with the best and beating the (incredibly dominating) world champion with the black pieces. Make it make sense.
Also, take a look at this analysis of correlation between average (and stddev) of move accuracy vs rating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnJ0Da4Rp0 - explained in the detail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nEFaRdwZY - analysis applied to several players
Even the graphs look a lot like copy-paste jobs from excel, which is fine obviously, but not the sort of thing I'd expect competent scientists/data-scientists/developers to be doing, especially for a big public report where some of the formatting issues are just about readability and basic presentation quality. Like Figures F and G (page 14) ... why are they styled so differently? Same question applies to many of the graphs, which isn't to mention label font sizes either.
Beyond that, yea I'd say good amounts of the data and logic are pretty basic and wouldn't be surprising from an amateur on the internet. The main thing chess.com have seems to be their Strength Score algorithm, which IMO is probably developed and maintained by a team different from the one that prepared this report.
This is confusing correlation and causation.
One thing that people don't realize is the sheer amount of money required to become a "GM". You have to get a certain number of "norms" from FIDE and the requirements list is a PITA: https://chessgoals.com/how-to-get-a-grandmaster-norm/
If you don't have a lot of money and a lot of free time to go to a lot of chess tournaments around the world, you are not getting a "GM" title in this day and age. This favors children (few time constraints) with rich parents (lots of coaching along with the ability to travel).
The problem is that if you aren't a "chess prodigy" by 15 it generally isn't worth continuing to pursue--what does sinking the resources into being a "GM" get you at the end? If you're one of the "Chess Gods", you have entry into the tournaments anyway, and, if you're not, it doesn't really matter.
It’s an absolutely ridiculous basis to make a claim.
Since cheating is arguable habit forming, he simply based his career on cheating. Where others put in the mileage, he invested in his cheating expertise.
Is this an accurate statement given that, because of this report, we are now aware that a lot of other GMs have cheated as well?
If, for some reason, you decided to drop your budding music/engineering/whatever career at age 20 to focus entirely on chess, and you had the natural aptitude to be able to become a GM, perhaps it could happen. But rarely would a person decide to do that, if they had not prior to that point.
I think both effects have something to do with it.
Finally he gets on a NFL roster as 3rd string for St Louis. Cleveland skips picking him in the expansion draft. The Rams sign a different starting QB and trade away #2 QB leaving Warner as the backup. The starter gets hurt and with basically no first team practices Warner gets named the starter.
After all that and starting for the first time in the NFL at age 28 he has one of the best statistical seasons ever for QB and wins the MVP and Superbowl. Goes on to win the MVP again and has a 10 year HOF career.
If we apply Chess.com's logic he's the biggest cheater that ever cheated. But obviously he's not because you can't really cheat at QB in the NFL.
Totally unnecessary sentence that just leads to derailment (like in this subthread).
I haven't gone over the report thoroughly, but it's clearly focused on Hans's conduct and not so much on the state of play regarding online cheating, which is, even by Magnus's statement, the chief focus of all of this.
As an outsider to the chess world, this revelation of rampant online cheating is the main story.
First, not surprising, right? Using a computer engine is part of learning and preparing in chess (AFAICT). What other sport has a similar issue where an extremely useful and essential and highly available tool in the sport is considered cheating based entirely on using it within the narrow window of a game? Of course it was going to leak into play in online games where you only have the data feed of moves and nothing else connecting the players.
Second, that it's common amongst the elite of the sport is huge. Either online chess is somewhat dead on arrival as a sport and was never taken seriously by many players (which makes sense to me given how integrated computer engines are in the sport) ... or the chess world needs to go through some sort of cultural revolution here.
Third, chess.com have a conflict of interest in this meta-discussion, I presume, as they have commercial interests in the survival of online chess.
Fourth, the OTB cheating question still seems open and it seems plausible to me that a good chess player would cheat online for followers and income and entrance to tournaments and then use OTB as the real testing ground. My bias here is that I suspect cheating in OTB is just crazy by comparison as you'd have to carry some sort of device that would stand as hard evidence of cheating while in online play the proof is always circumstantial and so easier for a cheater to convince themselves they won't get caught. Which gets back to my second and third points about how online chess maybe doesn't make much sense and chess.com aren't quite seeing the forest for the trees on this.
Pretty much every e-sport with hidden information has this issue. CS:GO, DotA2, SC2. They all have replay analyzers to reveal the map and let you look back to figure out how to play better. But if there was a way to use them in game (map hacks), it'd invalidate the game.
https://fanbuzz.com/mlb/sammy-sosa-corked-bat/
Really? My takeaway is that chess.com is doing a better job of detecting cheaters than FIDE, who seem to have been asleep at the wheel with Niemann
> Fourth, the OTB cheating question still seems open and it seems plausible to me that a good chess player would cheat online for followers and income and entrance to tournaments and then use OTB as the real testing ground.
This seems wildly implausible to me. Niemann‘s OTB rise would be indicative of a not just significant but utterly world historic chess mind, head-and-shoulders above Fisher and head-shoulders-and-entire-torso above every other player in history. When led into uncharted territory by the world chess champion, Magnus indicated that Niemann seemed utterly and completely untroubled - and yet he’s, what, running stockfish in another window for $1000 prizes online and getting himself caught dozens of times? Why? Why take the risk against opponents he should beat in his sleep? These should have been sleepwalk games for this Fisher++ genius who’s totally untroubled by a 5 time world chess championship, but he’s for some reason making obviously weaker moves when not switching windows when his unaided moves shouldn’t have been screamingly weaker than the aided ones given his singularly extraordinary chess rise.
It beggars belief. His world historic rise in rating alone is ludicrously over the top. Kid’s an obvious fraud.
> In conclusion, while we cannot definitively prove that Hans’ rise in strength is entirely “natural,” we have also found no indications in the game data to suggest otherwise. While some have suggested that a move-by-move analysis by humans may surface some oddities in move choice or analysis, there is nothing in our statistical investigation to raise any red flags regarding Hans’ OTB play and rise.
Seems like you gotta beat Magnus for your cheating to matter?! Snark aside, Magnus’s behaviour makes some sense, he wants this to be addressed. But the manner in which it is happening, his conduct included, is just poor form for the sport, even if it was the best overall move Magnus could make.
Therefore, Neimann.
In Magnus' recent interview with Lex Fridman, he said though members of his team utilize engines in preparation, it's not something he personally uses very much if at all in his training. In fact he seems to think training against engines can be detrimental.
---
Transcript from: https://steno.ai/lex-fridman-podcast-10/315-magnus-carlsen-g...
Lex: How much do you use engines like Leela and Stockfish in your preparations?
Magnus: My team does. Personally, I try not to use them too much on on my own because I know that when I play you can obviously cannot have help from from engines and often I feel like often having imperfect or knowledge about a position or some engine knowledge can be a lot worse than than having no knowledge. So I try to look at engines as little as possible.
Lex: So yeah, so your team uses them for research for generation of ideas but you are relying primarily on your human resources.
Mangus: Yeah, for sure... I can evaluate as a human. I can know what they find unpleasant and so on and it's very often the case for me to some extent... And so then looking at the engines doesn't necessarily help because at that point you're facing a human, you have to sort of think as a human.
But ...
1) Magnus is one of the greatest ever, so he doesn't count as an example;
2) From excerpt, his *team* does use engines, and he *uses his team*. So his use of engines is one degree removed compared to others, which hardly matters, especially given point 1 above.
Cheating is particularly easy in any online context and those who dismiss the notion that online sports and gambling aren't infected with it are simply naive. People cheat in competitive bass fishing where all you have to do is cut the fish open to catch them ...
How is this a conflict of interest? It's just regular old interest. They are interested in Chess continuing to grow.
> At the outset, we want to make clear that while these events highlight a critical topic in chess—cheating the vast majority of chess games do not involve any cheating. We estimate that fewer than 0.14% of players on Chess.com ever cheat, and that our events are by and large free from cheating. We firmly believe that cheating in chess is rare, preventable, and much less pervasive than is currently being portrayed in the media
Your average person playing blitz while seated on the toilet has little incentive to cheat, particularly if it involves setting up real time access to a powerful engine ... One expects almost no cheating in such an environment.
What if the numbers are: 1/700 cheat, but 1/7 GMs cheat ...?
So he was re-banned for absolutely no reason.
He kept his side of the deal, i.e. not cheat again on chess.com platform. Chess.com didn’t keep theirs.
Either way, chess.com kept their side of the deal, their side of the deal was "and we can ban you at any time in the future for any reason or even no reason whatsoever". Frankly that strikes me as a very fair term in a deal for reinstating a admitted cheaters access to your tournaments with large cash prizes...
As stated in the report, the reason he was banned again was that the insinuations from Magnus caused the chess.com team to reevaluate whether or not they could trust him not to cheat going forward, especially with an upcoming tournament with a million dollar prize on the horizon. After this reevaluation, they decided their previous leniency was unwarranted.
But the document paints a different picture. He cheated, and they agreed to re-enable his account if he promised to not cheat again.
According to chess.com he kept his promise. So why the sudden new ban?
I would agree with you that the initial cheating was enough for lifetime ban. But chess.com decided against it at the time.
Reconsidering their decision 2 years later without new evidence, is kind of shitty.
Dead Comment
If somebody has a prodigious history of not playing by the rules, there is no reason to think they'll ever reform, and it isn't worth the reputational damage to the game both within (Magnus) and without (the public's perception of high-end chess). This has been a fiasco when they should have just banned Neiman once it became clear that he's been consistently cheating for years.
Is Chess.com gonna reveal similar reports for every other player or is this privilege only for those who are accused by a chess.com part owner of OTB cheating.
I can understand their online tournaments being something they care about and why they might rescind an invitation based on these allegations but there's something very strange about them taking it upon themselves to ban him from the platform as a result of his play against someone whose company they're in the process of buying.[1]
It seems to me as though they're inserting themselves into this unnecessarily with their analysis too. They spend a great deal of time explaining their rationale in a few places and then toss in a "In our view, no conclusions should be made from this data." at the end of it. If no conclusions should be drawn, don't bother sharing the data; it's useless. By sharing it in this manner, they are attempting to pretend it's reliable and effectively make the accusation with an out to claim they didn't.
This part too:
An uncharitable reading is that this is a very honest statement. Magnus may not have directly influenced their decisions but I think it would be hard to argue they don't have a vested interest in this for the reasons above. IMO this is a clear conflict and they should have simply withdrawn his invitation, even suspended him from their platform, but refrained from commenting on the over-the-board controversy entirely.[1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/embedded/announcement?publisher...
I agree. Inline with your comments, the report has to me a bit of the vibe of an PR department scrambling to get ahead of the story. The poorly and inconsistently formatted graphs indicates they were pulled out of various documents written by various people at different times. And the spray and prey arguments that don't go any where make it seem like they're desperate to appear as objective and unbiased as possible ... which indicates that they are very biased in their urge/need to respond to the "Magnus refuses to play with Hans" situation.
If their cheating detection is so good, wouldn't it be reasonable for chess.com to say to Magnus that you don't have to worry about cheating in our tournaments so you'll play whoever you're paired with and you can leave it up to us to ban people because we know what we're talking about. Why ban Hans now, right after Magnus's ultimatum?
They run money tournaments and hope to have top GMs join and advertise their service by playing, streaming, and commentating the tournaments. You really don't see why they would prefer not to have an OTB cheat invited to these events?
Not to say that Hans has been proven to be a cheat, but it does explain why they have to care about cheating in any event, anywhere.
No, I definitely see why they would rescind his invitation. I mention so in my post you're quoting from.
My question is specifically about the "analysis" they performed of the over-the-board game that started all of this off.
As one example, chess.com thinks it’s suspicious that Hans became a grandmaster at 17 instead of a younger age (page 15 of the report), but keep in mind that the legendary Joseph Henry Blackburne didn’t learn to even how to play chess until he was 17. More recently, world champion #15 Vishy Anand did not become a grandmaster until he was 18.
Point being, it argues like a polemic, not a fact-finding report. They themselves admit this. On page 19: “Chess.com is unaware of any concrete evidence proving that Hans is cheating over the board or has ever cheated over the board”.
My personal hurdle, which has not changed in the last month, is real evidence of online cheating on or after June 20, 2021 (Hans’s 18th birthday), or real evidence of over the board cheating. Understating the extent of his online cheating in his September 6 speech is not evidence of recent cheating. I don’t like it, but it might not even be deliberate lying, but a combination of a foggy memory and nerves.
Regardless, while apparently guilty of online cheating when he was 17 or younger, and possibly guilty of understating the extent of his juvenile delinquency, I see no need to ban him from playing over the board chess with the evidence we have on the table. To ban someone as an adult for something done while a juvenile is generally considered immoral, and to ban someone without solid evidence is also considered immoral. This is a line I draw in the sand and will hold to.
I don't think it's so clear, especially when the time elapsed is short.
If you cheated I'm a game we played yesterday and today is your 18th birthday I'm still not going to trust you today.
Would you play him for money at a game where you are both equally skilled and it's easy to cheat?