I don't believe Hans cheated in the Sinquefield Cup, and I do believe he has had a genuine jump in strength. Mostly because he's been able to keep up with world champion MVL in blitz. Cheating in OTB blitz chess is not really feasible at all. Also there's no evidence he cheated and no reason to believe he cheated based on his games. The only "evidence" is that he beat Carlsen with black.
Questions have been raised about his 3rd GM norm, but the jury's still out on that. It wouldn't surprise me if he has cheated in OTB as well in the past, given his shady history and behaviour.
But Carlsen really needs to grow the fuck up. As GM Ben Finegold pointed out, withdrawing from a round robin is a dick move, and it kind of ruins the tournament because players can be forced into a draw in a critical round where they need a win. In addition to that, passive-aggressively withdrawing with a cryptic tweet is not even close to the proper etiquette in response to suspected cheating. And it doesn't even make sense from a chess standpoint. He wasn't going to play Hans again. Withdrawing doesn't give him back any rating points. He obviously had no concrete evidence or Hans would be disqualified, so it's not like he's saving the tournament for the other players. He's just being a self-important jerk.
I'm glad he's declined to defend his title because he's no longer capable of being an ambassador for the sport. He only cares about himself(which was basically his explanation for declining) He's also gotten in bed with illegal gambling sites, trying to turn the Norwegian Chess Federation into a lobby organisation for the gambling industry(luckily he failed).
I say this as someone who grew up idolising Magnus Carlsen. I did 2 years ago, even 18 months ago. Not anymore.
I understand that. My point was that if he can keep up with the literal WC in blitz, it's extremely likely that the strength displayed by him in the Sinquefield cup was in fact genuine. People aren't usually hundreds of ELO points stronger in blitz than in classical. At least not at the GM level. Again, actually looking at his games from this tournament leaves no reason to suspect cheating.
The whole thing just sucks. I think Hans probably didn’t cheat in St Louis. I think his past online cheating has cast a cloud over what would otherwise be an amazing win over Magnus.
It should also be stressed that Hans isn’t somebody who came in off the street and started beating MVL and Magnus out of the blue. He has been known in chess circles for the better part of a decade as a promising junior. It’s not as if people think he lacks the basic capacity to go toe to toe with the champ and stand a chance. It’s hardly like he pulled the wool over peoples eyes for this long. Like you said, cheating in OTB blitz isn’t viable.
He’s a high level grandmaster who happens to have a history of cheating.
With Kasparov himself saying that the Carlson's opening with white was weak, and there not being a shred of actual evidence of the cheating. I'm leaning towards the witch hunt theory.
Why should I think otherwise? All grandmasters have had surprise loses now and again, right?
Chess.com made a public statement after his comments, effectively saying he wasn’t honest and had cheated far more extensively than he had admitted. They banned him and said that they shared the evidence with him in private, and it would be up to him to respond to it.
So either chess.com is wrong, despite having a pretty good ability to detect cheating, or Hans is lying. I’m inclined to believe the latter.
Chess.com is also 25% or so owned by Magnus’s company.
Also, if chess.com had all this evidence why did they wait until after Magnus’s cryptic tweet to act on it? Do they only run their algorithms on games after Magnus makes cryptic comments on players playing the games?
The far more obvious reason is that they took these actions because they don’t want to potentially lose Magnus and his company’s involvement in the tournament.
This didn’t make sense to me. His reasons for cheating were because he wanted to play higher rated players. However I’ve seen many rated players get up there on like 2 hours. He said he does nothing for two years but play. One side very patient, other very impatient..
Banned twice to be clear means he cheated far more than twice, it more means there were two major periods in his life where he was cheating and chess.com banning him recently implies there was very likely a third period more recently.
That being said I do think it’s unlikely he cheated in Sinquefield. I should stress that OTB cheating and online cheating are indeed psychologically different. One can be a momentary lapse in judgement which can be a slippery slope, the other requires extensive pre-meditation and is more likely to be detected.
This is my essential problem with Magnus’s actions. What is he going to walk out of every tournament where somebody who cheated at 16 plays in? Is that how we as a community address the problem of cheating? Passive-aggressive gestures against people caught for cheating in the past that pull uninvolved people into your drama?
And only do that after losing... Which is the part that makes him look bad. On other hand I don't think there is a way to look good in this situation. Other than just to shut up and play.
Cheating is a huge issue in online chess. Sites like chess.com have teams that hunt it. That being said, chess.com should probably release the evidence.
No, but they reviewed his history after the accusations and found him to be lying and misrepresenting himself.
So, if we take chess.com at their word and he is lying, we have a person who is a "former" cheater, who is currently actively lying about the scope of their cheating.
It's not conclusive by any means, but this is a far cry from "nothing to see here"
Chess.com must be really struggling for money if they have to wait for a non accusation of OTB cheating to run their anti-cheating algorithms on a player’s games.
Which they obviously aren’t. Which means that they have found nothing new in the “review”.
The more obvious answer is that Magnus is pissed, and as a part owner of chess.com and biggest draw in tennis, chess.com wants his continued participation and so is kicking Hans out.
They may have justification for it, but it was clearly not enough of a justification to act on before Magnus decided to get all pissy on losing.
They are intentionally opaque but I believe chesscom is using some browser tracking like checking if you’re tabbing out as a form of rudimentary anti cheat, and they can detect things like ban evasion and players using an alt.
For the most part they’re working off public information though.
Whether Hans cheated OtB is not really the main issue although most commenters get hung up on it.
Occam’s Razor suggests we should strongly believe he didn’t cheat OTB.
The bigger issue is that known cheaters create a cloud of suspicion that puts their opponents at a huge disadvantage. Magnus has spoken about this before - if you think someone might be cheating you can’t concentrate on chess.
This suspicion can be allayed with extra security but that extra security was only deployed after Magnus left.
> Whether Hans cheated OtB is not really the main issue although most commenters get hung up on it.
It’s not only the main issue. It’s pretty much the sole issue. The only other one I can see is how harshly Magnus should be sanctioned by FIDE for leaving a tournament without a valid reason and his little stint on Twitter.
> The bigger issue is that known cheaters create a cloud of suspicion that puts their opponents at a huge disadvantage. […] This suspicion can be allayed with extra security but that extra security was only deployed after Magnus left.
Magnus knew perfectly well how the game would be played and security was more than adequate before this game. Tournaments takes preventing cheating very seriously and the Sinquefield Cup is no exception.
There are tons of viable methods for cheating. I’ve heard the method of taking a break on a balcony and having a conspirator flash singles at you with car headlights. Or a cheating device in your shoes, or hidden in even more private places.
The point being is that if Hans really wanted to cheat OTB the security measures to stop him are rather inadequate. More theatre than anything.
Do I think he cheated OTB? No but he could have. There will always be that raised suspicion, that extra degree of doubt given Han’s repututation.
Maybe then we should increase security level in these events. Demand all the players to be naked, in locked rooms. With full body cavity search. Just to exclude any possibility. Do not them leave until game is over. Bucket can be provided if needed...
This person has been caught cheating in the past several times including for prize money tournament so it's much more likely they have cheated many other times and were not caught.
There are many ways you could cheat in a OTB match, most people don't understand how easy it would be, one of the ways you can tell someone is cheating is that they don't understand why their move was good, often computer lines are very unintuitive and moves sacrificing a piece without any positional or tactical compensation mean it has found an idea that requires calculating more moves ahead than any human can.
In the post game analysis hans gave, it was terrible, lines that he suggested often being 1 or 2 move blunders, not expanding on insanely complicated positions, but simply claiming "the chess speaks for itself" and misevaluating who is winning in many variations that were shown, often when deciding between two different lines how well you evaluate the end position is critical to picking the correct line.
I don't know if hans did cheat in this tournament, but if he didn't then he was quite actively giving the impression to the other players that he was, which has would give a huge psychological advantage, not because the opponent "can't concentrate on chess", but because if your opponent is offering you pawns or a piece for "free", in a game against a human you will take it, in a game against an engine taking it means you have already lost.
> if you think someone might be cheating you can’t concentrate on chess
I wonder how young players can concentrate on chess when they know if they suddenly win over the King then top chess entities can ban them from chess? And the fan base of the King will run after them all over the internet with threats?
Magnus just wanted to be more than a chess King. Evidently, it means being less than a honest human.
He hasn’t even said anything. All he has done is taken cryptic unexplained actions and released cryptic unexplained tweets.
If Magnus believes Hans cheated (again, that’s a big if because Magnus hasn’t said anything) and Magnus is actually correct that he cheated, even in that situation Magnus’s entire set of actions since he lost have been highly dishonest, since his entire communication strategy has been to leave cryptic messages that people can read anything into, without yet having made any clarifying statements.
I believe most people understand that chess.com are working off statistics and best faith efforts but can be mistaken.
Moreover chess.com saying they cheated on their website is a wholly separate issue than if Hans cheated OTB. There’s plenty of room to believe that chess.com is being sincere but that Hans may be innocent of both recent allegations, especially the OTB cheating allegation.
His "constitutional right"? This is a joke, right? Please say yes. Please tell me it doesn't have to be explained that there's no "constitutional right" to use a chess website.
This whole thing has been extremely ugly. At the core I think one thing needs to be stressed. An accusation of cheating in a game like chess is potentially career ending. It's an extremely heavy thing to throw at another player.
There seems to be no evidence that Niemann cheated OTB (his cheating as a 12-15 y/o online I do not take as evidence of anything, as a zoomer socialised on internet gaming he has the misfortune of having his misbehaviors better documented than older generations, it's to me comparable to famous esports players who used to cheat as kids online)
Magnus has not made a clear accusation but just withdrew and posted a meme insinuating cheating, which is awful because that ambiguity in itself creates drama. Any player should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. World Champions should speak with clarity instead of trolling.
The online social media and twitch coverage of the event throws fuel on the fire by creating incentives to milk the entire thing for views, chess coverage degenerates more and more into internet gossip and drama, it's unbecoming for the game. Unlike most people I think the recent surge in popularity has not been good for the professionalism of the game.
I haven't followed very closely, but isn't it only in the past 1-2 years some top players have also become popular streamers/youtubers? And they are becoming more and more popular. Which would imply that there will be more and more useless drama like this in the future.
it’s not that unusual. Tigran L. Petrosian[1] - a grandmaster - was caught cheating in a competitive online game fairly recently, and plenty of drama ensued
I’m more concerned by the reaction of supposedly pro players than by the actual events. The whole thing was handled very childishly by the community as whole. I was very thankful for the MVL interview which showed that some sanity might prevail but I fear irreparable damage have been done to the reputation of the game.
I think the world champion withdrawing from a major tournament and accusing a young player of cheating seemingly out of spite causing an overall very childish reaction in the community as a whole will tarnish the reputation of the game significantly, yes.
I don’t think chess is in any risk of disappearing but it was on a significantly upward trajectory when it comes to popularity that this kind of antic may noticeably dent if not reverse.
I think there is two pronged issues here. First is reputation of the players involved. Specially those attacking.
And then overall putting even the events in question. If he cheated? Who else have cheated? And how common is cheating? Could it even be that the popular names are cheaters too? After all it takes one to know one...
Don't some big chess players own a stake in chess.com?
Is part of the drama a kind of unbalance of power. Where those with power in the community exerts more influence and benefit more from their influence.
Could owning chess platforms be seen as a conflict of interest in a professional sporting frame of mind?
Which makes all the comments using chess.com’s actions as evidence kind of pointless.
That being said, Magnus is the biggest draw in chess. So even if he didn’t have part ownership of chess.com, most tournaments would be willing to sacrifice a rather unlikable and unknown player to not piss off Magnus.
I think this is horrible behavior from Carlsen. He flubbed the opening and got into a bad position, then throws a temper tantrum insinuating that his opponent was cheating. If you make an accusation like that and it's proven to be false you should be suspended from tournament play.
There is simply no proof, or even a hint of proof, that Niemann did anything wrong. Carlsen, however, is a drama queen with an enormous ego who is using his power to slander another player.
I would argue many chess players have the ability to casually gauge cheating, but few have the background in things like statistics to really have a solid handle on the subject. So usually people leave cheat detection to the big websites. It’s a minor genre of chess video content for a savvy content creator to use their OSINT skills to detect cheating, for the viewers to marvel at the skill-less cheating, to report the player, and for everybody to marvel at the ban.
The issue is that nobody can really tell if a single game was cheated on, it’s just not enough data to provide sufficient evidence of cheating. I’ve seen non-cheaters play games where every move is 100% the same as stockfish’s recommendation because the winning line was incredibly forced.
Questions have been raised about his 3rd GM norm, but the jury's still out on that. It wouldn't surprise me if he has cheated in OTB as well in the past, given his shady history and behaviour.
But Carlsen really needs to grow the fuck up. As GM Ben Finegold pointed out, withdrawing from a round robin is a dick move, and it kind of ruins the tournament because players can be forced into a draw in a critical round where they need a win. In addition to that, passive-aggressively withdrawing with a cryptic tweet is not even close to the proper etiquette in response to suspected cheating. And it doesn't even make sense from a chess standpoint. He wasn't going to play Hans again. Withdrawing doesn't give him back any rating points. He obviously had no concrete evidence or Hans would be disqualified, so it's not like he's saving the tournament for the other players. He's just being a self-important jerk.
I'm glad he's declined to defend his title because he's no longer capable of being an ambassador for the sport. He only cares about himself(which was basically his explanation for declining) He's also gotten in bed with illegal gambling sites, trying to turn the Norwegian Chess Federation into a lobby organisation for the gambling industry(luckily he failed).
I say this as someone who grew up idolising Magnus Carlsen. I did 2 years ago, even 18 months ago. Not anymore.