[HN Gopher] Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster 'Likely C...
___________________________________________________________________
Chess Investigation Finds U.S. Grandmaster 'Likely Cheated' More
Than 100 Times
Author : freefal
Score : 190 points
Date : 2022-10-04 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Cheating at 3+2 games while streaming? How's it is even possible
| to input all moves/positions into a chess program in parallel too
| main game and also while commenting? IMO it is impossible without
| some very specialized software or external assistance who would
| do the clicks. And how does he cheat in over the board events?
| beardyw wrote:
| It is very easy indeed. Stockfish would be an immense help.
| Best moves are calculated progressively, that is they are
| refined over a few seconds. Inexperienced players are given
| away by delaying over obvious moves waiting for the best move.
| It is definitely not rocket science. You can download and run
| Stockfish yourself. I think chess.com possibly runs it in the
| browser.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I know the basics how to do it, it is rather obvious. I just
| feel that operating two boards manually is really a chore,
| and definitely not while streaming.
| Bud wrote:
| Are you familiar with professional Starcraft II? Those guys
| are executing ten moves PER SECOND. While streaming.
|
| This is two to four orders of magnitude faster than chess
| players in a classical game. One to two orders of magnitude
| faster than blitz.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| StarCraft players also aren't really thinking, all micro
| is mostly almost reflexes. Chess does require way more
| analysis, so if you are on a very short time limit,
| checking up with an engine and operating it would eat all
| your time.
| perihelions wrote:
| Computer vision for chess is widely available (and very
| useful!)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19563768 ( _"
| Chessvision.ai - Analyze chess position from websites, images
| or video"_, 49 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21162466 ( _" Show HN:
| ChessBoss - enhancing physical chessboards with computer
| vision"_, 36 comments)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Things that are easy for some members of HN crowd are likely
| not that easy for a 19yo person who's only notable
| achievement in life so far is being really good at chess
| (well, presumably). Such software also doesn't explain his
| OTB results, which are consistent with his online results.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Some OTB tournaments allow players to go to the bathroom
| with their phone, others allow audience in same room - so
| an accomplice (such as Hans' coach Maxim Dlugy - another
| admitted cheat) could relay moves via signal. I've seen
| suggestion on Hiraku's channel that current scanning for
| players for communication devices is sub-par, although Hans
| has offered to play naked to disprove that theory (some
| porno site is calling his bluff by offering him $1M to
| actually do it). Anal beads? I dunno ...
|
| Magnus has estimated it would usually only take one or two
| computer corrections per game for himself to play
| perfectly, so we're not talking about every move, just at
| key points. Apparently even just an indication that there
| is some key/winning move at a given point, without
| indicating what it is, is enough for the player to stop and
| put in the time to find it.
| ccooffee wrote:
| Here's a story from Reddit about someone using these systems
| during over-the-board play to cheat: https://www.reddit.com/r
| /BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xigy...
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Human assistant?
| Version467 wrote:
| I don't know how market leading chess cheating software works,
| but it's not that hard to imagine that it just captures the
| screen, or scrapes the moves in any number of ways
| automatically is it? I'm sure it's not needed to manually type
| in all the moves.
|
| As to how he'd cheat over the board, that's the big question.
| There are a couple of theories floating around, some more
| realistic than others, but if we knew for sure than this whole
| debacle would already be over.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Anyway his over the board results are more or less consistent
| with his online results, so either he has invented some
| cheating method that had evaded detection for many years at
| top level events, or that he is really good on his own.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I mean, probably the worst way to cheat is 'mindlessly'. If
| you're doing nothing more than 'transcribing' moves from
| one client to the other, sure. But if I'm cheating and
| trying to figure out maximum ROI, I'm looking at what the
| computer did for me, trying to understand it and figure it
| out. That way I can learn and get better myself, as well as
| talk/bluff intelligently about why "I" might have made a
| certain move.
| bluecalm wrote:
| 3+2 is a lot of time to input the moves several times over and
| prepare coffee in the meantime. Seriously, it's not a slightest
| problem for a competent online blitz player.
|
| OTB cheating: there are many possible ways. The simplest one
| being having a script reading the moves from the live broadcast
| and feeding them to an engine and then sending the info to the
| player. Hans' strength magically decreased in the Sinquefield
| cup once broadcast delay was introduced for example.
| energyy wrote:
| > Hans' strength magically decreased in the Sinquefield cup
| once broadcast delay was introduced for example.
|
| This might be the solution. But then on-site audience would
| need to be monitored as well.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Hans' strength magically decreased in the Sinquefield cup
| once broadcast delay was introduced for example.
|
| So you discount a possibility that the controversy and
| allegations against him had at least _some_ effect in him
| playing worse in the Sinquefield Cup?
|
| Anyway, there were studies out there that there were no
| statistical differences in his rating gains in tournaments
| broadcasted with delays and without it. Study by Kenneth
| Regan also found no irregularities in his play, so the only
| 'evidence' of him using computer help are allegations by a
| company that is in business relationship with Carlsen, and
| his 'bad' analysis in post game interview. I'm not very
| impressed.
| jsnell wrote:
| > Anyway, there were studies out there that there were no
| statistical differences in his rating gains in tournaments
| broadcasted with delays and without it.
|
| It is exactly the opposite of what you claim: there is a
| massive statistical aberration in his performance of
| broadcast tournaments vs. non-broadcast. He is _200 Elo_
| higher in the former.
|
| https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?p=933597&sid=1fd
| 7...
|
| You're clearly very invested in this case. How can you
| possibly be getting the polarity of the evidence wrong?
| Bud wrote:
| Yet earlier in this thread, you were incredulous about even
| the possibility that a chess game state could be entered
| into software or communicated during play. Which is clearly
| a ludicrously blind statement. So pardon us if it's hard to
| be particularly impressed by, well, whatever you are
| impressed or not impressed by. Because you don't seem to
| have much grasp on the basics involved, here.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Which is clearly a ludicrously blind statement.
|
| This statement came from an experiment I conducted. I
| just tried playing lichess 3+2 game while running a
| nearby chess.com/analysis on a second display. ...
|
| ... and I was barely keeping up with all the clicks, and
| in the endgame was unable to keep up. So no, efficient
| cheating in fast games requires at least a special
| training, and better some automated software to keep up
| with the moves and to communicate best moves back to
| player.
| bmacho wrote:
| This is the most interesting part for me:
| Computers have "nearly infallible tactical calculation," the
| report says, and are capable of beating even the best human every
| single time. The report says dozens of grandmasters have been
| caught cheating on the website, including four of the top-100
| players in the world who confessed.
|
| I can't really comment it, but I leave it here if you haven't
| read the article.
| wisnoskij wrote:
| I can 100% garenty you that anyone interested enouhg to get
| into the top 50k chess players is going to be interested enough
| in chess to want to play around with a chess engine, and why
| not use it in the most convenient way possible, to play a few
| chess.com matches with it.
| shagie wrote:
| Gift link - https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-cheating-hans-
| niemann-rep...
| whartung wrote:
| So, I'm not much of a chess person, much less a competitive chess
| person.
|
| Can the "over the board" cheating potential be reduced with a 5
| minute "tape delay" of broadcasting the game? Is that enough time
| to thwart the influence of an external signal?
|
| Seems to me the only way this person can redeem himself is
| through over the board play under strict conditions ("Come
| dressed in shorts, a t-shirt and sandals").
|
| But I don't know if how long they're allowed per move, and if 5
| minutes is enough time to thwart external influence.
| sh4rks wrote:
| The delay would have to be a lot longer than 5 minutes. It's
| not uncommon for players to take 30+ mins on a single move in
| OTB chess.
|
| Also, if your cheating device allows you to somehow input chess
| positions, then you wouldn't even require an external signal.
| Though it would be extremely impressive if somebody could pull
| that off.
| umvi wrote:
| Depends on the game type and cheating type.
|
| If blitz type game where players have <5 minutes to decide a
| move, then yes, delayed broadcast might be effective. Other
| game types allow for >5 minutes per move so tape delay would be
| ineffective since cheater could just stall.
|
| Cheating type also matters. There's external help (friend in
| the audience communicating 1 or more bits of information via
| auditory, optical, radio, or some other signal), and there's
| also internal help (raspberry pi zero + battery and pressure
| sensor embedded in your shoe or something). There are so many
| ways to cheat that it's hard to enumerate all of them let alone
| prevent all of them.
| Hamcha wrote:
| In blitz, 5 minutes totally would work, in classical chess I
| have my doubts.
|
| The Sinquefield Cup (the tournament where the drama started)
| added a 15 minute delay which would be much more noticeable and
| less forgiving.
| robswc wrote:
| That's a question I was going to ask. Sure, not _every_ move
| is 5 min, but wouldn't a 5 min delay almost ensure any
| cheater would play mostly more than 5 min, each turn?
| (besides some simple moves, ofc)
|
| Or is it that they only need to cheat at a few points where
| taking more than 5 min wouldn't be abnormal at all?
| cantaloupe wrote:
| The latter. The article briefly points out that cheating on
| only a few moves can give one grandmaster a significant
| advantage, which makes cheating difficult to detect. In
| discussion of a previous article, some HN commenters
| suggested that even having a binary "be careful here"
| signal based on a chess engine could make a big difference.
| robswc wrote:
| So one could take on average ~5 min per move. On any
| moves they want help with, they could wait out the 5 min
| and have an accomplice send the signal?
|
| Honestly, it does seem next to impossible to stop a
| dedicated cheater if any feedback makes it out of the
| room in a reasonable amount of time.
| bombcar wrote:
| It might work if there are _no_ spectators live in person.
| Otherwise you can easily have someone in person relaying the
| information to a computer, or you have to search everyone, not
| just the players.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| If it happened, I don't think it happened realtime.
|
| Given sufficient notoriety and money involved, it would be
| possible to just hire someone to essentially run a training
| model of alpha zero against moves specifically selected to be
| likely to be made by Magnus, and then all you really need is
| memorization of key scenarios (which for a good chess person
| should be no problem) to identify the right move to make.
| bombcar wrote:
| That specific scenario is just considered normal good prep
| - they will even play games against people who "play" their
| opponent's openings. That's all well known but you can't
| memorize enough to make a major difference.
| ianferrel wrote:
| I don't think that what you described is cheating.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Keep this in mind(!)
|
| Magnus Carlsen is a majority shareholder in chess.com.
| MAXPOOL wrote:
| The next _' move'_ for cheaters is to use chess computers in a
| way that passes _' Chess Turing Test'_ and makes cheating
| indistinguishable from normal human play under analysis.
|
| When there is money in the game, there is incentive to cheat.
|
| > The report says dozens of grandmasters have been caught
| cheating on the website, including four of the top-100 players in
| the world who confessed.
|
| There are probably smart cheaters already playing who are able to
| evade detection.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Cheat detection isn't done by only by move analysis, but by an
| extensive profiling of a person and games based on many factors
| beyond even just the moves. For instance one of the easiest
| ways to catch a weak player cheating is move times. Such a
| player will have no idea whether a move is trivial or works
| only due to an exceptionally precise and lengthy series of
| counter-intuitive calculations that no human could do without a
| significant think. And so they'll tend to rely both in
| approximately the same amount of time.
|
| Even during the Carlsen-Niemann game it was meta-factors that
| initially clued Carlsen in. Niemann was playing without any
| significant effort or tension, in spite of playing in a game
| where he was outplaying the world champion. And after the game
| he was unable to explain his own ideas, proposed ideas that
| were simply losing, referenced games that did not exist, and
| was generally (relative to the class of player here) clueless.
| None of that final section is definitive proof of cheating to
| say the least, but it helps create a probabilistic profile of a
| player (and a game).
|
| The point of this is that even a computer that played human-
| like (which I would argue will not happen for the distantly
| foreseeable future), would be just one factor among many in
| busting cheaters. I expect this is why Magnus was also
| initially reluctant to directly accuse him of cheating. He
| _felt_ he was cheating based on the meta-factors and probably
| got folks more capable than himself to evaluate the technical
| factors, and when that also came up as a redflag - yeah, the
| dude 's a cheater.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This is exactly how I get clued in on how someone is cheating
| in a shooting game I play.
|
| You can tell how experienced someone is based off the gun
| they use (some are stronger than others), whether they use
| cover or just run out into open spaces and shoot, how they
| move, whether they use 'gadgets' like grenades, and so on. A
| lot of novice players don't even use the sprint function to
| run.
|
| When someone who literally just walks around the map but can
| laser everyone with headshots (which have a significant
| damage multiplier)? They're cheating.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Niemann was playing without any significant effort or
| tension, in spite of playing in a game where he was
| outplaying the world champion.
|
| Carlsen was making mistakes. That wasn't his best game at
| all. Are we sure we aren't talking of this because someone's
| ego was hurt?
|
| > And after the game he was unable to explain his own ideas,
| proposed ideas that were simply losing,
|
| That doesn't mean anything at all
|
| > referenced games that did not exist,
|
| That did exist close enough to the period he mentioned.
| Remembering the position and analysis is necessary,
| remembering when exactly this position happened and even
| between whom exactly is utterly useless.
|
| > and was generally (relative to the class of player here)
| clueless.
|
| He didn't make a clueless impression to me. But I'm not
| Carlsen's fanboy whos accusations can cloud my own reasoning.
| If I was, I'd probably believe that Niemann is a proven
| cheater and would look for facts to confirm that bias.
| bambax wrote:
| > _For instance one of the easiest ways to catch a weak
| player cheating is move times. Such a player will have no
| idea whether a move is trivial or works only due to an
| exceptionally precise and lengthy series of counter-intuitive
| calculations that no human could do without a significant
| think_
|
| Ok, but what prevents the helper to communicate the
| difficulty or the number of minutes to think-pretend as well
| as the move itself?
|
| Everything that can be measured can and will be gamed. That's
| why anti-fraud units are so secretive.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| What happens when it's a strong chess player who is cheating?
|
| Even a strong player can benefit from consulting a computer.
| Chess games can win fail based on a few moves.
|
| A strong player would only need to consult the computer on a
| few moves to get a considerable advantage.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The strongest players would be the "best" cheaters but also
| the least likely to cheat. Top _n_ players for small _n_
| would only need one "this move is important" hint per game
| to significantly improve their rating. Very hard to detect
| of course. But when you hear the actual top players talk
| about chess they genuinely seem interested in playing the
| game and not so much driven by chasing some accomplishment
| of winning. It's quite hard to get to that level without
| having the genuine interest.
|
| But also their games are subject to the most scrutiny and
| study and they themselves will spend a lot of time publicly
| talking about and analyzing their own games, those "cheat"
| moves would stand out as ones which were hard to see and
| had bad explanations after a while.
| z9znz wrote:
| > What happens when it's a strong chess player
|
| A strong chess player would have to weigh the risk of
| losing all their progress and reputation if caught
| cheating.
|
| After this current situation, I expect the penalties for
| being caught cheating will be severe. Whether the cheater
| is banned from all future events or not, nobody will want
| to support them, nobody will want to associate with them,
| and they will essentially be cast out of the entire chess
| world.
| avar wrote:
| > And after the game he was unable to explain his own ideas,
| proposed ideas that were simply losing, referenced games that
| did not exist, and was generally (relative to the class of
| player here) clueless
|
| Aside from Niemann's case, how is it strategically beneficial
| to a chess player to provide the "inside scoop" on his plays?
|
| You're presupposing incompetence, but another explanation
| would be a deliberate strategy to throw off future opponents.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > makes cheating indistinguishable from normal human play under
| analysis.
|
| From what I understand, Niemann got into trouble because people
| thought that he wasn't able to adequately provide the analysis
| i.e. the reasoning behind some of his own moves. You'd need a
| live auxiliary AI to tutor the cheater in how to explain why a
| particular move was made.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Well, that's only one of many reasons. GM Hikaru was laughing
| at him on his channel when replaying that interview with Hans
| - a lot of his answers were strange and deflective. A player
| at this level should be able to fluently describe their
| analysis at any move in the game.
|
| At one point he described one of his own moves as "a weird
| move" without offering any explanation, sounding more as if
| he was observing the move rather than being the one who had
| actually analyzed it and chosen to play it!
| bombcar wrote:
| The best players only need one or two notes, even something as
| simple as "there's a good play here" twice a game could throw
| things dramatically.
|
| That is harder, almost as hard as playing for real, but doable.
| Much easier to just be a mechanical turk for sharkfish or
| whatever it's called.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| You could train a neural network to filter through likely human
| moves from the engine's top recommendations and never get
| caught.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Interesting piece. It highlights how it's hard to differentiate
| between someone genuinely playing at a level higher, and a
| cheater. A few things I noted from this article:
|
| 1. The driving force behind the original accusations is that
| Magnus felt his opponent wasn't "exerting" himself enough,
| compared to other young prodigies.
|
| 2. Chess.com's case is that his results are "statistically
| extraordinary."
|
| 3. There is a history of cheating
|
| 4. Allegations that he admitted cheating privately (though it's
| not clear to whom)
|
| 1, 2, and 3 could easily be cause for suspicion; however, that's
| not the same as evidence. The one crucial piece absent from this
| article is any suggestion of _how_ he cheated.
|
| Without providing a means, I find this piece premature and
| questionable. That said, I don't know anything about chess, lot
| alone cheating at the master level. So maybe the "how" is common
| sense and not difficult?
|
| And of course, there's also this:
|
| > The report also addresses the relationship during the saga
| between Carlsen and Chess.com, which is buying Carlsen's "Play
| Magnus" app for nearly $83 million.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| > it's hard to differentiate between someone genuinely playing
| at a level higher, and a cheater
|
| Actually, it isn't! Great chess bots have very different play
| styles and there are people currently studying them. It's very
| unlikely someone will come out of nowhere so to speak (as in,
| not on some amazing rise as a young child) with these types of
| techniques. I'm nowhere near these levels of chess players but
| have played competitively for my county as a school-kid and
| still play a couple hundred games a year so have some idea.
| chrisherring wrote:
| A smart cheater isn't just going to replicate bot moves and
| make it easy to detect. They may just use it to decide
| between 2 moves they were 50/50 on already. Do this 2 or 3
| times and it would make a big difference at the grand master
| level. This would be quite hard to detect.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| FIDE are doing their own investigation, but the chess.com cheat
| detection algorithm is apparently well regarded, and online
| cheating is obviously very simple to do. He's admitted cheating
| online as recently as 3 years ago. If he can reasonably be
| proved to having cheated online more often and more recently
| than he has admitted to, then that gives good reason to suspect
| he'll have cheated OTB too given the chance.
|
| There are various ways one might cheat OTB, from taking one's
| phone the bathroom in the middle of a tournament (some allow
| this!!), to getting signals from an accomplice who is seeing
| the game in real time. Signals could be electronic to some
| device on the player, or visual from an audience member in the
| room. It's been proposed to introduce a 15-30 min broadcast
| delay in tournament games as one way to prevent cheating. Some
| tournaments scan the players for electronic devices - not sure
| how foolproof this is.
| boredtofears wrote:
| Wow that last bit seems like a rather important disclaimer that
| I didn't know about when this saga first unfolded.
| j-krieger wrote:
| The fact that an athlete in a competitive sport was allowed to
| partake in an event even after admitting to cheating not only
| once, but twice, is outrageous in itself.
| antiterra wrote:
| The admissions were from when he was 12 and 16; many so
| societies generally believe in redemption from childhood
| transgressions.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Report says over 100, as late as 2020.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| He already admitted to cheating a lot. He didn't say he
| cheated in two games, he said cheated at two times in his
| life. He even detailed how his second time was pumping up
| his rating, you can't pump a rating with only one game.
| Sounds like if it went to 2020 then he would have been 17
| at least, not 16 but that's pretty close at least.
| curiousllama wrote:
| The report hasn't even been released yet - it didn't exist
| when they allowed him to play
| robswc wrote:
| 12 is fine... 16 is iffy... it was only 3 years ago.
|
| I'm personally a bit frustrated with the ever changing
| standards for adolescents. They are as responsible or naive
| as people want them to be for whatever their bias calls for.
| (not saying you btw, just in general).
| wisnoskij wrote:
| neither ages make him exempt from repercussions. If a 9yo
| pro chess prodigy had cheated in a profession tournament he
| absolutely should of gotten temporary bans or fines. But
| even if a 60 yo chess prodigy used a chess engine in one
| online stakless match, other than a week chess.com ban I do
| nto see what sort of punishment would want to give them
| that would be reasonable.
|
| What we are talking about here is a minor who admitted to
| using a chess engine in a meaningless online match 2 times.
| Like all the grandmasters don't play with chess engines
| just to see how they work.
| largepeepee wrote:
| 12 is only "fine" if you were caught and demonstrated you
| learned to stop.
|
| 12 is horrible if you have a track record of blatant
| cheating and only getting worse for years till they
| permanently banned you.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Personally, I'm not a fan of permanent Scarlet Letters for
| .... I think I may go so far as to say _anything_.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Personally, I'm not a fan of permanent Scarlet Letters
| for .... I think I may go so far as to say _anything_.
|
| What's your opinion of the National Sex Offender
| Registry?
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _What 's your opinion of the National Sex Offender
| Registry?_
|
| People are on it for simply peeing in public. And teenage
| minors in a relationship sending nudes to each other due
| to a lack of "Romeo and Juliet" laws.
|
| Not much is black & white.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Not this meme again.
|
| I challenge you to post ONE example of this.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Now that the easy stuff is out of the way, what do you
| think about people on the registry for violent sexual
| assault?
| willcipriano wrote:
| I talked to a guy who was on a sex offender registry for
| "urination in public" at a bar one time. Sounded like a
| travisty of justice when he explained it that way. Talked
| to someone else about him afterwards and while yes he was
| "just peeing in public" he did so in the view of a few
| young girls who walked past his house on their way to
| school on multiple occasions and with a erection.
|
| Knew another guy who did a few years in prison for "just
| a bag of weed", again that was true in a technical sense,
| he was on parole for a strong arm robbery and had the bag
| in plain view when he got pulled over.
|
| I'm not saying nobody is ever innocent, but everyone I
| talk to claims to be and it never holds up.
| andirk wrote:
| Is there a National Murder Registry?
| twelve40 wrote:
| yes in a way, it's called criminal record
|
| also probably because people who commit murders and do
| the time are not always in a permanent urge to do more of
| that, unlike.
| robswc wrote:
| Neither am I... I honestly have no idea what the kids
| punishment should be. Not irredeemable by any means...
| that seems cruel for the sake of being cruel... but its
| also not fair to have people compete with a known cheater
| (and potentially, hopefully not, a liar).
|
| He may have to take a long break.
| lamontcg wrote:
| This assertion keeps on being made and it seems almost
| deliberately obtuse to me.
|
| If you do something bad when you are 17.9 should we wipe the
| slate clean once the odometer rolls over to exactly 18.0
| where for some reason that age creates a solid barrier where
| the person emerges like a chrysalis and all their sins are
| washed clean?
|
| And as a 50 year old, the difference between a 16 year old
| and a 19 year old are not very big. An unfortunate fact is
| that if you fuck up pretty big when you're 16 that people
| aren't going to trust you very much when you're 19. You need
| to do the time to build up more collateral. I've seen people
| who were assholes when they were teenagers change, but they
| didn't wake up on some magic birthday a new person. They were
| still assholes in their early 20s but their trajectory was
| such that by the time their early 30s came around they had
| changed themselves.
| fairity wrote:
| The rate at which we forgive and forget prior actions
| should decrease as someone ages in a monotonic way. Reason
| being an individual's capacity and willingness to learn and
| change their values and behavior decreases with time. Sure,
| the 18yo cliff makes no sense.
| briandear wrote:
| Are we calling chess a sport?
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| They started playing it online so now it is an esport. /s
| freetime2 wrote:
| I had the same thought. I don't have a particularly strong
| opinion about whether chess players should be called athletes
| or not, but this was the first time that I had ever seen
| chess players referred to as athletes.
|
| The first result when you google "Are chess players athletes"
| says no [1], but I realize that this is more of an opinion
| piece. I would be curious to hear what more members of the
| competitive chess community think of the designation as
| athletes.
|
| Edit: Upon further googling, I have learned that the IOC
| recognizes chess as a sport. Reading up further on how the
| matches last for 7+ hours, and how important physical
| conditioning is, I think it's totally valid to refer to chess
| players as athletes. In different sports there is wide
| spectrum of physical and mental demands - and I think chess
| just falls on the incredibly-demanding-mentally-but-less-
| demanding-physically end of the spectrum.
|
| [1] https://herculeschess.com/are-chess-players-athletes/
|
| [2] https://olympics.com/ioc/recognised-international-
| federation...
| adamckay wrote:
| Yes.
|
| It's recognised by the International Olympic Committee -
| https://olympics.com/ioc/recognised-international-
| federation...
|
| A common definition is: "Sport pertains to any form of
| competitive physical activity or game that aims to use,
| maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while
| providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases,
| entertainment to spectators."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport
| paxys wrote:
| Is there a single sport in the world where a player will get a
| lifetime ban for admitting to cheating in the past? All major
| ones will let you compete even after being caught doping/fixing
| a half dozen times in your career. The bar is a lot lower than
| you think.
| mzs wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sportspeople_banned_f.
| ..
| mkl95 wrote:
| There are a few competitive sports where the same pattern
| occurs. Namely decentralized sports, particularly boxing where
| it's not rare for some elite athlete to be banned temporarily
| after testing positive for PEDs. Most bans are for 6-12 months
| which is a joke.
|
| My guess is that the more decentralized a sport is, the more
| likely it is for cheating to occur and go unpunished. Chess is
| unofficially becoming a decentralized sport since the pandemic
| due to the shift to online playing. Even if some organizations
| claim to be in power, there is only so much they can do.
| Banning cheaters permanently may not even be possible.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Presumably any long FIDE ban would be the end of a serious
| chess career, right?
| cco wrote:
| > Most bans are for 6-12 months which is a joke. An athlete's
| professional career is roughly ten years* with the majority
| of their earning potential to be an even smaller set of those
| years. A ban from being paid for 12 months may represent 10%
| or more of an athlete's career earning potential.
|
| *Of course this varies a lot by sport, gymnastics careers are
| obviously very short, a golfer's career may be much longer.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Even worse, professional athletes fund full-time training
| through ways that wouldn't be available during a ban. Skip
| full-time training for a year and you'll probably not be
| competitive after.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is, I think, the single biggest factor in the
| proliferation of cheating. Most cheaters are smart enough to do
| the math on how they should win at the sport, or is smart
| enough to hire someone who can do the math. In other words,
| cheaters are rational actors.
|
| Allowing people back into the sport swings the EV math heavily
| in favor of cheating if the penalty isn't massive given that
| the chance of getting caught is so low (as long as you know
| what you're doing). The only way to make the EV of cheating
| negative is to make the sanction very, very bad. Losing all of
| your future earnings from the sport is a good way to do that.
|
| I used to run Magic: the Gathering tournaments, and there was a
| tremendous amount of "minor" cheating - forgetting the rules
| when it benefits them, shuffling in suspicious ways, peeking at
| opponents decks, etc. Many competitive players even openly
| admitted to doing this. Even if a tournament official could
| call them on the cheating and disqualify them (which was
| frowned upon without hard evidence), they would likely not be
| suspended from sanctioned play at all unless the evidence was
| overwhelming. Several famous cheaters did it many times and got
| caught several times. Minor cheating was very common as a
| result.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The alternative - an environment where innocent people were
| sometimes getting expelled - would be worse when it's just a
| game.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A tournament with a >$200,000 prize pool (the Sinquefeld
| cup or a Magic pro tour) is hardly "just a game."
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Sometimes people are caught red-handed.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yeah, it doesn't have to involve banning people for life
| on borderline cases of cheating, but if you are caught
| red-handed, a lifetime ban seems in order.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| This is why I constantly cheated in school. I got caught once
| and the penalty was a 0 on the test and a talking to. And
| only because I was a cheating noob.
|
| The benefits were in the thousands and thousands of
| scholarship dollars.
|
| I cheat now in my employment. I work three full time jobs
| remotely and do the bare minimum in each. The risk is getting
| fired (and if I only get fired from two of the jobs, I am
| still ahead of honest work). The payoff is decades taken off
| my working life.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Selling your labor to multiple buyers and delivering
| acceptable work is not cheating.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Technically, they might sue you if you represent that you
| are working exclusively for them, which is a clause in
| most of these contracts. Still, not illegal.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Being a TA and discovering that about half the class was
| engaged in a singular cheating ring (that does not mean the
| other half is free from cheating) changed my perspective as
| to how cheating should be dealt with.
|
| In general I feel that if enough people are doing the
| "wrong" thing, then punishing most of the population is
| probably an even worse move. Failing individuals, marking
| their transcript, or kicking them out of college may seem
| acceptable when you have the perspective that only
| individuals cheat. But when you hypothetically punish over
| half the student body by taking their money and kicking
| them out...
| soperj wrote:
| Then why even have rules about it. You're basically
| screwing honest people.
| sirshmooey wrote:
| This aptly describes the modern state of thoroughbred horse
| racing. The sport is littered with these so called "super-
| trainers". All of which possess precedent defying win
| percentages. It's gotten so bad, a federal governing body has
| been tasked to combat it. The anti-doping rules will take
| effect this January [1].
|
| [1] https://www.hisaus.org/about
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm slightly confused about the relationship between chess.com
| and these tournaments. If he gets caught cheating at a FIDE
| tournament, they could do whatever they want -- ban him for
| life, whatever, it is up to them. If he gets caught cheating on
| an online game, whether it is chess.com or counterstrike, who
| cares? It is an unranked online game (or the ranking is tied to
| some account gamerscore thing).
|
| Unless their chess.com scores feed into their FIDE ELO scores
| or something?
| wisnoskij wrote:
| when they were 12.
| j-krieger wrote:
| One time when they were 17. Obviously the sanction at 12
| wasn't bad enough. A barring for 5 years would've maybe
| helped him learn his lesson
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Whatever happened during online play on a second rate chess
| site is hardly a reason to ban player from OTB events
| without evidence of cheating in such events.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Right? I completely didn't understand this part? In pretty much
| everything else, you cheat, you're basically done.
| jayski wrote:
| I'm not a fan of this player, I don't even play chess.
|
| Still it sounds a bit harsh to me that a child that cheated
| online can never in his adult life participate in chess
| tournaments.
|
| If he had cheated as an adult I would have a different
| opinion.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Well, that's where the report comes in. He has cheated
| several times as an adult too.
| [deleted]
| smaryjerry wrote:
| If you consider 17 an adult and that the report is
| correctly identifying those games. This is no different
| than cheating in a video game online. It's playing random
| people from matchmaking for rating points tied to that
| game. Maybe there were multiple tournaments as well for
| small prizes (probably under $1000 prize money) if the
| report on the report is correct though. I'd compare it to
| an NBA player cheating in a pick up game of basketball.
| j-krieger wrote:
| > If you consider 17 an adult and that the report is
| correctly identifying those games
|
| For him, that was 2 years ago.
| Bud wrote:
| Oh. Really? I mean, not in baseball. Not in football. Not in
| basketball. Not even in President of the United States.
|
| What is this alternate reality you're in, and what is your
| list of "everything else"? Citations, please.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I didn't go deep on it, but it seemed like dude's cheating
| was repeated, open, and notorious.
| Bud wrote:
| It was.
|
| I was addressing the other part of your statement,
| however.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Citation: Pete Rose, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds,
| Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling will never get in the
| Hall of Fame.
|
| You're right that that's not "basically done," but once
| they're retired, HoF is all they have to look forward to.
| Being officially in disgrace is pretty done.
| Bud wrote:
| Yet I can cite hundreds of cases of cheating in all the
| major sports in which, yes, there was a suspension or
| other penalty, but the players or people involved were
| then allowed to participate again. The examples you cited
| are very extreme, but even in these cases, they don't
| support your argument. None of those players were removed
| from the game during their playing careers and barred.
| And again, those are just the most extreme cases. There
| are many, many less severe cases, all of which support my
| argument and not yours.
|
| You might want to remove Schilling from your list, btw.
| He hasn't been accused of any cheating; instead, he did
| other embarrassing things.
| paxys wrote:
| > In pretty much everything else, you cheat, you're basically
| done.
|
| The penalty for cheating in most major sports is way more
| lenient than you think. Most leagues will suspend you for a
| handful of games in the first instance. In the NBA for
| example you can be caught three times before being suspended
| for one season.
| lamontcg wrote:
| MLS you catch a 10 game ban (out of a 34 game season) for
| your first PED offense.
| ENOTTY wrote:
| In case you're looking for whether this says anything about the
| butt plug allegations, this report does not. It only concerns
| cheating on an online platform, not in person cheating
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > "Outside his online play, Hans is the fastest rising top player
| in Classical [over-the-board] chess in modern history," the
| report says, while comparing his progress to the game's brightest
| rising stars. "Looking purely at rating, Hans should be
| classified as a member of this group of top young players. While
| we don't doubt that Hans is a talented player, we note that his
| results are statistically extraordinary."
|
| I basically made the argument that, in any sport, when a player
| does statistically much, much better than their previous
| performance would predict, that in and of itself should be
| considered evidence of cheating - perhaps not _conclusive_
| evidence, but definitely evidence warranting further
| investigation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32990022
|
| > All this talk of "Carlsen accused him of cheating with no
| evidence" reminds me of the blowback against some athletes in the
| 70s and 80s who accused rivals of taking PEDs "with no evidence".
|
| > Sometimes the evidence of someone doing monstrously better than
| can be expected by their history is sufficient IMO. I mean, look
| at this article about swimmer Shirley Babashoff [1], dubbed
| "Surly Shirley" at the time by the media, for suggesting the East
| German women were on PEDs in the 70s. Nowadays we look back on
| those images of the East German women, looking more manly than
| any dude I've ever seen, and wonder how we considered with a
| straight face that they weren't on a boatload of drugs.
| Similarly, it completely baffles me how any sane person can think
| that Flo Jo wasn't on PEDs in the runup to the 1988 Olympics -
| her 100m dash record still stands today.
|
| > I'm not saying Carlsen went about it in the right way, because
| now Niemann is basically in an indefensible position, but I'm
| also not willing to quickly dismiss it because Carlsen has "no
| evidence".
| ehsankia wrote:
| I think the biggest tell is how he wasn't able to explain his
| play and just threw a smug response whenever asked to describe
| anything.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I might take into consideration rapid rise in ratings, and
| even this chess.com report, but please, this argument about
| post game interview is pure nonsense. It is not a 'tell' in
| the slightest. Any player with at least IM title will give
| you a decent analysis of that position _if he wants_ , and
| Niemann is certainly better than IM even without alleged
| computer help. He was visibly disinterested in the interview
| and it was conducted in a rather hostile manner, so it is
| perfectly understandable that he probably just wanted a break
| and rest.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Other players have had questionable post-game interviews.
| This is evidence but without history of cheating it wouldn't
| mean much.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Yeah you pointed out something special here. It's like those
| unsung Russian sub captains who didn't start the nuclear
| apocalypse because they had an intuitive understanding between
| faulty and genuine threats. You can't explain why you know
| something you just know it.
|
| Besides, Magnus genuinely has never seemed like the guy to get
| petty and up and throw a fit, he's lost plenty of times without
| doing such.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> never seemed like the guy to get petty and up and throw a
| fit_
|
| More than that, Magnus is a very fierce competitor and he
| doesn't withdraw from tournaments. He's 31 and this is his
| first withdrawal AFAIK.
| manimino wrote:
| Magnus cares deeply about the image of chess as a sport. He
| has done a great deal to popularize chess. Cheating
| threatens the legitimacy of chess itself.
|
| It makes sense that Magnus would take a stand on it, even
| if he risks losing face by doing so.
| JetSetIlly wrote:
| > You can't explain why you know something you just know it.
|
| The way Carlsen described his suspicions reminded me of
| "connoisseurship" in the art world. Now that's a "skill"
| that's not as important as it once was but once the science
| has given its results and there are still no firm
| conclusions, connoisseurship is all you have.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Cheater connoisseurship. Nice.
| ed-209 wrote:
| Serious question: why isnt online play excluded at this level of
| competition? Why not restrict these "pro" matches to regulated
| conditions as in any other pro competition?
|
| We dont generally place full trust in online job interviews so
| why lower the bar to "honor system" when it comes to the most
| cheat-friendly competition in the universe?
| paxys wrote:
| Because it takes a lot of time and money to set up an in-person
| tournament. A virtual one is basically free and will get a lot
| more participation from top players.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Pandemic happened that's the big reason.
| tzs wrote:
| GothamChess coverage on YouTube [1]. Part of this is showing and
| reading the article itself so if the WSJ paywall is getting in
| your way you can read it in the video.
|
| Hikaru coverage on YouTube [2].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1DCqoBjR4s
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VptbNKbHQiM
| zqlamp wrote:
| The chess.com campaign continues. 100 games are nothing online,
| Carlsen/Firouzja play that in a single night. The headline is
| pure propaganda and omits the word "online".
|
| In fact, the article tries to paint Niemann as a liar while the
| purported facts pretty much match what he admitted to. One
| cheating in a titled tournament at age 12 and multiple cheats at
| the beginning of 2020. He said he was 16, so he was barely 17
| according to the article. That isn't a lie, that can easily
| happen in an interview.
|
| If that is all that chess.com has, their behavior is extremely
| poor. Also, what about all those other cheating titled players
| who did not have the misfortune to win against multi-million
| asset Carlsen?
|
| It is time for Europeans to send GDPR requests for cheating
| scores etc. and terminate their accounts. The risk is too great.
| angio wrote:
| He cheated in prize money tournaments. That's borderline fraud.
| ghank wrote:
| Here is Carlsen taking a move from Howell in a Lichess prize
| tournament, which he'd never do OTB:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMcnrmb97g
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| The move was pretty obvious.
| klrobert wrote:
| Then why does Carlsen ask "how?" before playing it? This
| is a conversation that would never have happened in an
| OTB tournament.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Likely, because he was thinking of something else. It
| happens often when playing weaker opponents, you are so
| concentrated on some genius master plan to defeat an
| opponent, that when an opponent does something dumb you
| fail to see it immediately. Of course, my lichess rating
| is _slightly_ below Carlsen 's so I'm probably not the
| world's best expert on such things.
|
| (I don't quite understand what you mean by 'those
| conversation would never have happened .. ')
| mda wrote:
| So a half drunk Howell blurts a single move to half drunk
| Carlsen in a bullet game and this is cheating?
| frumper wrote:
| Did I miss where cheating online is somehow not as bad as
| cheating in person? I understand it's harder to cheat in
| person, but I never thought it was "worse" to cheat in person
| because it's the worst thing you can do to your opponents in
| either an online, or an in-person game.
| ghank wrote:
| You miss that 100 _classical_ games OTB are an eternity, and
| 100 online _blitz_ games are nothing.
|
| And yes, while cheating online is shabby, hardly anyone took
| online chess seriously before the big money tournaments
| started during the pandemic.
|
| And that the whole chess.com affair is a side show that is
| exploited for streamer content and clicks. The relevant issue
| is cheating or not cheating in the Sinquefield cup.
| frumper wrote:
| A cheater is a cheater. They are making a choice to cheat.
| It's not an accident. They know it's wrong, they know their
| conduct is hurtful. It doesn't make any sense to say that
| no one took it serious. I'm sure people that lost to him
| would feel otherwise. If he's so good why would he even
| bother cheating in tournaments?
| zhivota wrote:
| Why don't they just put the players into a Faraday cage with
| wired cameras on the inside? No communication out of the box by
| any means in that case.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I could actually cheat in that situation, if my people could
| hack the camera controls and dilate the iris or move it or
| something...
| tempestn wrote:
| You can run a chess engine that can beat any human on a small
| portable device, so external communication wouldn't be
| necessary. Perhaps combined with a metal detector it could
| work? Honestly though I think the more significant reason is
| that that would require building the cages, and would prevent
| live audiences.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Knew it!
| Madmallard wrote:
| How is this person like at all able to even compete over the
| board? Seems like this type of history and even a history of
| cheating at all should just be a permanent nix.
| spuz wrote:
| He is a genuinely very good player. That also makes it
| potentially very hard to detect if he has indeed cheated. His
| current coach has been quoted in a past interview saying how
| easy it would be to cheat undetected if you were already at GM
| level. You only need the engine to guide you in 2-3 moves to
| swing a game.
|
| 2013 Interview with Max Dlugy:
| https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-shoe-aistant--ivanov-forfe...
|
| Also, before you ask, "if he is already at GM level, why does
| he feel the need to cheat?" the answer is that the stronger
| players and athletes often feel more inclined to cheat because
| they have such high expectations of themselves. Past cheating
| scandals in sports have proven this.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's important to note that the investigation was conducted by
| chess.com, which is hardly an impartial authority in the matter.
| Version467 wrote:
| How aren't they impartial? They are obviously an interested
| party, but do they have an incentive to skew the facts? If so
| in which direction? Not doubting you, just genuinely
| interested.
| axxl wrote:
| Magnus owns a decent stake in them (20% maybe?) and has been
| very publicly making accusations as well.
| suetoniusp wrote:
| Its not that much, but the article ignores the fact that
| chess.com knew all of this and invited him to their
| tournaments. Then once the Singfield cup event happened and
| Magnus got mad they banned him.
|
| They have been selectively releasing information about him
| and his one time coach for a few weeks now. While in the
| past they have never, not once, released any of their
| cheating information. Why now?
|
| If they dont release the report they are talking about then
| this article is nothing.
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently they have a policy of only dealing internally,
| with their own online systems. Basically they just
| quietly ban players caught cheating, and don't report it
| anywhere normally.
|
| Even now, they haven't released this publicly yet.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Their deal with Magnus hasn't closed, but yes, they are
| purchasing his company.
| Version467 wrote:
| Oh, I didn't know that chess.com wanted to buy chess24.
| That does make it more difficult.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| As mentioned in the article they are in talks to buy Magnus's
| app Play Magnus.
|
| That being said, if they have literal screenshots of the
| discussions between Niemann and chess.com admitting to
| cheating and appealing the ban, those seem like smoking guns
| in addition to all this other analysis
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| On the other hand, the analysis is about online games on the
| chess.com platform.
| perihelions wrote:
| https://archive.ph/TtSEO
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I believe the critical aspect here is not the specific cheating
| that chess.com found, but that this appears to contain written
| statements by Niemann himself which contradict his public
| statement.
|
| And if it now turns out that he lied in his confession, too, then
| that's a really bad look w.r.t. his trustworthiness.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" written statements by Niemann himself which contradict his
| public statement"_
|
| The article doesn't say that Niemann's admissions to Chess.com
| were about cheating in prize-money tournaments, nor the other
| disputed facts. The spreadsheet of incidents they show us isn't
| what Niemann admitted to cheating in, but was Chess.com's
| internal anticheat flagged -- we can tell because they label it
| as _" suspect games"_ and it uses qualifiers like _" likely"_.
| The inferences that the cheating was for real money prizes, or
| at an age older than 16, or on for-profit Twitch streams, are
| drawn from from this list of suspected games.
|
| We don't currently know what facts Niemann confessed too: it's
| not public whether the facts Niemann is allegedly lying about
| overlap with the facts Niemann admitted to in writing in 2020.
| WSJ may have evidence that's dispositive on this point (i.e.
| those Slack texts), but they haven't printed it yet.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Confessions have an important role in forgiveness, but given
| that, the public arena is never the right place for
| confessions; i.e., do you expect someone to say "Actually, I
| also hit on another employee last May." That would get you
| nailed to a cross and no lawyer would ever advise that except
| on the calculus of further damage control.
| kjeetgill wrote:
| There's a huge difference between not confessing and making a
| false confession.
| [deleted]
| chaoticmass wrote:
| If he really is so good, why doesn't he start doing IRL
| tournaments and rise through the ranks that way?
| chesscom wrote:
| There is so much more to our report than what was focused on in
| the WSJ article. The full report will be shared shortly...
| mzs wrote:
| >Rensch had previously said that Chess-com had never shared a
| list of cheaters or the platform's cheat detection algorithm
| with Carlsen.
|
| So who did chess.com share those with?
| largepeepee wrote:
| And why would they ever share full details of confidential
| agreements?
|
| Ie, their secret sauce.
| mzs wrote:
| Cause they shared Dlugy's private emails last week? Cause
| they leaked this report to the WSJ before putting it on
| their site? Cause Rensch worded the non-denial denial
| specifically like that?
| largepeepee wrote:
| Like I had mentioned previously, why would they reveal
| their entire hand?
|
| It makes sense to show the relevant part of their
| upcoming case and who knows what kind of agreement they
| had with Dlugy and with lawyers before deciding to reveal
| that snippet.
|
| Like in poker. Just because they showed one card, doesn't
| mean they are now obligated to show their hand.
| jquantf wrote:
| Indeed. How did the rumors start? Who received the list? Was
| it legal?
|
| https://gdpr.eu/fines/
| aluminum96 wrote:
| It's a real red flag that he plays stronger moves after the
| browser window loses focus. I'd argue that's much less
| circumstantial than anything else so far.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Even if he was cheating, its a dumb move to do that. It's super
| easy to stop websites from knowing that you're switching tabs
| or windows.
|
| https://github.com/IceWreck/Page-Visibility-User-Script
|
| I made this a while ago.
|
| Or just use another computer.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Which shows ... I don't know ... naivety, or cockiness, or
| something. If I'm cheating at chess (or poker or whatever)
| online and I know that there are likely to be some form of
| anti-cheat scanning happening... why wouldn't you run your
| chess client on a computer beside you - then everything
| surrounding that is undetectable (processes, focus, CPU
| utilization, etc.)
| kuboble wrote:
| Because he likely wasn't aware they they track it and having
| this other computer introduces other risks.
|
| If he accidentally showed a picture of his second computer on
| the same desk during e.g. a stream it would be akin to guilt
| admission.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Cheating is a bad decision to begin with. I'm not surprised
| that further bad decisions were quickly in pursuit.
| bena wrote:
| People are still rather short-sighted when it comes to what a
| computer can do.
|
| They can really only think in front of them. If I put
| information into this program, I get information out. They
| don't think that applications can monitor their own meta-
| state. Or the state of other applications.
|
| So I'm not terribly surprised that he thought running the
| engine in another browser window would have been sufficient.
| He might have even had it open in "incognito mode". And since
| it's incognito, it can't be detected, right?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Most people don't realize that the online chat functions
| for a lot of customer service sites show every character
| you type, not when you hit 'enter' or 'send'.
| bambax wrote:
| Didn't know that. Is this really true? What would be the
| point of it?
|
| When chatting with a customer support it's quite apparent
| the csr is involved in many chats at once; wouldn't it be
| quite taxing for them to have to monitor not just the
| responses but every keystroke of the people they interact
| with?
| bena wrote:
| You could passively record without having to force the
| CSR to engage. You could also then use that text to help
| prompt the CSR.
| [deleted]
| rjj wrote:
| Just to make sure I read this right: he most likely cheated in 11
| online tournaments from 2015 - 2020.
|
| Why not analyze his recent and over-the-board games?
| jfghi wrote:
| I imagine everything is being analyzed but given that cheating
| in 11 online tournaments is enough to invalidate someone's
| career it makes for an appropriate topic of article.
| rjj wrote:
| I get that. Just checking I had it right that this is ~not
| really the analysis we most want.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Kenneth Regan did that and came to a conclusion that there were
| no cheating.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I'd say he could not come to a conclusion that there were
| cheating.
| Jabbles wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _While it says Niemann's improvement has been "statistically
| extraordinary." Chess.com noted that it hasn't historically
| been involved with cheat detection for classical over-the-board
| chess, and it stopped short of any conclusive statements about
| whether he has cheated in person. Still, it pointed to several
| of Niemann's strongest events, which it believes "merit further
| investigation based on the data." FIDE, chess's world governing
| body, is conducting its own investigation into the Niemann-
| Carlsen affair._
| mzs wrote:
| One of the reporters adds a detail that several from the WSJ
| article means 6 (which we all would have immediately known had
| chess.com simply published on their site instead of leaking the
| 72-page report):
|
| >The report made no conclusions about Niemann's in-person games.
| But it also flagged his play from six over-the-board events,
| saying those merit further investigation.
|
| https://twitter.com/andrewlbeaton/status/1577380477807300626
| energyy wrote:
| do I really need to login/pay to read this news?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| an archive.ph link and a gift-article link have been posted
| here in the comments.
| energyy wrote:
| yeah, saw that after posting this.. thanks
| suetoniusp91 wrote:
| arecurrence wrote:
| Why don't cheaters just use two machines or even just their phone
| and a laptop? The evidence is often around other processes or
| browser tabs running on their device (and in this case also focus
| loss) but an immediate thought must be to simply use multiple
| devices.
| paxys wrote:
| No, the evidence is usually around analysis of the moves and
| how they compare to those generated by chess engines and how
| the same player has played in the past. The mechanics of the
| cheating are mostly irrelevant.
| arecurrence wrote:
| You're totally right, some of the articles I looked at
| focused on tangential causes... whereas analysis of moves
| compared to decisions by a vastly superior system has got to
| be the smoking gun.
|
| I suppose new algorithms will be designed or trained to
| account for the user's performance history.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Traditionally chess engine moves were identifiable easily
| enough by regular players, and chess.com even has algorithms in
| place to detect this.
|
| Thats all going to change now though, and its totally possible
| to cheat using a second computer with an engine that will be
| undetectable.
| slivanes wrote:
| You mostly read about cheaters who get caught.
| olliej wrote:
| Yeah, I think fail to consider survivor bias to be relevant
| in cases like this.
|
| It's also why there are occasional surges in cheating (or
| crime, or whatever) after significant instances - subsequent
| examination then finds other cases because it's now looking
| for them, but the reality is the cheating (or whatever) was
| always there and just not noticed.
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