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A few aspects of Carlsen's erratic behavior are super telling.
Carlsen tried the rare 4.g3 Nimzo, he made an early mistake which resulted in an unpleasant endgame.
Carlsen when asked in a public interview gave Niemann, and his crew, a very favorable and very public valuation of Niemann's impressive play.
Carlsen's latest comment failed prove Niemann cheated.
Is it time to drag Carlsen and chesscom into court?
I watched the Yosha video. Then browsed the reddit thread. A quote from the reddit thread that resonated strongly with me: "I have a background in math and if I know one thing it's that probability theory is hard. I took probability theory and measure theory (still have nightmares from that), and if I know one thing it's this: Probability theory is counter intuitive".
I don't know if Niemann cheated. But I'd wager that Ken Regan's understanding of probability is considerably better than Yosha's. She made some obvious mistakes, as reddit user ikanhear points out.
This is probably the most interesting thing that has ever happened in the world of chess.
I think after Carlsen's statement, lawyers will be lining up to represent Niemann in a defamation suit, while Carlsen will be reduced to having to call Saul. But at least, unlike some other GMs, his statement didn't go as far as accusing Niemann of cheating with his accent.
This is probably the most interesting thing that has ever happened in the world of chess.
I think after Carlsen's statement, lawyers will be lining up to represent Niemann in a defamation suit, while Carlsen will be reduced to having to call Saul. But at least, unlike some other GMs, his statement didn't go as far as accusing Niemann of cheating with his accent.
I kind of think Alpha Zero mastering chess in just 4 hours is far more interesting that this cheating scandal.
But I do wonder if anyone anticipated this 25 years ago when Kasparov was playing Deep Blue .... if anyone looked ahead and thought, if computers come to rule chess, could humans cheat by incorporating the computers into their games without anyone knowing it?
As far as a Niemann defamation suit, wouldn't he have to be suffering some financial loss, such as not being invited to tournaments? If that is happening, then ok, a lawsuit could be possible.
What is very interesting is that Maxim Dlugy was part of the Boris Ivanov cheating scandal from several years ago, and now is part of THIS cheating scandal, but on the other side of it! Perhaps he learned something from Boris Ivanov that he transferred to Niemann?
Chess is all over the news now, being shown in a very negative light, even CBC's The National had the story. This is hurting chess very much, fewer children will be allowed to get interested in the game when parents see this.
I watched Caruana's podcast yesterday, he gives an interesting take, seems very balanced. As far as the games that people find suspicious, Yoo - Niemann doesn't look strange to me at all, most of the moves are forced/ natural, and Niemann played terribly in the opening, it seems kind of ridiculous to play yourself into a lost position after 12 moves and then start cheating. In the other games, he plays a series of moves in a complex position that coincide with the computer's mainline, but none of the individual moves look too suspicious on their own. I guess the counterargument would be that there are plenty of other games where Niemann plays moves that don't match the computer line, which is what Regan's analysis seems to show.
Since the argument seems to be that Niemann only cheats in certain games, it would be interesting to see if there are games where Niemann plays a series of computer moves followed by a blunder. If his results cluster in two distributions - either very close to the computer for the whole game or normal for a player of his level, that would be powerful evidence of something amiss. However I feel like Regan's statistical analysis would have revealed this if it were the case.
At about the 31-minute mark, Hikaru mentions some player cheating in a Canadian tournament.
That's not a cool thing for Nakamura to do. Now everyone who lost a game in the final round, on top board, in a Cdn tournament in which Nakamura played, will have a cloud of suspicion over them.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
At about the 31-minute mark, Hikaru mentions some player cheating in a Canadian tournament.
The only Canadian Swisses (to my knowledge) that Nakamura has played in, were North Bay 1999 (when he was 12 years old), and the Grand Pacific Open (Victoria BC) in 2012.
Forgive me if this is old news, but GM Tkachiev researched and reported on the ease with which cheating can occur:
A colleague would be following the game on a notebook outside the playing room and occasionally transmitting a key move to a tiny device hidden in Tkachiev's ear – one he says is very popular amongst certain students (i.e. those cheating in exams). A walk-through airport detector would not find it, and a hand-operated scanner would need to be set to high sensitivity and directly scan the ear.
Maybe scanners are better these days, and maybe the devices are less detectable too. Reminds me of Spy vs Spy from MAD magazine in the 70s. Only less funny.
At about the 31-minute mark, Hikaru mentions some player cheating in a Canadian tournament.
Fabi also mentioned he knows a cheaters (for a fact) at a big tournament that was not detected by Regan's analysis, meaning Regan's analysis probably err too much on the safe side.
People need to understand Fabi/Hikaru/etc. will not say certain things on interviews watched by thousands of people on YouTube, due to liability. If Josh Guo posts on ChessTalk saying Hans is a cheater, few would care, but same cannot be said about Fabi.
Therefore, please form your own opinion based on what is known.
The good thing about Yosha's analysis is you can try it yourself in ChessBase using the same function, tweak the parameters, etc. You will get similar results.
Some people in reddit said they found high-correlation games of Anand, Nepo, Carlsen, etc. But those guys had much longer careers, and are objectively stronger players. Hans had numerous high-correlation games just in the past 2-3 years.
Last edited by Joshua Guo; Wednesday, 28th September, 2022, 12:37 PM.
It's certainly not an ideal situation. However, the damage to chess over the medium to long term will be far greater, imo, if cheating isn't dealt with effectively on an ongoing basis. You may dislike Carlsen's methods but who else is standing up right now in defence of the game's integrity? Garry Kasparov or Ben Finegold? What a joke they are!
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
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