Niemann - Carlsen

[Hans Jung]

Great find Neil!

[Hugh Brodie]

He played in Toronto one year and got beaten badly by Samsonkin I think.

Toronto Open 2009. He got 4/5, behind two 5s and a 4.5, losing to Samsonkin.

In the 2012 Grand Pacific Open he got 6/6.

[Neil Frarey]

Again from Magnus Carlsen's comment ...

When Niemann was invited ast minute to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event. I ultimately chose to play.
Magnus Carlson

Really? Seriously ... please stop!!!

Here's Carlsen just a couple of weeks before losing to Niemann at the Julius Baer Generation Cup beach partying with Niemann just after the pervious tournament FTX Crypto Cup in Miami ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK-a-N2Vg_4



Image source ... agadmator's YouTube Chess Channel

LOOL!!!



.

[Brad Thomson]

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.

ChessBase ran the articlein 2015: https://en.chessbase.com/post/tkachi...eater-in-chess

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.

I guess we will have to play the games without any live broadcasting or spectators, and show them on the internet only later. This would prevent the sort of help that seems possible according to Hal's post. Nobody sees the games as they are played except the players and arbiters.

[Peter McKillop]

..... This is hurting chess very much .....

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!

[Joshua Guo]

Hikaru & Fabiano on Hans, Magnus, and the Cheating Scandal - YouTube

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.

[Hal Bond]

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.

ChessBase ran the articlein 2015: https://en.chessbase.com/post/tkachi...eater-in-chess

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.

[Patrick Kirby]

He played in Toronto one year and got beaten badly by Samsonkin I think.

[Hugh Brodie]

Hikaru & Fabiano on Hans, Magnus, and the Cheating Scandal - YouTube

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.

[Peter McKillop]

Hikaru & Fabiano on Hans, Magnus, and the Cheating Scandal - YouTube

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.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Hikaru & Fabiano on Hans, Magnus, and the Cheating Scandal - YouTube

At about the 31-minute mark, Hikaru mentions some player cheating in a Canadian tournament.

[Patrick Kirby]

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.

[Brad Thomson]

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.

[Pargat Perrer]

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?

[J. Crowhurst]

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.