OT: Magnus Carlsen brouhahas

[Meeksology]

"Oh no, my queen"

[mademan]

Here’s a solution. Don’t invite known cheaters to the highest competition.

Dude admitted to cheating when he was 12 and 16 years old. Not sure if players should be banned from a sport for life because of things they did before even reaching adulthood.

Dude was banned by chess.com again and given the evidence for it (tho they won’t make it public, but he hasn’t either). It’s clear he’s cheated more recently given the ban tho. I dunno about over the board cheating, but there’s no doubt he’s been doing dirt online and more than just what he admitted.

I mean the entire idea of “I only cheated the few times I got caught” is hilarious.

[Onus]

Here’s a solution. Don’t invite known cheaters to the highest competition.

Dude admitted to cheating when he was 12 and 16 years old. Not sure if players should be banned from a sport for life because of things they did before even reaching adulthood.

He's 19 now, so it's not like it was so long ago

[Mr Puddles]

Here’s a solution. Don’t invite known cheaters to the highest competition.

Dude admitted to cheating when he was 12 and 16 years old. Not sure if players should be banned from a sport for life because of things they did before even reaching adulthood.

Dude was banned by chess.com again and given the evidence for it (tho they won’t make it public, but he hasn’t either). It’s clear he’s cheated more recently given the ban tho. I dunno about over the board cheating, but there’s no doubt he’s been doing dirt online and more than just what he admitted.

I mean the entire idea of “I only cheated the few times I got caught” is hilarious.

If there's evidence of him cheating they need to release it. Now it's just allegations based on Magnus quitting the tournament and resigning after one move.

Clearly Magnus thinks he's cheating - so they need to release the evidence already

[Capn'O]

How do you cheat at chess?

Get moves messaged to you that have been played out on Chess engines

I thought it was proven that the computers can’t beat humans? Didn’t Bobby Fischer beat the IBM computer

The computers have gotten a lot better.

[Capn'O]

Funny thing is Niemann had no idea on how to explain his own moves and calculations when he first won against magnus. You have to understand that these GMs have a ridiculous amount of knowlegde about the game saved in their brains. Just by looking at a certain position they can more or less tell you the best 1-2 moves in a blink of an eye and all kinds of variations that might happen afterwards. After he won against Magnus he gave an interview and he had no idea what he was talking about. That was very suspicious to say the least. You do not beat the World Champion in chess with perfect moves without beeing able to explain certain positions on the board and your thought process behind it. That is unprecedented on this level of play imho. At least I can´t remember anything similar.

A few interesting Infos about this whole situation:

1. Nieman is a known cheater in online chess, he was caught and banned two times from online chess when he was younger.
2. They interviewed all kinds of GMs since the game and there are some very interesting/funny comments in my opinion.
a. Anish Giri said he does not think that Niemann ever cheated against him because Niemann always played really bad against
him.
b. Nepomniachtchi said that it is super weird that Nieman has trouble playing against lesser players but against super GMs he plays
on a totally different level. Like he is another player. Usually players at this level have a very constant skill level. Niemanns
ability to play chess seems to fluctuate heavily, depending on what´s at stake.
c. Nakamura said he understands Magnus not saying anything because he himself was threatened with legal action.
d. Magnus is probably the worst loser of all top GMs (he says so himself). But usually it is him saying something like "i played really
bad, it was my horrible mistake, I made a huge blunder" while beeing super annoyed at himself. He is very critical about his
own play, that is part of why he is such a beast. Him accusing another player of cheating (although inderectly) is not something
he does easily. That guy is very smart and knows exactly what kind of effect his actions have.

In the end we will ever know the whole truth probably. At least it is good for some drama and entertainment.

Thank you so much for this fantastic summary. RealGM never fails to amaze me on all ends of the spectrum.

[Apz]

Funny thing is Niemann had no idea on how to explain his own moves and calculations when he first won against magnus. You have to understand that these GMs have a ridiculous amount of knowlegde about the game saved in their brains. Just by looking at a certain position they can more or less tell you the best 1-2 moves in a blink of an eye and all kinds of variations that might happen afterwards. After he won against Magnus he gave an interview and he had no idea what he was talking about. That was very suspicious to say the least. You do not beat the World Champion in chess with perfect moves without beeing able to explain certain positions on the board and your thought process behind it. That is unprecedented on this level of play imho. At least I can´t remember anything similar.

A few interesting Infos about this whole situation:

1. Nieman is a known cheater in online chess, he was caught and banned two times from online chess when he was younger.
2. They interviewed all kinds of GMs since the game and there are some very interesting/funny comments in my opinion.
a. Anish Giri said he does not think that Niemann ever cheated against him because Niemann always played really bad against
him.
b. Nepomniachtchi said that it is super weird that Nieman has trouble playing against lesser players but against super GMs he plays
on a totally different level. Like he is another player. Usually players at this level have a very constant skill level. Niemanns
ability to play chess seems to fluctuate heavily, depending on what´s at stake.
c. Nakamura said he understands Magnus not saying anything because he himself was threatened with legal action.
d. Magnus is probably the worst loser of all top GMs (he says so himself). But usually it is him saying something like "i played really
bad, it was my horrible mistake, I made a huge blunder" while beeing super annoyed at himself. He is very critical about his
own play, that is part of why he is such a beast. Him accusing another player of cheating (although inderectly) is not something
he does easily. That guy is very smart and knows exactly what kind of effect his actions have.

In the end we will ever know the whole truth probably. At least it is good for some drama and entertainment.

Thank you so much for this fantastic summary. RealGM never fails to amaze me on all ends of the spectrum.

This is whats fun with online communities, no matter if its realgm or some online game. You find the most fascinating knowledge and discussions.

[Capn'O]

Funny thing is Niemann had no idea on how to explain his own moves and calculations when he first won against magnus. You have to understand that these GMs have a ridiculous amount of knowlegde about the game saved in their brains. Just by looking at a certain position they can more or less tell you the best 1-2 moves in a blink of an eye and all kinds of variations that might happen afterwards. After he won against Magnus he gave an interview and he had no idea what he was talking about. That was very suspicious to say the least. You do not beat the World Champion in chess with perfect moves without beeing able to explain certain positions on the board and your thought process behind it. That is unprecedented on this level of play imho. At least I can´t remember anything similar.

A few interesting Infos about this whole situation:

1. Nieman is a known cheater in online chess, he was caught and banned two times from online chess when he was younger.
2. They interviewed all kinds of GMs since the game and there are some very interesting/funny comments in my opinion.
a. Anish Giri said he does not think that Niemann ever cheated against him because Niemann always played really bad against
him.
b. Nepomniachtchi said that it is super weird that Nieman has trouble playing against lesser players but against super GMs he plays
on a totally different level. Like he is another player. Usually players at this level have a very constant skill level. Niemanns
ability to play chess seems to fluctuate heavily, depending on what´s at stake.
c. Nakamura said he understands Magnus not saying anything because he himself was threatened with legal action.
d. Magnus is probably the worst loser of all top GMs (he says so himself). But usually it is him saying something like "i played really
bad, it was my horrible mistake, I made a huge blunder" while beeing super annoyed at himself. He is very critical about his
own play, that is part of why he is such a beast. Him accusing another player of cheating (although inderectly) is not something
he does easily. That guy is very smart and knows exactly what kind of effect his actions have.

In the end we will ever know the whole truth probably. At least it is good for some drama and entertainment.

Thank you so much for this fantastic summary. RealGM never fails to amaze me on all ends of the spectrum.

This is whats fun with online communities, no matter if its realgm or some online game. You find the most fascinating knowledge and discussions.

Exactly. I always say, social media has the best and worst of the world all in one place

[SkyHookFTW]

How do you cheat at chess?

Get moves messaged to you that have been played out on Chess engines

I thought it was proven that the computers can’t beat humans? Didn’t Bobby Fischer beat the IBM computer

Computers have come a long way. There are chess engines like Stockfish and ChessZero that have ridiculous ELO ratings. Look at 20 years ago, with the match between Deep Blue and Kasparov.

I'm not just a dumb football player, I was pretty good with a rating of 1914, making me a Class A player, one step below master.

[Richard Miller]

Funny thing is Niemann had no idea on how to explain his own moves and calculations when he first won against magnus. You have to understand that these GMs have a ridiculous amount of knowlegde about the game saved in their brains.

Yea, even the lowliest of GMs is still like a god compared to a random amateur, those guys live and breath chess, that he can't explain himself is bizarre

[tdotrep2]

morris code with anal beads ruined chess. no joke

[Fencer reregistered]

I feel like the stress is getting to him, which I get. Dude has steadily climbed to the top of the chess world since he was a little kid, and it’s a ton of pressure and stress and preparation to stay at that level, and to keep fighting off the younger generation coming up behind you. At the end of the day, dude is in his 30s, but has been playing pro chess for what, like 15-20 years? That’s tough man.

Also, with regards to being the GOAT, Fischer actually made a great point. He said in terms of talent and ability and being able to read the board, you can’t really compare modern players to older players just based off ratings and all that. He said he could have beaten any previous era’s generation Grandmaster blindfolded, because he had the opportunity to study so much more chess theory that they didn’t have the chance to do back then. And that it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s “better”. And similarly, he said it wouldn’t be totally fair to compare him to someone like Kasparov, because Kasparov similarly had much more of an opportunity to study more chess theory, and it’s especially true for Carlsen’s era when he’s had the benefit of growing up and playing against modern chess engines and running through countless simulations that the human mind wouldn’t have been able to do on its own.

It’s the equivalent of today’s NBA players having access to modern training and modern nutrition with modern tech, and having the benefit of looking at previous generations and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And having a much better understanding of statistical analysis and scouting, which is mainly a benefit of time and experience as the game got older. Which is why transplanting a previous generation’s player to the modern game isn’t really fair, because you’re removing all of the luxuries from that player that modern players heavily benefitted from.

Which is why Carlsen isn’t necessarily the GOAT to me, even though he’s clearly one of them. The context is important.

Very right about the game advancing. I recall positional ideas feeling new around the time of the Fischer-Spassky match that seem routine today. But then -- that match was about 50 years ago, which is about an equal length of time as had then passed since the New York 1924 tournament and the rise of hypermodernism.

[Dooley]

Hans has cheated online, but Hans probably did not cheat in the game against Magnus that started the brouhaha and it seems pretty clear that there is no publicly available evidence that Hans has cheated OTB in general

So there are basically three explanations for what is going on here IMO: (1) Magnus has some kind of non-public evidence that Hans cheated OTB, in which he should put up (or get FIDE to put up) or shut up; (2) Magnus is attempting to single-handedly enforce a new norm in competitive chess that people with a history of cheating online should not be allowed to play in supertournaments, in which case he's going about it in an incredibly unreasonable and weird way but maybe his goal is justified; or (3) Magnus is just salty about losing and making a whole controversy because of it.

I can assume that people who study the game can retro engineer the logic of each move looking at the development of the game itself, and understand if that particular strategy required to much "processing power" for a human being. Or you can ask a the player to comment and explain. Maybe for those experts is very straightforward, I don't know, it sure sounds fluffy to me and my basic understanding of the game.

Yeah, there are certain moves in chess that are "human" and certain moves that are not. For instance, it can be the case that the best computer-recommended move is a wildly risky tactical sacrifice - a human might not consider such a move because it's too risky, but the computer can simply calculate all of the variations in advance and know that with best play it works out fine.

However, it's possible to cheat without directly getting moves from the computer. Just having a buzzer that tells you the computer evaluation of the position - for instance, "right now the position is -1" - or that tells you when there's a tactical attack to look for would be a huge, possibly decisive advantage. And it would be really, really hard to find positive evidence of such an advantage just by looking at gameplay.

You can also try to judge based on the players' analysis. However, this is difficult because players are human beings, and therefore weird. Hans in particular is a weird guy with a well-established history of strange interviews. So, Hans gave an interview where his analysis was notably bad, and this is one of the things that makes super GMs suspicious of him. But did he give a weird interview because he was cheating and using a supercomputer and didn't really understand the position? Or did he give a weird interview because he is a weird, weird dude who was also very tired after playing a long chess game? It's impossible to say.

It's totally possible that Hans did cheat. It can't really be ruled out based on the evidence available. But there's also no concrete evidence supporting the idea that he *did* cheat OTB so everyone is just stuck in this position of not knowing.

[sca]

How do you cheat at chess?

Moreover, how do you understand there was cheating looking at a game?

If the player does moves that make no sense to anyone, except the simulation computer do the same. I don't watch chess, but I remember watching it one time and all the commentators were confused by the computer prediction, but then it all made sense in the end.

Yeah this is pretty much it. Get a bunch of master-level players (or even a few of them, really) to analyze a player’s moves and they’d be easily able to tell you which ones are humanlike and which ones are unnatural.

[mademan]

Dude admitted to cheating when he was 12 and 16 years old. Not sure if players should be banned from a sport for life because of things they did before even reaching adulthood.

Dude was banned by chess.com again and given the evidence for it (tho they won’t make it public, but he hasn’t either). It’s clear he’s cheated more recently given the ban tho. I dunno about over the board cheating, but there’s no doubt he’s been doing dirt online and more than just what he admitted.

I mean the entire idea of “I only cheated the few times I got caught” is hilarious.

If there's evidence of him cheating they need to release it. Now it's just allegations based on Magnus quitting the tournament and resigning after one move.

Clearly Magnus thinks he's cheating - so they need to release the evidence already

But there is evidence and chess.com did ban him based on that evidence just last week. They gave the evidence to Hans, and if he wants to release it to the public he can. They have no duty to do so

[shangrila]

The fact that the anal beads theory gained mainstream traction is hilarious.

[JonFromVA]

Alas, cheaters don't deserve the benefit of the doubt and thanks to Barry Bonds we know even greatly talented individuals can be tempted to do so; not just scrubs looking to hang in there.

Having watched some of the post-game interview with Niemen, it does stick out that he just happened to study the opening that Carlsen actually decided to play in that game. Stranger things have happened, but I imagine he would have had some inspiration for doing so and would have thrown it in at least as an anecdote. So, Carlsen's claim that Nieman somehow got a hold of his game prep makes some sense.

And again, Niemen is clearly not a chess idiot, he didn't necessarily need a computer in his ear; just a little advantage could have been all he needed.

[Fencer reregistered]

I feel like the stress is getting to him, which I get. Dude has steadily climbed to the top of the chess world since he was a little kid, and it’s a ton of pressure and stress and preparation to stay at that level, and to keep fighting off the younger generation coming up behind you. At the end of the day, dude is in his 30s, but has been playing pro chess for what, like 15-20 years? That’s tough man.

Also, with regards to being the GOAT, Fischer actually made a great point. He said in terms of talent and ability and being able to read the board, you can’t really compare modern players to older players just based off ratings and all that. He said he could have beaten any previous era’s generation Grandmaster blindfolded, because he had the opportunity to study so much more chess theory that they didn’t have the chance to do back then. And that it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s “better”. And similarly, he said it wouldn’t be totally fair to compare him to someone like Kasparov, because Kasparov similarly had much more of an opportunity to study more chess theory, and it’s especially true for Carlsen’s era when he’s had the benefit of growing up and playing against modern chess engines and running through countless simulations that the human mind wouldn’t have been able to do on its own.

It’s the equivalent of today’s NBA players having access to modern training and modern nutrition with modern tech, and having the benefit of looking at previous generations and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And having a much better understanding of statistical analysis and scouting, which is mainly a benefit of time and experience as the game got older. Which is why transplanting a previous generation’s player to the modern game isn’t really fair, because you’re removing all of the luxuries from that player that modern players heavily benefitted from.

Which is why Carlsen isn’t necessarily the GOAT to me, even though he’s clearly one of them. The context is important.

Hasn't he held the title the longest? I always thought that was his case, not so much that he could beat others.

Unanswerable because of how ill-defined the title is. But my first thought would be that Lasker had by far the longest stint as champion. WW1 and WW2 also introduced delays in championship competition.

[LuDux1]

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

[dhsilv2]

I feel like the stress is getting to him, which I get. Dude has steadily climbed to the top of the chess world since he was a little kid, and it’s a ton of pressure and stress and preparation to stay at that level, and to keep fighting off the younger generation coming up behind you. At the end of the day, dude is in his 30s, but has been playing pro chess for what, like 15-20 years? That’s tough man.

Also, with regards to being the GOAT, Fischer actually made a great point. He said in terms of talent and ability and being able to read the board, you can’t really compare modern players to older players just based off ratings and all that. He said he could have beaten any previous era’s generation Grandmaster blindfolded, because he had the opportunity to study so much more chess theory that they didn’t have the chance to do back then. And that it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s “better”. And similarly, he said it wouldn’t be totally fair to compare him to someone like Kasparov, because Kasparov similarly had much more of an opportunity to study more chess theory, and it’s especially true for Carlsen’s era when he’s had the benefit of growing up and playing against modern chess engines and running through countless simulations that the human mind wouldn’t have been able to do on its own.

It’s the equivalent of today’s NBA players having access to modern training and modern nutrition with modern tech, and having the benefit of looking at previous generations and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And having a much better understanding of statistical analysis and scouting, which is mainly a benefit of time and experience as the game got older. Which is why transplanting a previous generation’s player to the modern game isn’t really fair, because you’re removing all of the luxuries from that player that modern players heavily benefitted from.

Which is why Carlsen isn’t necessarily the GOAT to me, even though he’s clearly one of them. The context is important.

Hasn't he held the title the longest? I always thought that was his case, not so much that he could beat others.

Unanswerable because of how ill-defined the title is. But my first thought would be that Lasker had by far the longest stint as champion. WW1 and WW2 also introduced delays in championship competition.

Fair enough...that or I guess highest gap in ELO would be the other method.