4 ms·

> As more evidence comes out I haven't seen evidence of Neumann's cheating, as is claimed in this comment. Only allegations, which do not look very strong to m

> As more evidence comes out I haven't seen evidence of Neumann's cheating, as is claimed in this comment. Only allegations, which do not look very strong to me.

tibbar 4y ago
There are two lines of evidence: first regarding his cheating online, which is easier to do and easier to check. Chess.com banned Hans and put out a statement saying that Hans cheated more often and more seriously than he claimed. [1] The second line of inquiry is statistical analyses of Hans's over-the-board games. See my original comment for one such analysis, but he really has been playing at an absurd level in some games (performing as well 0 centipawn loss against some engines!) It's not a good look. [1] https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352 https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  What a person did at 16 years old is hardly relevant now, and it is definitely immoral to keep bringing it up without new evidence. How long would it take for people like you to stop bringing up 'he has a history of cheating'? 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? He had played at a way more serious events, and still the only 'evidence' of cheating is his relatively good performance. Until someone comes up with an explanation how he is able to cheat with games streamed with delay and after metal detector scanner, I suggest treating Carlsen's behavior as tantrums of a person who can't take a loss. Also, whatever chess.com says about cheating online is irrelevant, as their methods are known to produce a lot of false positives. Additionally, since recently chess.com is in business relationship with Carlsen, so they can hardly be counted as an independent party in all of this.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    > What a person did at 16 years old is hardly relevant now That argument works better when someone's 25 than when they're 19. This isn't the distant past, this is 3 years ago. That's definitely recent enough to be a black mark on his reputation. On the other side, the main person who's suspicious of them isn't some internet random. It's the world greatest chess player, which should is decidedly a mark in one's favor reputation-wise. This is the very basis of how reputation works. You slowly establish reputation by having a track record of positive behavior, you rapidly tarnish reputation by having a track record of negative behavior, and when you are making judgements based on limited information about the activity at hand, you trust the more trustworthy. Think of how much good will Microsoft has had to build in the last 10 years to try and make up for the 20 before that. Think of the fable of the boy who cried wolf. Trusting those who have earned it and distrusting those who have wronged before is basic society 101.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      The "sin" he committed was playing no stakes online blitz, and you are projecting this 'mark' on his reputation to a professional over the board tournament with anticheating measures. The tournament organisers were very confident that no cheating took place at the event. To me it is a rather closed case. Regarding Carlsen's behavior, so far it looks like he has grown a very big ego. Not interested in a second championship match with Nepo, throwing tantrums against an up and coming player who defeated him. Maybe he's feeling he is losing his edge against a new generation of players, and doesn't like it.
vintermann 4y ago
I have heard a concrete allegation that in the Capablanca Memorial 2022 tournament (which was over the board), Niemann has games where he plays normally up to a point in the midgame, then he plays the top line of a specific engine (Stockfish 11) for an implausible number of moves in sequence. There are a lot of lower-quality accusations, but this is the interesting one IMO. It should be easy enough to independently check for someone who has a setup for that sort of thing.
- not1ofU 4y ago
  ChessBruh mentioned that this youtube channel has analysis of Hans' Games, focusing on centipawn loses after standard openers are filtered out: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChessfanMWP/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ChessfanMWP/videos The last 5 or so vids on that channel are in English, but youtube does a decent-ish translation of his other videos too.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Yes, he is the source of that allegation. He is very hard to follow, though. He's not a great caster, and his accent is so thick that YouTube's automatic captioning misidentifies it as Russian.
nextlevelwizard 4y ago
You mean over the board, right? Because he himself has admitted to cheating online twice, but if you think about it even a bit people don't just cheat once, then get caught, then couple years later repeat the process. Most likely he had cheated at least before and between the times he got caught.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Whatever kids do online at 16 yo playing on a second-rate chess site (and chess.com is a second-rate) is hardly relevant to how they play over the board in a top level chess events.
smcl 4y ago
In my experience, people who do do deceitful stuff - steal, lie and cheat - act quite predictably when confronted with their allegations: 1. I didn't cheat! 2. Ok yeah I cheated those times but I never did it again 3. GOTO 1 It seems we've gone through this cycle once already - where Niemann has admitted that he was caught cheating on two occasions in the past. And now chess.com are saying actually he has cheated more times than that, so we're seemingly going through this cycle at least once more: https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352 https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352 This is very feelings-based but as an outsider who doesn't really play Chess and can't evaluate what happened on the board, it certainly doesn't look good. He's at very least been quite dishonest
- fwsgonzo 4y ago
  This is exactly how it works. It's disappointing how many ifs and buts people are giving him just because they don't particularly like Carlsen. It really shows. Cheaters are serial cheaters, and they will deny deny deny. The problem is really that he has admitted to cheating more than once. There is a reason why sports and just about everything else employs zero-tolerance policies: It doesn't just happen once.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    It can though. Kids can be young and make stupid mistakes. I'm not saying that is what happened here - I really don't follow chess enough to have an informed opinion on this specific case. However I object to the blanket opinion that there aren't people who cheated once and absolutely regretted it and never did it again, especially kids, especially online.
    - smcl 4y ago
      On one level you're right, if you do something dishonest then admit it that doesn't automatically mean you're never to be trusted ever again. However I think the more times someone goes through the deny/concede cycle I described, the less trustworthy they are, especially if it's for exactly the same thing each time.

> As more evidence comes out I haven't seen evidence of Neumann's cheating, as is claimed in this comment. Only allegations, which do not look very strong to me.

tibbar 4y ago

There are two lines of evidence: first regarding his cheating online, which is easier to do and easier to check. Chess.com banned Hans and put out a statement saying that Hans cheated more often and more seriously than he claimed. [1] The second line of inquiry is statistical analyses of Hans's over-the-board games. See my original comment for one such analysis, but he really has been playing at an absurd level in some games (performing as well 0 centipawn loss against some engines!) It's not a good look. [1] https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352 https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
What a person did at 16 years old is hardly relevant now, and it is definitely immoral to keep bringing it up without new evidence. How long would it take for people like you to stop bringing up 'he has a history of cheating'? 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? He had played at a way more serious events, and still the only 'evidence' of cheating is his relatively good performance. Until someone comes up with an explanation how he is able to cheat with games streamed with delay and after metal detector scanner, I suggest treating Carlsen's behavior as tantrums of a person who can't take a loss. Also, whatever chess.com says about cheating online is irrelevant, as their methods are known to produce a lot of false positives. Additionally, since recently chess.com is in business relationship with Carlsen, so they can hardly be counted as an independent party in all of this.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  > What a person did at 16 years old is hardly relevant now That argument works better when someone's 25 than when they're 19. This isn't the distant past, this is 3 years ago. That's definitely recent enough to be a black mark on his reputation. On the other side, the main person who's suspicious of them isn't some internet random. It's the world greatest chess player, which should is decidedly a mark in one's favor reputation-wise. This is the very basis of how reputation works. You slowly establish reputation by having a track record of positive behavior, you rapidly tarnish reputation by having a track record of negative behavior, and when you are making judgements based on limited information about the activity at hand, you trust the more trustworthy. Think of how much good will Microsoft has had to build in the last 10 years to try and make up for the 20 before that. Think of the fable of the boy who cried wolf. Trusting those who have earned it and distrusting those who have wronged before is basic society 101.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    The "sin" he committed was playing no stakes online blitz, and you are projecting this 'mark' on his reputation to a professional over the board tournament with anticheating measures. The tournament organisers were very confident that no cheating took place at the event. To me it is a rather closed case. Regarding Carlsen's behavior, so far it looks like he has grown a very big ego. Not interested in a second championship match with Nepo, throwing tantrums against an up and coming player who defeated him. Maybe he's feeling he is losing his edge against a new generation of players, and doesn't like it.

vintermann 4y ago

I have heard a concrete allegation that in the Capablanca Memorial 2022 tournament (which was over the board), Niemann has games where he plays normally up to a point in the midgame, then he plays the top line of a specific engine (Stockfish 11) for an implausible number of moves in sequence. There are a lot of lower-quality accusations, but this is the interesting one IMO. It should be easy enough to independently check for someone who has a setup for that sort of thing.

not1ofU 4y ago
ChessBruh mentioned that this youtube channel has analysis of Hans' Games, focusing on centipawn loses after standard openers are filtered out: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChessfanMWP/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ChessfanMWP/videos The last 5 or so vids on that channel are in English, but youtube does a decent-ish translation of his other videos too.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Yes, he is the source of that allegation. He is very hard to follow, though. He's not a great caster, and his accent is so thick that YouTube's automatic captioning misidentifies it as Russian.

nextlevelwizard 4y ago

You mean over the board, right? Because he himself has admitted to cheating online twice, but if you think about it even a bit people don't just cheat once, then get caught, then couple years later repeat the process. Most likely he had cheated at least before and between the times he got caught.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Whatever kids do online at 16 yo playing on a second-rate chess site (and chess.com is a second-rate) is hardly relevant to how they play over the board in a top level chess events.

smcl 4y ago

In my experience, people who do do deceitful stuff - steal, lie and cheat - act quite predictably when confronted with their allegations: 1. I didn't cheat! 2. Ok yeah I cheated those times but I never did it again 3. GOTO 1 It seems we've gone through this cycle once already - where Niemann has admitted that he was caught cheating on two occasions in the past. And now chess.com are saying actually he has cheated more times than that, so we're seemingly going through this cycle at least once more: https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352 https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352 This is very feelings-based but as an outsider who doesn't really play Chess and can't evaluate what happened on the board, it certainly doesn't look good. He's at very least been quite dishonest

fwsgonzo 4y ago
This is exactly how it works. It's disappointing how many ifs and buts people are giving him just because they don't particularly like Carlsen. It really shows. Cheaters are serial cheaters, and they will deny deny deny. The problem is really that he has admitted to cheating more than once. There is a reason why sports and just about everything else employs zero-tolerance policies: It doesn't just happen once.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  It can though. Kids can be young and make stupid mistakes. I'm not saying that is what happened here - I really don't follow chess enough to have an informed opinion on this specific case. However I object to the blanket opinion that there aren't people who cheated once and absolutely regretted it and never did it again, especially kids, especially online.
  - smcl 4y ago
    On one level you're right, if you do something dishonest then admit it that doesn't automatically mean you're never to be trusted ever again. However I think the more times someone goes through the deny/concede cycle I described, the less trustworthy they are, especially if it's for exactly the same thing each time.