6 ms·

It's very remarkable that Carlsen is suspicious of Niemann's game against him in Sinquefield, since there's a clear consensus among other top chess players that

It's very remarkable that Carlsen is suspicious of Niemann's game against him in Sinquefield, since there's a clear consensus among other top chess players that there was absolutely nothing unusual about it (or at least about the moves played).

addicted 4y ago
And he wasn’t suspicious about his game when he beat Hans a few weeks earlier itself. If Hans did go to all those extremes to cheat OTB it’s really surprising he would do so while playing black against Magnus Carlsen in an otherwise kind of pointless game.
MauranKilom 4y ago
The reasons Carlsen gives for being suspicious are not "the moves played were unusual" but about Niemann's behavior surrounding them.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  When Robert Fischer achieved an unprecedented scores in the pretenders matches prior to winning the champion title, I believe that the biggest factor was not the quality of the play of Fischer, but the way he mentally unbalanced and broke his opponents, who absolutely did not give a performance they were capable of.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    In this case it seems most of the unusual behavior occurred after the match, where (I've seen claimed) Niemann gave obviously wrong reasons why he had played so well on such an uncommon line, and was also not able to explain why he made particular choices he did playing it.
    - chongli 4y ago
      Not only did he fail to explain his reasoning in any satisfactory way, but the suggestions he gave as responses to alternative lines from his opponent were outright losing which showed that he had a poor grasp of the position. This is extremely suspicious behaviour from a player who had just defeated the world champion while using the black pieces. The consensus among the top GMs was that Hans’s postgame analysis was way below the level you would expect from a player of his rating, never mind a player near Carlsen’s rating (which is much higher)!
      - MisterSandman 4y ago
        Could that not just be explained as nervousness? Not saying he didn't chest, but that's hardly evidence
        mav88 4y ago
        No it can't and it is damning evidence. When you wipe the world champion off the board as black (which he did), you need to be able to show you understand how the game progressed in a post-game analysis. Neimann's understanding of his own remarkable performance was seriously deficient.
        roflyear 4y ago
        vintermann 4y ago
        Being unable to explain your own work is how a lot of academic cheating is confirmed. It doesn't matter if they don't know who you copied from, if you can't understand your own work right after you supposedly made it, they will fail you.
        umvi 4y ago
        It's like when you get the correct answer on a math test, but then when the math teacher asks you to show your work you bumble around and can't reproduce the thought process required to arrive at the correct answer.
  - kova12 4y ago
    We can be reasonably sure that Fischer has not been cheating above and beyond unusual conduct. There hasn't been a way to meaningfully cheat. In our times however there are computers which can materially help, and there are technologies allowing someone to receive it, use of which is very difficult to detect without an unacceptably invasive search
    - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      Btw think of this: If Fischer would play with such results in our days, Petrosyan fans would scream loud that he is cheating.
  - tehnub 4y ago
    The unnerving, unbalancing effect Fischer had in the 1971 Candidate's tournament was absolutely due to his play. He put up immense resistance against lines prepared by teams of Soviet GMs (example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-90cPf61M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-90cPf61M), which was the sort of thing that broke their nerve. He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board; if there were any outside-chess forces at play, it was the pressure from Soviet higher-ups embarrassed to lose to a lone American. Also, I don't recall that his opponents played worse than they would have been expected to against an opponent so much stronger than them — maybe after their fifth loss in a six game match, they'd become demoralized. This is nothing like the Carlsen-Niemann case.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      > He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board They absolutely were blundering much more than they did vs other opponents, showing a far lower quality off play than usual. Also I believe you didn't read much about his championship match. Remember how the games were moved to a different room, and why?
      - tehnub 4y ago
        Arjun blundered against Magnus far more than usual last weekend. That's what stronger players tend to do to you. I thought you were talking about the Candidate's tournament. As for the championship match, it's not generally believed that Spassky severely underperformed anyway. He won several games and put up good fights in the draws and losses. >I believe you didn't read much about his championship match I am quite familiar with the surrounding circumstances, including the pre-match negotiations. I do not see how any of this "mentally unbalanced" or "broke" Spassky, unlike (arguably) Larsen and Taimonov. Furthermore, he's generally been commended for his behavior as a consummate professional and a "gentleman" in the circumstances. I wonder if you are as familiar with chess (the game, professional play, and its history) as you lead on to be, posting all over this thread.
        Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Which are totally subjective. And they dont really make sense. He thought he was too relaxed? How would cheating OTB against Carlsen be relaxing? Carlsen is being really unprofessional here, even if he turns out to be correct. But the window has closed - we will never have evidence that he was cheating at this tourney.
ilc 4y ago
Not really. If you think about it: Magnus, is Magnus. He has an aura about him. People make blunders playing against him they wouldn't against others. This is known. Magnus is ALSO very good. But that "aura"... doesn't hurt him. If for whatever reason, Hans saw far enough ahead, to not be worried... and Magnus hadn't, what does that say about Magnus? He mentioned Hans wasn't nervous, in comparison to Magnus he had nothing to lose. I won't defend his prior cheating. I will say: Prove it Magnus. --- I'll draw a parallel to a game I have played at the national / international level. Bridge. Bridge has had a TON of cheating scandals. People knew something was fishy. But they took the time, watched the videos, and figured out what happened. Recent ones during the time I played: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantoni_and_Nunes_cheating_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantoni_and_Nunes_cheating_sca... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_and_Schwartz_cheating_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_and_Schwartz_cheating_s... A whole article on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge ... I want the smoking gun Magnus. Not your gut.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 4y ago
  Bridge cheating is a bit different, because you can find the smoking gun from video reviews, etc. I wonder if "bridge supercomputers" as a cheating method has been tried. I assume the percentages on finesses working, etc, are easy enough for the experts to learn that they're not very worthwhile.
  - ilc 4y ago
    Well, remember, you don't have full information. Especially in an "all pass" auction from opponents. Interestingly, the computers would to MUCH better on defense. Because as you bid, you speak about the distribution of your hand, and your partner does the same about theirs. (Even in negative inferences.) And trust me: Good opponents will use that information, already. So far, bridge has found the smoking guns because honestly: The cheaters have sucked at cheating. If they bothered to actually encrypt their signals at all, they would have been suspected, but not caught. --- To answer the question: Even today. Good players will know the answer to when to take which finesses. Where good, is probably around Life Master and a bit under.
dmix 4y ago
Is there a good summary by a chess expert on how he may or may not have cheated? (Ideally a video).
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  In chess you cheat by receiving external assistance. Nowadays, especially at the high level, that assistance is basically always from a computer. Other than that your guess is as good as mine as _how_ he could have received said assistance, I've seen some wild theories.
  - zikduruqe 4y ago
    What theories? That would be interesting to read. A micro-vibrating motor in his shoe, buzzing morse code? f4 to g5 for example?
    - detaro 4y ago
      for some reason the wild theory in this particular instance has been "vibrating anal beads". No, I don't know why.
      - Loughla 4y ago
        I have a theory about why that exists, in particular. 1. The trope of the 'Depraved Homosexual' has a long established history in pop culture and cinema. Anal beads as the choice for cheating would fall, comfortably, into that trope. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepravedHomosexual https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepravedHomosexu...] 2. Chess is full of VERY smart people. One of the most common ways to insult a smart person is to call into question their sexuality; hence why we have to have entire movements related to calling out anti-lgbtq+ statements like "that's so gay". [https://welcomingschools.org/resources/stop-thats-so-gay-anti-lgbtq-comments https://welcomingschools.org/resources/stop-thats-so-gay-ant...] Anyway, combine those two things, and you get your answer. It's because the world hasn't really evolved at all in the last 30-40 years, outside of what we have been forced to do by law. It's easy and socially acceptable to call a man gay as an insult, so in a roundabout way, that's what we're getting with the anal beads talk. I sort of laser focused on this last week when I heard this theory for the first time. It just struck me as so. . . odd. Why would that be a thing? That's what I came up with.
esaym 4y ago
>at least about the moves played You missed a large part. Some of his moves were "somewhat suspect". However, he was interviewed after the game with Magnus and he really could not explain why he was making the moves he made. Even the interviewers were almost laughing as he gave his "analysis" for his own moves. He played off his top engine moves as just getting lucky, while at the same time stating he didn't make other moves because they would have weakened his position (when in fact it was the other way around), while also stating he made other moves to strengthen his position (when in fact it was weakening). Nothing he said made sense. He is playing against the top players in the entire world, and he can't really describe his games. This is super genius territory, and yet he just claims his skills to mostly just be based on luck.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Hans also is trolling. Who knows if he can't explain or just doesn't want to. It means nothing.
  - Revery42 4y ago
    If you choose to troll you gotta pay the toll
  - Sebb767 4y ago
    Hans trolling like this, as an admitted cheater winning a play far above his rating, would be an astonishingly bad move.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      Yeah. He's also 19. Lol.
- Loeffelmann 4y ago
  Do you have a clip of the interview?
  - esaym 4y ago
why-el 4y ago
This is not true at all. For instance Nepominatchi commented on game saying Niemann's play was "more than impressive"[1]. Not commenting on the situation per se, merely your "clear consensus among other top chess players" comment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPmminIC7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPmminIC7g
- roflyear 4y ago
  Can mean anything. It was very impressive.
  - why-el 4y ago
    You are hung up on the wrong thing. Parent writes: "[clear consensus that] there was absolutely nothing unusual about it", I quote one of the greats saying the game is "more than impressive", which, at least we should agree, is the exact opposite of claiming there is "nothing unusual about this game". Onus is on parent to come up with a list of grandmasters claiming the game was "usual", at least I provided one refutation but there are many.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      Correct. They will not come up with a list of GMs saying Hans cheated. Many GMs have said that it doesn't seem like he did (at least during the game with Magnus).
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        Alireza, Ian, Magnus, Fabi, Wesley, and Levon have since made statements that imply they believe Hans cheated, or at least that they were suspicious of his play, as well as Yasser and Hikaru. That's the majority of the players in the Sinquefield cup. Even Levon, who was initially skeptical, has since reversed his position. As is tradition in chess, no one says "He cheated" they say things like "his moves were better than one would have expected" or "superhuman" or "I felt like I should trust my opponent over my calculation".
ninth_ant 4y ago
It's a bit misleading to say that there was absolutely nothing unusual about the game. The Sinquefield game in question showed a very high correlation between engine optimal moves and the moves played by Niemann. His gameplay accuracy here is within the bounds of what the very top players can achieve in individual games, but high enough to raise some suspicion. The next step is to place that mild suspicion in the context of both his history of admitted cheating, his unwillingness/inability to explain his remarkable moves post-game, and the additional context of many other games played in the last few years with _extraordinary_ accuracy. Now something that could be explained by just a very strong game appears very suspicious.
XCSme 4y ago
Some other top chess players voiced strong suspicions regarding his post-match interview (including the interviewer), because he could not suggest basic lines in the post-match analysis, lines that even the interviewer could find without an engine (and for example Hikaru while watching the interview, being able to say the line instantly).
croes 4y ago
It seems not the moves are the problem but the lack of concentration to come up with them.

addicted 4y ago

And he wasn’t suspicious about his game when he beat Hans a few weeks earlier itself. If Hans did go to all those extremes to cheat OTB it’s really surprising he would do so while playing black against Magnus Carlsen in an otherwise kind of pointless game.

MauranKilom 4y ago

The reasons Carlsen gives for being suspicious are not "the moves played were unusual" but about Niemann's behavior surrounding them.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
When Robert Fischer achieved an unprecedented scores in the pretenders matches prior to winning the champion title, I believe that the biggest factor was not the quality of the play of Fischer, but the way he mentally unbalanced and broke his opponents, who absolutely did not give a performance they were capable of.
- morelisp 4y ago
  In this case it seems most of the unusual behavior occurred after the match, where (I've seen claimed) Niemann gave obviously wrong reasons why he had played so well on such an uncommon line, and was also not able to explain why he made particular choices he did playing it.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Not only did he fail to explain his reasoning in any satisfactory way, but the suggestions he gave as responses to alternative lines from his opponent were outright losing which showed that he had a poor grasp of the position. This is extremely suspicious behaviour from a player who had just defeated the world champion while using the black pieces. The consensus among the top GMs was that Hans’s postgame analysis was way below the level you would expect from a player of his rating, never mind a player near Carlsen’s rating (which is much higher)!
    - MisterSandman 4y ago
      Could that not just be explained as nervousness? Not saying he didn't chest, but that's hardly evidence
      - mav88 4y ago
        No it can't and it is damning evidence. When you wipe the world champion off the board as black (which he did), you need to be able to show you understand how the game progressed in a post-game analysis. Neimann's understanding of his own remarkable performance was seriously deficient.
        roflyear 4y ago
        vintermann 4y ago
        Being unable to explain your own work is how a lot of academic cheating is confirmed. It doesn't matter if they don't know who you copied from, if you can't understand your own work right after you supposedly made it, they will fail you.
      - umvi 4y ago
        It's like when you get the correct answer on a math test, but then when the math teacher asks you to show your work you bumble around and can't reproduce the thought process required to arrive at the correct answer.
- kova12 4y ago
  We can be reasonably sure that Fischer has not been cheating above and beyond unusual conduct. There hasn't been a way to meaningfully cheat. In our times however there are computers which can materially help, and there are technologies allowing someone to receive it, use of which is very difficult to detect without an unacceptably invasive search
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    Btw think of this: If Fischer would play with such results in our days, Petrosyan fans would scream loud that he is cheating.
- tehnub 4y ago
  The unnerving, unbalancing effect Fischer had in the 1971 Candidate's tournament was absolutely due to his play. He put up immense resistance against lines prepared by teams of Soviet GMs (example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-90cPf61M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-90cPf61M), which was the sort of thing that broke their nerve. He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board; if there were any outside-chess forces at play, it was the pressure from Soviet higher-ups embarrassed to lose to a lone American. Also, I don't recall that his opponents played worse than they would have been expected to against an opponent so much stronger than them — maybe after their fifth loss in a six game match, they'd become demoralized. This is nothing like the Carlsen-Niemann case.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    > He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board They absolutely were blundering much more than they did vs other opponents, showing a far lower quality off play than usual. Also I believe you didn't read much about his championship match. Remember how the games were moved to a different room, and why?
    - tehnub 4y ago
      Arjun blundered against Magnus far more than usual last weekend. That's what stronger players tend to do to you. I thought you were talking about the Candidate's tournament. As for the championship match, it's not generally believed that Spassky severely underperformed anyway. He won several games and put up good fights in the draws and losses. >I believe you didn't read much about his championship match I am quite familiar with the surrounding circumstances, including the pre-match negotiations. I do not see how any of this "mentally unbalanced" or "broke" Spassky, unlike (arguably) Larsen and Taimonov. Furthermore, he's generally been commended for his behavior as a consummate professional and a "gentleman" in the circumstances. I wonder if you are as familiar with chess (the game, professional play, and its history) as you lead on to be, posting all over this thread.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
nonethewiser 4y ago
Which are totally subjective. And they dont really make sense. He thought he was too relaxed? How would cheating OTB against Carlsen be relaxing? Carlsen is being really unprofessional here, even if he turns out to be correct. But the window has closed - we will never have evidence that he was cheating at this tourney.

ilc 4y ago

Not really. If you think about it: Magnus, is Magnus. He has an aura about him. People make blunders playing against him they wouldn't against others. This is known. Magnus is ALSO very good. But that "aura"... doesn't hurt him. If for whatever reason, Hans saw far enough ahead, to not be worried... and Magnus hadn't, what does that say about Magnus? He mentioned Hans wasn't nervous, in comparison to Magnus he had nothing to lose. I won't defend his prior cheating. I will say: Prove it Magnus. --- I'll draw a parallel to a game I have played at the national / international level. Bridge. Bridge has had a TON of cheating scandals. People knew something was fishy. But they took the time, watched the videos, and figured out what happened. Recent ones during the time I played: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantoni_and_Nunes_cheating_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantoni_and_Nunes_cheating_sca... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_and_Schwartz_cheating_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_and_Schwartz_cheating_s... A whole article on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_bridge ... I want the smoking gun Magnus. Not your gut.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
Bridge cheating is a bit different, because you can find the smoking gun from video reviews, etc. I wonder if "bridge supercomputers" as a cheating method has been tried. I assume the percentages on finesses working, etc, are easy enough for the experts to learn that they're not very worthwhile.
- ilc 4y ago
  Well, remember, you don't have full information. Especially in an "all pass" auction from opponents. Interestingly, the computers would to MUCH better on defense. Because as you bid, you speak about the distribution of your hand, and your partner does the same about theirs. (Even in negative inferences.) And trust me: Good opponents will use that information, already. So far, bridge has found the smoking guns because honestly: The cheaters have sucked at cheating. If they bothered to actually encrypt their signals at all, they would have been suspected, but not caught. --- To answer the question: Even today. Good players will know the answer to when to take which finesses. Where good, is probably around Life Master and a bit under.

dmix 4y ago

Is there a good summary by a chess expert on how he may or may not have cheated? (Ideally a video).

cmeacham98 4y ago
In chess you cheat by receiving external assistance. Nowadays, especially at the high level, that assistance is basically always from a computer. Other than that your guess is as good as mine as _how_ he could have received said assistance, I've seen some wild theories.
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  What theories? That would be interesting to read. A micro-vibrating motor in his shoe, buzzing morse code? f4 to g5 for example?
  - detaro 4y ago
    for some reason the wild theory in this particular instance has been "vibrating anal beads". No, I don't know why.
    - Loughla 4y ago
      I have a theory about why that exists, in particular. 1. The trope of the 'Depraved Homosexual' has a long established history in pop culture and cinema. Anal beads as the choice for cheating would fall, comfortably, into that trope. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepravedHomosexual https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepravedHomosexu...] 2. Chess is full of VERY smart people. One of the most common ways to insult a smart person is to call into question their sexuality; hence why we have to have entire movements related to calling out anti-lgbtq+ statements like "that's so gay". [https://welcomingschools.org/resources/stop-thats-so-gay-anti-lgbtq-comments https://welcomingschools.org/resources/stop-thats-so-gay-ant...] Anyway, combine those two things, and you get your answer. It's because the world hasn't really evolved at all in the last 30-40 years, outside of what we have been forced to do by law. It's easy and socially acceptable to call a man gay as an insult, so in a roundabout way, that's what we're getting with the anal beads talk. I sort of laser focused on this last week when I heard this theory for the first time. It just struck me as so. . . odd. Why would that be a thing? That's what I came up with.

esaym 4y ago

>at least about the moves played You missed a large part. Some of his moves were "somewhat suspect". However, he was interviewed after the game with Magnus and he really could not explain why he was making the moves he made. Even the interviewers were almost laughing as he gave his "analysis" for his own moves. He played off his top engine moves as just getting lucky, while at the same time stating he didn't make other moves because they would have weakened his position (when in fact it was the other way around), while also stating he made other moves to strengthen his position (when in fact it was weakening). Nothing he said made sense. He is playing against the top players in the entire world, and he can't really describe his games. This is super genius territory, and yet he just claims his skills to mostly just be based on luck.

roflyear 4y ago
Hans also is trolling. Who knows if he can't explain or just doesn't want to. It means nothing.
- Revery42 4y ago
  If you choose to troll you gotta pay the toll
- Sebb767 4y ago
  Hans trolling like this, as an admitted cheater winning a play far above his rating, would be an astonishingly bad move.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Yeah. He's also 19. Lol.
Loeffelmann 4y ago
Do you have a clip of the interview?
- esaym 4y ago

why-el 4y ago

This is not true at all. For instance Nepominatchi commented on game saying Niemann's play was "more than impressive"[1]. Not commenting on the situation per se, merely your "clear consensus among other top chess players" comment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPmminIC7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPmminIC7g

roflyear 4y ago
Can mean anything. It was very impressive.
- why-el 4y ago
  You are hung up on the wrong thing. Parent writes: "[clear consensus that] there was absolutely nothing unusual about it", I quote one of the greats saying the game is "more than impressive", which, at least we should agree, is the exact opposite of claiming there is "nothing unusual about this game". Onus is on parent to come up with a list of grandmasters claiming the game was "usual", at least I provided one refutation but there are many.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Correct. They will not come up with a list of GMs saying Hans cheated. Many GMs have said that it doesn't seem like he did (at least during the game with Magnus).
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      Alireza, Ian, Magnus, Fabi, Wesley, and Levon have since made statements that imply they believe Hans cheated, or at least that they were suspicious of his play, as well as Yasser and Hikaru. That's the majority of the players in the Sinquefield cup. Even Levon, who was initially skeptical, has since reversed his position. As is tradition in chess, no one says "He cheated" they say things like "his moves were better than one would have expected" or "superhuman" or "I felt like I should trust my opponent over my calculation".

ninth_ant 4y ago

It's a bit misleading to say that there was absolutely nothing unusual about the game. The Sinquefield game in question showed a very high correlation between engine optimal moves and the moves played by Niemann. His gameplay accuracy here is within the bounds of what the very top players can achieve in individual games, but high enough to raise some suspicion. The next step is to place that mild suspicion in the context of both his history of admitted cheating, his unwillingness/inability to explain his remarkable moves post-game, and the additional context of many other games played in the last few years with _extraordinary_ accuracy. Now something that could be explained by just a very strong game appears very suspicious.

XCSme 4y ago

Some other top chess players voiced strong suspicions regarding his post-match interview (including the interviewer), because he could not suggest basic lines in the post-match analysis, lines that even the interviewer could find without an engine (and for example Hikaru while watching the interview, being able to say the line instantly).

croes 4y ago

It seems not the moves are the problem but the lack of concentration to come up with them.