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The fact that an athlete in a competitive sport was allowed to partake in an event even after admitting to cheating not only once, but twice, is outrageous in i
by selfmodruntime 4y ago
The fact that an athlete in a competitive sport was allowed to partake in an event even after admitting to cheating not only once, but twice, is outrageous in itself.
- jrm4 4y agoRight? I completely didn't understand this part? In pretty much everything else, you cheat, you're basically done.
- jayski 4y agoI'm not a fan of this player, I don't even play chess. Still it sounds a bit harsh to me that a child that cheated online can never in his adult life participate in chess tournaments. If he had cheated as an adult I would have a different opinion.
- fredoliveira 4y agoWell, that's where the report comes in. He has cheated several times as an adult too.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smaryjerry 4y agoIf you consider 17 an adult and that the report is correctly identifying those games. This is no different than cheating in a video game online. It’s playing random people from matchmaking for rating points tied to that game. Maybe there were multiple tournaments as well for small prizes (probably under $1000 prize money) if the report on the report is correct though. I’d compare it to an NBA player cheating in a pick up game of basketball.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago> If you consider 17 an adult and that the report is correctly identifying those games For him, that was 2 years ago.
- kcplate 4y agoHis past cheating AND the statistical anomalies related to his fast progress may also be explained by cheating in an Occam’s Razor sort of way is what is raising the flags. I don’t care one way or the other, but I’d assume the worst.
- Taek 4y agoHe's still a child. He cheated when he was 16 (now we have evidence that he cheated at 17 too), and he's only 19. I don't think a 5 year ban (or honestly, even a 10 year ban) is all that extreme.
- Bud 4y agoOh. Really? I mean, not in baseball. Not in football. Not in basketball. Not even in President of the United States. What is this alternate reality you're in, and what is your list of "everything else"? Citations, please.
- jrm4 4y agoI didn't go deep on it, but it seemed like dude's cheating was repeated, open, and notorious.
- Bud 4y agoIt was. I was addressing the other part of your statement, however.
- Cupertino95014 4y agoCitation: Pete Rose, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling will never get in the Hall of Fame. You're right that that's not "basically done," but once they're retired, HoF is all they have to look forward to. Being officially in disgrace is pretty done.
- Bud 4y agoYet I can cite hundreds of cases of cheating in all the major sports in which, yes, there was a suspension or other penalty, but the players or people involved were then allowed to participate again. The examples you cited are very extreme, but even in these cases, they don't support your argument. None of those players were removed from the game during their playing careers and barred. And again, those are just the most extreme cases. There are many, many less severe cases, all of which support my argument and not yours. You might want to remove Schilling from your list, btw. He hasn't been accused of any cheating; instead, he did other embarrassing things.
- Cupertino95014 4y agoIf you read what I said, I didn't claim PED violators are removed from the sport. I said that being denied HoF is not just a slap on the wrist. If you're not someone who'd be considered HoF material anyway, then the consequences are probably manageable.
- paxys 4y ago> In pretty much everything else, you cheat, you're basically done. The penalty for cheating in most major sports is way more lenient than you think. Most leagues will suspend you for a handful of games in the first instance. In the NBA for example you can be caught three times before being suspended for one season.
- lamontcg 4y agoMLS you catch a 10 game ban (out of a 34 game season) for your first PED offense.
- smeagull 4y agoYeah, and you can even just go into a different sport like Baseball for that time.
- jprd 4y ago/orsonwellesclap This is a super on-point and sharp critique based on the assertion that Michael Jordan's first retirement from the NBA to go play Minor League baseball was an under-the-table suspension for gambling on NBA games (dude has a legit problem) while playing in the NBA Championships. This happened right after a three-peat (3 Championships in a row). And in one fell marketing miracle, the status quo and marketability of both the NBA and Michael Jordan was protected. One and a half years later, MJ "un-retired" to light up the league for another 3 straight championships.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoI can see both sides. If you have to cheat, that is your personal flaw and you have many other options in life where that behavior doesn’t matter. Especially since there are many others who don’t cheat that can take your place in a competition.
- antiterra 4y agoThe admissions were from when he was 12 and 16; many so societies generally believe in redemption from childhood transgressions.
- robswc 4y ago12 is fine... 16 is iffy... it was only 3 years ago. I'm personally a bit frustrated with the ever changing standards for adolescents. They are as responsible or naive as people want them to be for whatever their bias calls for. (not saying you btw, just in general).
- t-writescode 4y agoPersonally, I'm not a fan of permanent Scarlet Letters for .... I think I may go so far as to say anything.
- robswc 4y agoNeither am I... I honestly have no idea what the kids punishment should be. Not irredeemable by any means... that seems cruel for the sake of being cruel... but its also not fair to have people compete with a known cheater (and potentially, hopefully not, a liar). He may have to take a long break.
- nordsieck 4y ago> Personally, I'm not a fan of permanent Scarlet Letters for .... I think I may go so far as to say anything. What's your opinion of the National Sex Offender Registry?
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago>What's your opinion of the National Sex Offender Registry? People are on it for simply peeing in public. And teenage minors in a relationship sending nudes to each other due to a lack of "Romeo and Juliet" laws. Not much is black & white.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThis is, I think, the single biggest factor in the proliferation of cheating. Most cheaters are smart enough to do the math on how they should win at the sport, or is smart enough to hire someone who can do the math. In other words, cheaters are rational actors. Allowing people back into the sport swings the EV math heavily in favor of cheating if the penalty isn't massive given that the chance of getting caught is so low (as long as you know what you're doing). The only way to make the EV of cheating negative is to make the sanction very, very bad. Losing all of your future earnings from the sport is a good way to do that. I used to run Magic: the Gathering tournaments, and there was a tremendous amount of "minor" cheating - forgetting the rules when it benefits them, shuffling in suspicious ways, peeking at opponents decks, etc. Many competitive players even openly admitted to doing this. Even if a tournament official could call them on the cheating and disqualify them (which was frowned upon without hard evidence), they would likely not be suspended from sanctioned play at all unless the evidence was overwhelming. Several famous cheaters did it many times and got caught several times. Minor cheating was very common as a result.
- whatshisface 4y agoThe alternative - an environment where innocent people were sometimes getting expelled - would be worse when it's just a game.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoA tournament with a >$200,000 prize pool (the Sinquefeld cup or a Magic pro tour) is hardly "just a game."
- jonny_eh 4y agoSometimes people are caught red-handed.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoYeah, it doesn't have to involve banning people for life on borderline cases of cheating, but if you are caught red-handed, a lifetime ban seems in order.
- briandear 4y agoAre we calling chess a sport?
- stonemetal12 4y agoThey started playing it online so now it is an esport. /s
- freetime2 4y agoI had the same thought. I don't have a particularly strong opinion about whether chess players should be called athletes or not, but this was the first time that I had ever seen chess players referred to as athletes. The first result when you google "Are chess players athletes" says no [1], but I realize that this is more of an opinion piece. I would be curious to hear what more members of the competitive chess community think of the designation as athletes. Edit: Upon further googling, I have learned that the IOC recognizes chess as a sport. Reading up further on how the matches last for 7+ hours, and how important physical conditioning is, I think it's totally valid to refer to chess players as athletes. In different sports there is wide spectrum of physical and mental demands - and I think chess just falls on the incredibly-demanding-mentally-but-less-demanding-physically end of the spectrum. [1] https://herculeschess.com/are-chess-players-athletes/ https://herculeschess.com/are-chess-players-athletes/ [2] https://olympics.com/ioc/recognised-international-federations https://olympics.com/ioc/recognised-international-federation...
- adamckay 4y agoYes. It's recognised by the International Olympic Committee - https://olympics.com/ioc/recognised-international-federations https://olympics.com/ioc/recognised-international-federation... A common definition is: "Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport
- yucky 4y agoKey word being "physical" though, right? I wouldn't consider poker players or tetris players athletes.
- mkl95 4y agoThere are a few competitive sports where the same pattern occurs. Namely decentralized sports, particularly boxing where it's not rare for some elite athlete to be banned temporarily after testing positive for PEDs. Most bans are for 6-12 months which is a joke. My guess is that the more decentralized a sport is, the more likely it is for cheating to occur and go unpunished. Chess is unofficially becoming a decentralized sport since the pandemic due to the shift to online playing. Even if some organizations claim to be in power, there is only so much they can do. Banning cheaters permanently may not even be possible.
- cco 4y ago> Most bans are for 6-12 months which is a joke. An athlete's professional career is roughly ten years* with the majority of their earning potential to be an even smaller set of those years. A ban from being paid for 12 months may represent 10% or more of an athlete's career earning potential. *Of course this varies a lot by sport, gymnastics careers are obviously very short, a golfer's career may be much longer.
- iudqnolq 4y agoEven worse, professional athletes fund full-time training through ways that wouldn't be available during a ban. Skip full-time training for a year and you'll probably not be competitive after.
- cool_dude85 4y agoPresumably any long FIDE ban would be the end of a serious chess career, right?
- jfim 4y agoWhat does decentralized mean in the context of a sport? Does it mean having more than one governing body for the sport?
- mkl95 4y agoMultiple governing bodies. For instance boxing has four major governing bodies and dozens of small organizations. Other than that every area has its own athletic commission that is allowed to freely interpret some rules.
- wisnoskij 4y agowhen they were 12.
- selfmodruntime 4y agoOne time when they were 17. Obviously the sanction at 12 wasn't bad enough. A barring for 5 years would've maybe helped him learn his lesson
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoWhatever happened during online play on a second rate chess site is hardly a reason to ban player from OTB events without evidence of cheating in such events.
- Taek 4y agochess.com is a first rate entity in the chess world (a peer of FIDE and lichess), and Hans was caught cheating in events that had cash prizes. Hans cheated for money, that's plenty of indication that he would cheat in more important situations as well.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoChess.com has no problem allowing Niemann to participate in tournaments after they allegedly 'caught' him, and they only became very principled after their business partner Carlsen had lost to Niemann and instigated the conflict in a very disingenuous way. In any court their testimony would be thrown out. Also, he allegedly cheated for money at 12yo. Yeah, right, that's definitely a grave unforgivable sin that should ruin his whole career. /s
- Taek 4y agoHe cheated in the 2020 cash prize tournent SCC Grand Prix at the age of 17. If you are going to be snarky, at least be correct.
- paxys 4y agoIs there a single sport in the world where a player will get a lifetime ban for admitting to cheating in the past? All major ones will let you compete even after being caught doping/fixing a half dozen times in your career. The bar is a lot lower than you think.
- mzs 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sportspeople_banned_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sportspeople_banned_f...
- bee_rider 4y agoI'm slightly confused about the relationship between chess.com and these tournaments. If he gets caught cheating at a FIDE tournament, they could do whatever they want -- ban him for life, whatever, it is up to them. If he gets caught cheating on an online game, whether it is chess.com or counterstrike, who cares? It is an unranked online game (or the ranking is tied to some account gamerscore thing). Unless their chess.com scores feed into their FIDE ELO scores or something?
- msbarnett 4y ago> If he gets caught cheating on an online game, whether it is chess.com or counterstrike, who cares? Chess.com isn’t the yahoo chess web app or whatever, there’s more at stake there than “gamerscore”. Some of these 100 games were in online tournaments for cash prizes. Just because it wasn’t a FIDE run tournament doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter or that no one cares. The chess.com Pro Chess League they suggest he cheated in 12 games of had a $100,000 prize fund.
- yodsanklai 4y ago> The chess.com Pro Chess League they suggest he cheated in 12 games of had a $100,000 prize fund. I'd argue that an online tournament is bogus if anybody can cheat by using a computer.
- msbarnett 4y agoYou understand that this whole discussion is about how chess.com detected this at the time and booted him, right? They appear to be doing a better job of detecting cheating than OTB tournaments, which doesn’t say to me “anybody can cheat by using a computer”
- yodsanklai 4y agoTheir statistical models aren't going to detect accurately a player getting help for a couple of moves during a game, which is already enough to make a big difference. They may be able to detect consistent cheating over many games, but still, one can assume that cheating is pervasive in online platforms.
- awb 4y agoHe was a minor at the time when he admitted to cheating, so a lifetime ban would be harsh.
- cafard 4y agoPED use does not necessarily bring a lifetime suspension in US professional sports.