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Yea, it definitely seems a bit suspicious and unfair, which fits frankly with the sport going through growing pains on this. Seems like you gotta beat Magnus f
by maegul 4y ago
Yea, it definitely seems a bit suspicious and unfair, which fits frankly with the sport going through growing pains on this.
Seems like you gotta beat Magnus for your cheating to matter?! Snark aside, Magnus’s behaviour makes some sense, he wants this to be addressed. But the manner in which it is happening, his conduct included, is just poor form for the sport, even if it was the best overall move Magnus could make.
- bombcar 4y agoI suspect something like “everyone cheats online” is kind of what we have here, and they’re a bit worried about upsetting the whole applecart.
- maegul 4y agoWhich gets to my point about the bias of chess.com. Surely they have an interest in making this look like one awful offender, a bad apple essentially, and not that they’re profits come from a broken sport.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoFor anyone unaware, chess.com recently bought out the Play Magnus Group for about $80 million. They most definitely are not a neutral party in this financially. I personally interpret this sort of situation as creating an additional burden to acknowledge and demonstrate the conflict of interest isn't a material factor. I don't know if Hans cheated beyond his admissions. Online seems plausible if not likely to me. OTB seems much less plausible. But this report being leaked to the WSJ, then goes up on the blog, immediately ahead of Neiman's next big event? That definitely an intentional PR campaign, and that comes across as scummy to me. I'd say doubly scummy consider the report itself establishes how prevalent cheating on chess.com is among GMs, yet nothing like this sort of public disclosure has happened in other cases. It's hard to interpret this as anything but selective enforcement based on Carlson's reaction to a specific player and game.
- maegul 4y agoAgreed on all fronts. I've gotten the vague impression over the years that the chess establishment isn't the most fair and non-corrupt organisation (par for the course perhaps for sports organisations). It also seems to be relatively behind or new to massive cheating scandals (??). Put together an event like this was almost certainly going to be ugly and unimpressive.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoFIDE has a very poor reputation when it comes to handling the more unpleasant stuff.
- edanm 4y agoErr, if that was their interest, why did they even include the new-to-many info about other top GMs having admitted cheating? They could have just not included that part at all.
- bombcar 4y agoBecause the “our detection shows cheating” is supported by “here’s X cases where our detection worked and got a confession”.
- Bud 4y agoIf they have that interest, why did they just release a detailed 72-page report in which they make clear that there have actually been many offenders? Your argument doesn't hold much water.
- threatofrain 4y agoIt appears that chess.com was handling the matter discreetly until Hans made the issue public. It would be unfair if it turned out that the other GM's also challenged chess.com publicly.
- mzs 4y agoHans didn't make anything public until two stars made public allegations against him.
- me_me_me 4y agocarlsen is right saying cheating is an existential threat to chess. if cheating becomes easier to conceal (more subtle) it will kill interest in spectating and double paranoia in player. i could not care about bike racing due to doping, literally all top racers were doping back when i was following it. i can no longer watch it without doping in the back of my mind after all of it started coming out. Olympiads to me are the same. if cheating in your sport is not dealt with it will grow like cancer .