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Hikaru talking about the cheating allegation against him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 I'll add that

Hikaru talking about the cheating allegation against him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 I'll add that he live streamed the tournament he was accused of cheating in. If you've ever watched how fast he moves and quite often pre-moves & talks through his strategy as he goes, it'd be very surprising to see that he cheated (and I don't even know how he'd go about doing so - he's faster than the engines!).

hibikir 3y ago
I don't think he was cheating, if just because he was playing a series of players far, far lower than his standard level, and he proves that level in tournaments that have far superior anti-cheating requirements. However, could he be cheating, if he wanted to, in ways undetectable by the livestreaming? Absolutely! At the GM level, just having the evaluation visible somewhere is more than sufficient to gain 100 points of ELO: You know when your opponent blunders, and if you are winning. That can be setup trivially somewhere out of view. He doesn't need to be told one move, ever. See, for instance, Carlsen-Caruana WCC, game 6. Ended in a draw. But there was a mate in 30 once, that neither player saw. The moment Fabiano was told of the mate in 30, after the game, he started blurting out the right line... because if there's mate in 30, there was only one way it could possibly go, but it was too hard to calculate. Mate in 30 says 'yes, the really crazy line that you saw works out!' The same can happen in blitz. As for Hikaru being faster than the engine... it's a crazy claim that he wouldn't believe himself. At any and all time controls, the engine wins, all the time. The calculations from the previous move already included every move your opponent does... It's just that the lame browser engines aren't set up to remember the line from move to move, so they recompute. See what happens with any engine in the cloud, using aggressive parallelism, the kind a super GM uses to study. There's minimal cheat prevention in titled Tuesday. Even when streaming, cheating is trivially easy to do, by anyone. But this is a place where Kramnik is overplaying his hand. There's probably many players making money in titled tuesday by cheating, as their performance is so very far from over-the-board performance, it's highly suspicious. But the top dozen super-GMs, for which Titled Tuesday money is unimportant? The statistical differences vs their regular play would have to be far bigger than what Kramnik shows for them.
- trollied 3y ago
  > It's just that the lame browser engines aren't set up to remember the line from move to move, so they recompute. I didn't realise this. Appreciate the correction.
- soegaard 3y ago
  I agree with your analysis. > That can be setup trivially somewhere out of view. And that's the reason headphones are banned in tournaments. It's a problem for streamers though, since they need headphones to avoid audio feedback.
  - lupire 3y ago
    What audio feedback? Do chess streamers need audio from the computer?
    - unaindz 3y ago
      The audio clues that sound when the oponent moves a piece are really important, more so if you are distracted reading chat as streamers do.
    - soegaard 3y ago
      They often listen to music.
    - 83457 3y ago
      They are streaming.
    - 4death4 3y ago
      They're likely capturing their screen with sound. If they allow the audio output of the game to be captured by the microphone, then the game sounds will play twice. Chess doesn't have very many sounds, but it does have some, e.g. when a piece moves.
- thomasahle 3y ago
  > At the GM level, just having the evaluation visible somewhere is more than sufficient to gain 100 points of ELO. I suspect it could be even more, but I wonder if anyone has tested this at different levels? It would be cool to have a graph that shows eval-bar at 1600 ELO equals 70 points, eval-bar at 2800 ELO equals 200 points, etc.
mda 3y ago
He is not faster than engines.
- 0cVlTeIATBs 3y ago
  Maybe not usually, but here's an example when he was faster than stockfish [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWghHUcjPZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWghHUcjPZU
  - lupire 3y ago
    What is happening there? Hikaru doesn't explain.
    - Siecje 3y ago
      It said white had the better position and then later in the same position it said black had the better position.
  - mda 3y ago
    chess.com browser based engine is quite bad and default depth is low (and this is from 2 years ago).
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  He is if you normalize to 70W of power utilization, which is what more than what the brain uses :)
- aoeusnth1 3y ago
  he is sometimes faster than engines. Engines are stronger than humans at slow time controls, but there are multiple GMs that can beat Stockfish at ultrabullet due to low depth.
  - mda 3y ago
    It is true that chess engines are not usually designed to play in 15-30s games, however those ultra bullet examples games against the browser based versions which are much weaker and slower than the a dedicated engine process.
what-the-grump 3y ago
Do I think he cheats? No. Do I think it's possible to cheat at his level, it would be an art to cheat in rapid and not get in trouble at the rate he plays. But sure, I'll bite, why not. You can see that Hikaru has the ability to calculate and anticipate standard play far above his opponents, he calls out their moves before they make them. He clearly calculates both, he calculates the human line for him and his opponents. You can also see the tilt in chess vs say LoL in almost real time. You can begin to spot fatigue in an hour-long video, multi-hour stretch, you can see Hikaru get tried and change the way he plays, slow down, go for positions that are easier to play because he knows himself very well. Hikaru taking 2900s to town on chess.com simply looks like he is playing above the field at that pace. In a real tournament, with 90+ minutes, 2500-2600s give both Magnus and Hikaru trouble because there is so much more time to calculate. I think the reason why Hikaru is so strong, pattern recognition at this speed, instinct, and time spent playing, not strength necessarily in classical chess. (e.g. he has never been world champ)
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> Hikaru talking about the cheating allegation against him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 He seems very amused by the accusation in that video. Regarding his video to me this sounds like if you were to ask Djokovic to play 46 tennis matches versus players ranked between 5 and 400 in the world, could he win 45 out of 46 matches and draw one game (not possible in tennis but hey)? I mean: Djokovic literally won 41 matches in a row, including several matches against opponent from the top 5. From the opponents' list, it looks like there was no Magnus Carlsen and not any top 5 players in the world? Is it that surprising that a world champion crushes competition like that? I don't know but I'm not that suprised. P.S: I'm making a tennis analogy because Hikaru likes and plays tennis
- p1necone 3y ago
  > this sounds like if you were to ask Djokovic to play 46 tennis matches versus players ranked between 5 and 400 in the world, could he win 45 out of 46 matches and draw one game (not possible in tennis but hey)? Not quite, it's more like watching Djokovic's match record until he gets a really good streak and then calling that particular run out as unlikely. It being specifically 46 matches is just because that's the particular length of data that Kramnik cherry picked to do his analysis on.
- hilux 3y ago
  Unlike a chess game, a tennis match can't be lost with a single "blunder," unless it's a serious injury ... so I'm not sure it's a good analogy, mathematically speaking. We should ask Marc Esserman.
- rplnt 3y ago
  The chances Djokovic isn't cheating are very low though.
- sn0n 3y ago
  I'm going to need a statistical analysis of Hikaru's Tennis matches before I can assume anything. Surely he's cheating at tennis if he's cheating at Chess....
nilslindemann 3y ago
Kramnik has always intentionally trolled. This is how he compensates his frustration when he loses. The weird thing is, Kramnik actually cheated himself, when he became world champion. He accepted a match for the title with Kasparov, though he lost the match for the challenger against Shirov. This accusation against Hikaru is not funny anymore. Noobs in the Lichess chat start calling Hikaru a cheater. This is not ok. Being a cheater is a stigma in the chess community. Kramnik should apologize, or get declared as a persona non grata for a while in the chess community.
alexeiz 3y ago
Live streaming doesn't automatically mean you can't cheat. There is a software that reads the chesscom/lichess board in real-time, calculates a bunch of lines using a chess engine and overlays the evaluation of the next best moves over the chesscom board. You can then choose the move that you feel most comfortable with. You never need to look away from the board or switch focus from the browser window. This software doesn't need to be always running. You can start it with a hotkey on demand. The state of the technology is such that you can easily cheat in bullet games while streaming at the same time.
rplnt 3y ago
That's at least one "at the end of the day" a minute.
sesm 3y ago
He was wearing headphones during the stream, right? At his level, it's enough to get a 'BEEP' sound 1-2 times during the game to increase your performance by 200 ELO.

hibikir 3y ago

I don't think he was cheating, if just because he was playing a series of players far, far lower than his standard level, and he proves that level in tournaments that have far superior anti-cheating requirements. However, could he be cheating, if he wanted to, in ways undetectable by the livestreaming? Absolutely! At the GM level, just having the evaluation visible somewhere is more than sufficient to gain 100 points of ELO: You know when your opponent blunders, and if you are winning. That can be setup trivially somewhere out of view. He doesn't need to be told one move, ever. See, for instance, Carlsen-Caruana WCC, game 6. Ended in a draw. But there was a mate in 30 once, that neither player saw. The moment Fabiano was told of the mate in 30, after the game, he started blurting out the right line... because if there's mate in 30, there was only one way it could possibly go, but it was too hard to calculate. Mate in 30 says 'yes, the really crazy line that you saw works out!' The same can happen in blitz. As for Hikaru being faster than the engine... it's a crazy claim that he wouldn't believe himself. At any and all time controls, the engine wins, all the time. The calculations from the previous move already included every move your opponent does... It's just that the lame browser engines aren't set up to remember the line from move to move, so they recompute. See what happens with any engine in the cloud, using aggressive parallelism, the kind a super GM uses to study. There's minimal cheat prevention in titled Tuesday. Even when streaming, cheating is trivially easy to do, by anyone. But this is a place where Kramnik is overplaying his hand. There's probably many players making money in titled tuesday by cheating, as their performance is so very far from over-the-board performance, it's highly suspicious. But the top dozen super-GMs, for which Titled Tuesday money is unimportant? The statistical differences vs their regular play would have to be far bigger than what Kramnik shows for them.

trollied 3y ago
> It's just that the lame browser engines aren't set up to remember the line from move to move, so they recompute. I didn't realise this. Appreciate the correction.
soegaard 3y ago
I agree with your analysis. > That can be setup trivially somewhere out of view. And that's the reason headphones are banned in tournaments. It's a problem for streamers though, since they need headphones to avoid audio feedback.
- lupire 3y ago
  What audio feedback? Do chess streamers need audio from the computer?
  - unaindz 3y ago
    The audio clues that sound when the oponent moves a piece are really important, more so if you are distracted reading chat as streamers do.
  - soegaard 3y ago
    They often listen to music.
  - 83457 3y ago
    They are streaming.
  - 4death4 3y ago
    They're likely capturing their screen with sound. If they allow the audio output of the game to be captured by the microphone, then the game sounds will play twice. Chess doesn't have very many sounds, but it does have some, e.g. when a piece moves.
thomasahle 3y ago
> At the GM level, just having the evaluation visible somewhere is more than sufficient to gain 100 points of ELO. I suspect it could be even more, but I wonder if anyone has tested this at different levels? It would be cool to have a graph that shows eval-bar at 1600 ELO equals 70 points, eval-bar at 2800 ELO equals 200 points, etc.

mda 3y ago

He is not faster than engines.

0cVlTeIATBs 3y ago
Maybe not usually, but here's an example when he was faster than stockfish [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWghHUcjPZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWghHUcjPZU
- lupire 3y ago
  What is happening there? Hikaru doesn't explain.
  - Siecje 3y ago
    It said white had the better position and then later in the same position it said black had the better position.
- mda 3y ago
  chess.com browser based engine is quite bad and default depth is low (and this is from 2 years ago).
mensetmanusman 3y ago
He is if you normalize to 70W of power utilization, which is what more than what the brain uses :)
aoeusnth1 3y ago
he is sometimes faster than engines. Engines are stronger than humans at slow time controls, but there are multiple GMs that can beat Stockfish at ultrabullet due to low depth.
- mda 3y ago
  It is true that chess engines are not usually designed to play in 15-30s games, however those ultra bullet examples games against the browser based versions which are much weaker and slower than the a dedicated engine process.

what-the-grump 3y ago

Do I think he cheats? No. Do I think it's possible to cheat at his level, it would be an art to cheat in rapid and not get in trouble at the rate he plays. But sure, I'll bite, why not. You can see that Hikaru has the ability to calculate and anticipate standard play far above his opponents, he calls out their moves before they make them. He clearly calculates both, he calculates the human line for him and his opponents. You can also see the tilt in chess vs say LoL in almost real time. You can begin to spot fatigue in an hour-long video, multi-hour stretch, you can see Hikaru get tried and change the way he plays, slow down, go for positions that are easier to play because he knows himself very well. Hikaru taking 2900s to town on chess.com simply looks like he is playing above the field at that pace. In a real tournament, with 90+ minutes, 2500-2600s give both Magnus and Hikaru trouble because there is so much more time to calculate. I think the reason why Hikaru is so strong, pattern recognition at this speed, instinct, and time spent playing, not strength necessarily in classical chess. (e.g. he has never been world champ)

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> Hikaru talking about the cheating allegation against him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm2R--_fBj0 He seems very amused by the accusation in that video. Regarding his video to me this sounds like if you were to ask Djokovic to play 46 tennis matches versus players ranked between 5 and 400 in the world, could he win 45 out of 46 matches and draw one game (not possible in tennis but hey)? I mean: Djokovic literally won 41 matches in a row, including several matches against opponent from the top 5. From the opponents' list, it looks like there was no Magnus Carlsen and not any top 5 players in the world? Is it that surprising that a world champion crushes competition like that? I don't know but I'm not that suprised. P.S: I'm making a tennis analogy because Hikaru likes and plays tennis

p1necone 3y ago
> this sounds like if you were to ask Djokovic to play 46 tennis matches versus players ranked between 5 and 400 in the world, could he win 45 out of 46 matches and draw one game (not possible in tennis but hey)? Not quite, it's more like watching Djokovic's match record until he gets a really good streak and then calling that particular run out as unlikely. It being specifically 46 matches is just because that's the particular length of data that Kramnik cherry picked to do his analysis on.
hilux 3y ago
Unlike a chess game, a tennis match can't be lost with a single "blunder," unless it's a serious injury ... so I'm not sure it's a good analogy, mathematically speaking. We should ask Marc Esserman.
rplnt 3y ago
The chances Djokovic isn't cheating are very low though.
sn0n 3y ago
I'm going to need a statistical analysis of Hikaru's Tennis matches before I can assume anything. Surely he's cheating at tennis if he's cheating at Chess....

nilslindemann 3y ago

Kramnik has always intentionally trolled. This is how he compensates his frustration when he loses. The weird thing is, Kramnik actually cheated himself, when he became world champion. He accepted a match for the title with Kasparov, though he lost the match for the challenger against Shirov. This accusation against Hikaru is not funny anymore. Noobs in the Lichess chat start calling Hikaru a cheater. This is not ok. Being a cheater is a stigma in the chess community. Kramnik should apologize, or get declared as a persona non grata for a while in the chess community.

alexeiz 3y ago

Live streaming doesn't automatically mean you can't cheat. There is a software that reads the chesscom/lichess board in real-time, calculates a bunch of lines using a chess engine and overlays the evaluation of the next best moves over the chesscom board. You can then choose the move that you feel most comfortable with. You never need to look away from the board or switch focus from the browser window. This software doesn't need to be always running. You can start it with a hotkey on demand. The state of the technology is such that you can easily cheat in bullet games while streaming at the same time.

rplnt 3y ago

That's at least one "at the end of the day" a minute.

sesm 3y ago

He was wearing headphones during the stream, right? At his level, it's enough to get a 'BEEP' sound 1-2 times during the game to increase your performance by 200 ELO.