Cheating scandals in chess, poker, and fishing!

[calumniate]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

I'm thinking logistically- not unbelievable from a would someone even consider that method perspective. Hell, Niemann could really enjoy butt stuff for all I know.

But, how would a vibrating pulse have enough settings/patterns to communicate proper chess moves in short order for an in person chess match?

It's not like niemann could hover his hand over different pieces and expect vibrates over the correct one, for example lol. Was there like a system of patterns? Even so, it would be so difficult to effectively communicate exactly which move a specific piece needs to make.

I don't think the communications needs are all that hard. Morse code could do it.. all you need is d5-e7 or whatever (row, column -> new row + column). That's basically how these chessmasters think anyway

Edit -- fuzz kindof beat me to it

[Scroopy Noopers]

….humans have been communicating with ticks and taps for 100 years. The least surprising thing out the story is interpreting some sort of code via vibration.

[Monahammer]

the fidelity of that level of communication would need to be pretty exact though, or else the cheating would fall apart and become obvious. What if the device malfunctioned and added an extra long vibration in the middle of the string? etc, etc. Yes, humans are good at communicating in a wide variety of ways, but internal vibrations for chess positions seems pretty extreme.

How far up would the vibrator go? Is there a chance that if he shifted it might vibrate the chair beneath him? I have many more questions that go beyond communication through vibration lol.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

the fidelity of that level of communication would need to be pretty exact though, or else the cheating would fall apart and become obvious. What if the device malfunctioned and added an extra long vibration in the middle of the string? etc, etc. Yes, humans are good at communicating in a wide variety of ways, but internal vibrations for chess positions seems pretty extreme.

How far up would the vibrator go? Is there a chance that if he shifted it might vibrate the chair beneath him? I have many more questions that go beyond communication through vibration lol.

I think you will probably have to perform your own experiments if you want to go deeper.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I think you will probably have to perform your own experiments if you want to go deeper.

I was just waiting for someone else to suggest it!

[calumniate]

GMHikaru (youtube) is jaw dropped looking at the latest report on the chess stuff. He's a great watch if you like chess

[afc wimbledon]

what we need is a report from someone on Only Fans, it'll be like the hardcore remake of 'The Big Short' s stripper scene

[Slava]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

what we need is a report from someone on Only Fans, it'll be like the hardcore remake of 'The Big Short' s stripper scene

It sounds like Monahammer is going to provide this report for us, and they were just waiting for someone to suggest it!

[blankall]

I think we'll see more and more cheating scandals across a variety of similar niche type sports. The extra income and notoriety from social media is going to attract all sorts of sociopaths. In the past, if you were a high level fisher, you were largely limited to prize money and maybe some low end sponsorship deals. Now you can launch a successful YouTube/instagram account and the sponsorship deals will feed off those.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Slava

Chess.com issued their findings and say that Niemann cheated more and more recently than as a 12 and 16 year old.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-c...en-11664911524

The full report is now up on chess.com. It’s long—over 70 pages.

I haven’t had time to read the whole thing but overall it looks very bad for Niemann. Apparently the games in which he cheated include a game against Ian Nepomniatchi (Carlsen’s World Championship challenger) so his statement that he never cheated in “real games” looks like it might be wrong.

On the other hand the report does concede that there is no evidence Hans has everbcheated over the board, or in the specific game that gave rise to this whole thing. Again, not sure what to take from that: it’s kind of bad enough that he lied (and so recently) about the extent of his online cheating…. And cheating online is way easier—so at best doesn’t that just mean he won’t cheat when it’s more difficult? And at worst it just means no one has been able to prove it.

I find the whole thing quite sad though: Niemann is a young guy—21 I think?—and I have to think his chess career is now over. Given that he is notorious for cheating, a career outside of chess could be a bit harder too. Plus, high level chess players sometimes aren’t good at much else.

And what is being done about the more widespread problem? I highly doubt Hans Niemann is the only one. The chess.com report suggests cheating is rare, but ALSO says that their algorithm has caught multiple grandmasters, some of whom were among the top 100 players in the world….

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by calumniate

I don't think the communications needs are all that hard. Morse code could do it.. all you need is d5-e7 or whatever (row, column -> new row + column). That's basically how these chessmasters think anyway

Edit -- fuzz kindof beat me to it

You wouldn’t even need to communicate the exact move, just a notification there is a tactic for a winning position that tells the player to spend extra time analysing. It’s like how solving chess puzzles when you know there must be a winning move is easier than finding said winning moves in the middle of a game.

[TheIronMaiden]

Chess.com resealsed a 75 page analysis of Hans Niemans Play. For some background Chess.com reportedly has the best cheat detection in the world for online chess.

The conclusions are such. Has cheated lots online before 2020 when he was as old as 17, buy mostly when he was 16. He has never be found to cheat online on the following 2 years. Although some of those games were for prize money.


Chess.com has found no evidence that Hans has ever cheated over the board, even when he beat Magnus. That said they do say his rise in rating is unparalleled, although it is consistent progress with no large jumps.


It will be interesting to see what the FIDE Report finds.


This YouTube video breaks down the findings very well. https://youtu.be/7gOFKPpMDHU

[Fuzz]

Once a guy gets a taste of cheating, he isn't going to stop, he'll find ways to do it. Clearly this guy has lost all chance of respect.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Once a guy gets a taste of cheating, he isn't going to stop, he'll find ways to do it. Clearly this guy has lost all chance of respect.

I'd like to live in a world where people can move on from who they were when they were 17. There has been no concrete statistical evidence for cheating in two years.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

I'd like to live in a world where people can move on from who they were when they were 17. There has been no concrete statistical evidence for cheating in two years.

I thought that chess.com also said something about them not being great at evaluating over the board cheating though? Maybe I'm not remembering it right from the article I posted yesterday, and I also didn't read their report.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Slava

I thought that chess.com also said something about them not being great at evaluating over the board cheating though? Maybe I'm not remembering it right from the article I posted yesterday, and I also didn't read their report.

They're not the authority on OTB chess. FIDE's report will be the conclusive report.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

They're not the authority on OTB chess. FIDE's report will be the conclusive report.

Right, so while there are all kinds of red flags they don't want to conclude there is cheating. It's not a great look for Niemann though. He was found to have cheated quite reliably, and often. He has made a meteoric rise which has never been seen in history.

I do agree that people should be given a lot of leeway from who they were/are as teenagers. I'm pretty sure that if I met 14-22 year old Slava today I wouldn't have a lot of time for him! So, I get what you're saying. But there's also an element of a track record here.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Slava

Right, so while there are all kinds of red flags they don't want to conclude there is cheating. It's not a great look for Niemann though. He was found to have cheated quite reliably, and often. He has made a meteoric rise which has never been seen in history.

I do agree that people should be given a lot of leeway from who they were/are as teenagers. I'm pretty sure that if I met 14-22 year old Slava today I wouldn't have a lot of time for him! So, I get what you're saying. But there's also an element of a track record here.

He cheated lots online, that is an undeniable fact. But chess.com has not found further evidence of cheating in two years, no?


Maybe I am optomistic or sympathetic, but age in addition to time without cheating does give him some benefit of the doubt.



If FIDE finds evidence that he cheated over the board then the case is closed. Otherwise i think that young people deserve a chance at redemption.


This is a person who has spent every waking moment trying to get better at chess since he was 10 years old. Being labled a cheater would ruin his life as it stands now. Moving forward carefully and with full evidence is important. If he is actively cheating then shame on him and he will suffer, but he is innocent until proven guilty. Suspension is not enough.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

He cheated lots online, that is an undeniable fact. But chess.com has not found further evidence of cheating in two years, no?


Maybe I am optomistic or sympathetic, but age in addition to time without cheating does give him some benefit of the doubt.



If FIDE finds evidence that he cheated over the board then the case is closed. Otherwise i think that young people deserve a chance at redemption.


This is a person who has spent every waking moment trying to get better at chess since he was 10 years old. Being labled a cheater would ruin his life as it stands now. Moving forward carefully and with full evidence is important. If he is actively cheating then shame on him and he will suffer, but he is innocent until proven guilty. Suspension is not enough.

Yeah, I’ve been ruminating a bit on the chess.com report and I’m coming around to the view that there isn’t much there. Yes, they say he cheated more often than he admitted to, but let’s not forget he was in an extemporaneous interview—and let’s not forget what he said: he cheated online in a titled Tuesday event when he was 12, and then cheated when he was 16 but not in prize money events.

The report says he cheated when he was 12 and also cheated as recently as 2020 when he was 17, not 16. He also cheated in rated games and prize money tournaments. There is no direct evidence that he cheated since and the report is clear that chess.com’s anti-cheat algorithms are not designed for classical time controls or over the board chess. The report also says that a lot of the online analysis (based on other strength scores or numbers of “perfect games” in Hans’ over the board play “do not meet our standard” for cheat detection.

So what do we know? We know that Hans cheated a bit more than he confessed to online and in more important games. I actually don’t think the difference is huge in either case: the report says he cheated in 100 separate games, he says he cheated on two occasions (at 12 and 16) but never said in how many games it occurred. We also know that chess.com is not prepared to say he has ever cheated over the board, and while it notes some oddities and statistical anomalies in the end they aren’t enough to support a conclusion. That will be up to FIDE. As for when the cheating occurred, he said he was 16 and chess.com said it happened as recently as 2020 when he was 17. Not, in my view, a huge difference and it can be explained as just a mistake from a young guy trying to defend himself.

Overall, it’s still not a great look for Hans, just because his statement about not cheating in “real games” or prize money tournaments obviously isn’t true. But at the end of the day, I feel like the true purpose of this report was for chess.com to explain its decision to uninvited Hans from its global chess championship event in 2022, based on conduct that it has known about for two years, after having invited him before — when it clearly already knew about all of it.

And in that respect I find the justification unsatisfying. It’s a bad look when you consider that chess.com recently made the decision to merge with Magnus Carlsen’s “Play Magnus” platform, so he and they are now business partners. They deny he had anything to do with the decision, but I guess I’m just not convinced Hans’ removal from the event wasn’t driven by business considerations that have nothing to do with him.

And I still have no idea whether he has cheated over the board in the last 2 years: quite fairly, chess.com says they are not the arbiter of that, and their cheat detection system isn’t set up to answer that question.

Did he cheat against Magnus? I don’t know: maybe. It was not a remarkable game from Magnus at all—he played poorly by his standards. There were some odd things about the opening, and Niemann’s post game interview was definitely weird. But… I also think he probably is just a weird dude.

The whole thing is confusing and honestly after reading the report I’m left with more questions than answers. To me the most explosive thing disclosed in the report is that 4 of the top 100 chess players in the world have had their accounts closed for cheating on the chess.com platform, and many other titled players including GMs. They claim only .14% of players cheat, but I wonder if that’s based on who they catch, as that stat suggests to me cheating is highly prevalent—and that is a serious problem. Cheating is an existential threat to competitive chess, especially online.

[blankall]

I've been reading up on this, and I honestly don't see any indications of cheating here. Firstly, the whole butt plug thing came from a reddit joke. People were joking about the best way to cheat. The reddit community, not surprisingly, came up with a not so tasteful solution. Then Niemann jokingly made a comment about his willingness to play naked to disprove cheating allegations.....that wouldn't prevent you from using a butt plug, so the the reddit community blows up again.

I also don't see how someone cheating online when they are 12, or even 16/17, has any relevance. Kid are jackasses. I remember when I was gaming in junior high and high school all sorts of cheating scripts were circulating. He probably wasn't taking chess seriously when he was 12, and didn't realize that he would be banned from a tournament as an adult for taking advantage of some kind of cheating script. So what if he cheating "100 times" during his teenage years. How many games did he play? 100,000?

From what I've seen from the post-game interviews, Niemann has an extreme knowledge of chess, and the his winning set up in particular. He was able to replay the game from memory. He'd also done research on his opponent. He knew his standard moves and also his deviations going back many years.

On top of that Magnus admits to making an error, and he probably made more than one. To me this just looks like a low probability win occurring. If Magnus is the 95% favorite, he's going to lose 1/20 times. This was one of those times, as Magnus made errors.