Carlsen withdrawal after loss to Niemann

[M ANSARI]

I was totally on Hans side in the beginning and thought that Magnus was just being salty. But then with the Firouza game ... I mean Hans just had absolutely no clue what was going on in the post game analysis. I mean even if you play a five minute game you generally have a good feel of the position and can quickly remember critical lines. I mean this was a CLASSICAL GAME with very long time controls. He had no clue in an incredibly complicated and tactical position where a tiny misstep can be an immediate loss. Somehow he "stumbled" on the best moves without having to calculate??? Then searching more online I saw that he had been banned previously for cheating, and in one of the videos he was actually streaming online when he got banned. His reaction was even more adamant on the stream that he was not cheating and he was ridiculing Chess.com and said he would switch to Lichess. In his last interview he actually praised Chess.com for the best anti-cheating system and admitted he had cheated! So .... he gets caught cheating and is banned ... becomes a hermit and disappears for 2 or 3 years ... then comes back a transformed honest Bobby Fischer with rating jumping from 2400 ish to 2700 ish. He didn't beat MC as others have beaten MC ... where he usually over pushes while trying to win ... or even blunders in time trouble ... he outplayed him in a dry manouevering endgame grind where even a tiny misstep can ruin your advantage. After this I looked at his Mamadyarov gambe ... and boy does that look suspicious. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt for now, but to say there is nothing behind this is beyond idiotic. Cheating in chess will ruin competitive chess forever. The latest NNUE engines are incredibly strong tactically and even stronger positionally ... endgame play has also become incredibly strong ... humans have zero chance. So this should be taken seriously as there might be a way to circumvent current anti cheating methods. This looks like it will be an arms race but I am certain that it is possible to create a system of cheating where it can circumvent today's protocols. It is just a matter of getting someone with enough motivation to do it.

[dkappe]

I was totally on Hans side in the beginning and thought that Magnus was just being salty. But then with the Firouza game ... I mean Hans just had absolutely no clue what was going on in the post game analysis. I mean even if you play a five minute game you generally have a good feel of the position and can quickly remember critical lines. I mean this was a CLASSICAL GAME with very long time controls. He had no clue in an incredibly complicated and tactical position where a tiny misstep can be an immediate loss…

Have a look at the GM Jacob Aagaard quote earlier in the thread. This is someone who has actually worked with Hans. He finds nothing surprising in his interviews.

[M ANSARI]

With all due respect, you cannot consider a trainer of Hans as having an unbiased opinion. For sure he will want to beleive that his pupil is innocent. I do agree though that even if there is a 1% chance that Hans did not cheat, we should give him the benefit of the doubt. I personally had never heard of Hans ... well maybe heard of him but certainly never thought of him as a top GM. The fact that he was caught cheating and admitted it even though he had vehemently denied it previously ... well that has to have some effect on how people view this now. Ali Reza and even Magnus in his younger years ... have been accused of cheating ... but in those cases they received apologies and were cleared. Hans was never cleared and he has now admitted to cheating. Personally I think if you cheat online then you should be banned forever from any competitive chess. Remember that a person that got caught cheating probably did not get caught 1000's of other games. He got caught then he continued to try and circumvent the cheating protocols and caught again. So you have someone that has admitted cheating between the ages of 12 to 16 years old ... then disappears for 3 years and comes back. I mean really ... just don't let this guy play competitive chess ... at least not against the very top players in the world. He has earned the right to be banned from chess for at least a period where he can prove he is clean. This is disgraceful conduct from St. Louis Chess Club!

[Graham Banks]

You can't accuse him of cheating in this tournament unless you have concrete proof.

It's a lot different than cheating online.

[Fulvio]

Personally I think if you cheat online then you should be banned forever from any competitive chess.

+1
Maybe not forever, but at least for 4-5 years.
I read a lot of comments on reddit minimizing online cheating, and it really makes me sick.

[pocpit]

+1
Maybe not forever, but at least for 4-5 years.
I read a lot of comments on reddit minimizing online cheating, and it really makes me sick.

The thing is how you implement it. I mean, FIDE would forbid players on their tournaments for cheating online? For cheating online where? In chessdotcom? Lichess?

I guess you'd get into a lot of legal troubles by trying you apply this policy. Like for example false positives. Also, would all players games be passed from the cheating filter? Would these results be public? What about the tools used to find cheaters? AFAIK the tools they use to find cheaters are secret. Not to mention if they use neural network, which are completely back boxes. Who guarantees that everybody is clean? Another one: online games are available for everyone: in principle anyone could start using their own tools to analyze whether a player is cheating. Just imagine "I don't say this player is cheating, but my (secret) algorithm just returns a high probability he is".

By the way, when a player is banned for cheating on say chessdtocom or lichess; do they have any way to defense themself? Are they provided the evidences? AFAIK these decisions lack any protection to players.

PS: about false positives. The other day a guy with whom I play OTB told me about another guy being banned from lichess. Say player A (Elo 1800) and player B (elo 2400) know each other (they live in the same, small city). Player A knows that player B plays a certain Sicilian line, so player A prepares against this line and beats player B online. Player B reports player A, and player A is almost automatically banned: no questions, no explanations asked.

[AdminX]

I was totally on Hans side in the beginning and thought that Magnus was just being salty. But then with the Firouza game ... I mean Hans just had absolutely no clue what was going on in the post game analysis. I mean even if you play a five minute game you generally have a good feel of the position and can quickly remember critical lines. I mean this was a CLASSICAL GAME with very long time controls. He had no clue in an incredibly complicated and tactical position where a tiny misstep can be an immediate loss. Somehow he "stumbled" on the best moves without having to calculate??? Then searching more online I saw that he had been banned previously for cheating, and in one of the videos he was actually streaming online when he got banned. His reaction was even more adamant on the stream that he was not cheating and he was ridiculing Chess.com and said he would switch to Lichess. In his last interview he actually praised Chess.com for the best anti-cheating system and admitted he had cheated! So .... he gets caught cheating and is banned ... becomes a hermit and disappears for 2 or 3 years ... then comes back a transformed honest Bobby Fischer with rating jumping from 2400 ish to 2700 ish. He didn't beat MC as others have beaten MC ... where he usually over pushes while trying to win ... or even blunders in time trouble ... he outplayed him in a dry manouevering endgame grind where even a tiny misstep can ruin your advantage. After this I looked at his Mamadyarov gambe ... and boy does that look suspicious. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt for now, but to say there is nothing behind this is beyond idiotic. Cheating in chess will ruin competitive chess forever. The latest NNUE engines are incredibly strong tactically and even stronger positionally ... endgame play has also become incredibly strong ... humans have zero chance. So this should be taken seriously as there might be a way to circumvent current anti cheating methods. This looks like it will be an arms race but I am certain that it is possible to create a system of cheating where it can circumvent today's protocols. It is just a matter of getting someone with enough motivation to do it.

Yeah, when he said "maybe even Qh4 works", I was just SMH as even I could see it clearly drops a piece with no compensation in one of his game reviews.

[gordonr]

Yeah, when he said "maybe even Qh4 works", I was just SMH as even I could see it clearly drops a piece with no compensation in one of his game reviews.

Even if he is cheating and isn't as strong a player as the cheating is allowing him to be, I think it is a fact that he is still a very strong chess player. I'm seeing he has a FIDE blitz rating of 2632.

So the fact is that we have a player who is genuinely rated over 2500 commenting "maybe even Qh4 works". We can't attribute that to a lack of chess ability, that's for sure. As he said in an interview, he often comments straight after a game when he is tired, etc. I also easily saw that Qh4 was bad but I have no doubt whatsoever that Hans Niemann is much better player than myself without any engines.

My current opinion is that Niemann didn't cheat in this current tournament.

[towforce]

I read a lot of comments on reddit minimizing online cheating, and it really makes me sick.

Put a course on SkillShare to help people to move on from online cheating, and make some money!

Pain points can be profitable.

[Wilhelm]

For me Carlson is a cowardly person. If he is sure that Hans cheated than he must say what is fact. If not he should shut up and apologize. Poor...
Horrible situation for Hans if he is innocent, what I think.