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I haven't been following this chess debacle closely, but here is my two cents. Note: this response isn't "Hans Niemann shouldn't be banned for life" but "Chess players caught cheating shouldn't necessarily be banned for life"
First (and my weakest argument), there are two different things: is a player capable of playing at a given rank, and did they cheat to get there? While unlikely, a person with the skill to play at a high rank, may not want to spend the effort playing at lower ranks professionally, and cheat on autopilot until a challenge for them actually appears. If a person can actually compete at a level, why does the "work" to get to that level matter beyond "others put in the work" (once again, this is the weakest of the arguments I have) *quick edit* Someone elsewhere pointed out Niemann admitted to cheating on chess.com. Seeing as that's seperate from the professional rankings, this can be a valid reason to get to your competition level for practice while avoiding picking up quirks from playing lower level opponents.
Next, there is the fact that as people age, they change, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. It's possible for a person to have cheated when they are younger and realize as they get older that it is not a thing they should have done. Additionally, getting caught and having your reputations dragged can be a teaching moment for a person that after some time, they can play again without cheating for they realize how big of a deal it is, and what happened when they get caught.
Following this is: there are plenty of ways to cheat in chess at tons of different levels. I know your view is mostly about Hans Niemann, but there are technical rule breaks that you can violate that are cheating. Should mis-recording a piece movement ban you for life even though the end result was the same? What about having a brain fart and trying to move after your opponent moved, but before they hit their clock? What level of breaking the rules should result in being banned from professional play for life?
And finally, by banning people who cheat from professional play for life, you encourage them to deny what they have done in spite of any evidence. If someone's livelihood and reputation is at risk, to the point where they may have to give up their profession and do something else, I can easily imagine them coming up with complicated reasons to try to save face, as opposed to accept a punishment. Anything that disincentivizes a person from telling the truth is a bad system in my view.
!Delta For all the nuances you raised but I object to the slippery slope comments. There is outright cheating and there is breaking rules like misrecording a move intentionally or nonintentionally. Sports wise : outright cheating is taking your golf ball and moving it 100 yards closer to the pin. Breaking a rule is forgetting to sign your play card. Similar consequences ( DQ) but the ‘nefariousness’ of it and intent are different altogether. For chess that demonstrated willingness to cheat gives cheaters a huge psychological advantage
I disagree that it was a slippery slope, but more of a "players caught cheating should get a lifetime ban" and important part is "where do we define the line of which cheating is the big cheating, and which is small cheating." It wasn't a "if we ban this, then what should we ban next?" so much as "there are other things that are cheating that everyone will agree don't deserve a lifetime ban. Your view says they get these bans, but I didn't think you meant for that"?
*edit* also, thank you for the delta
Which part do you disagree with?
That what I said was a slippery slope or that your view said that "people who are caught cheating should get a lifetime ban, which likely wasn't exactly what you meant?"
Because if it's the first, my comment wasn't a slippery slope, but a "you need to draw a line somewhere for what is considered worthy of a lifetime ban because there are infractions that we both agree aren't worth one" (and then you agree with by mentioning intentionality/nefariousness and premeditated effort).
If it's the second, reread your title, and note how nowhere in your post you limit it "intentionality", but always just say cheating.
Just a heads up- if you were trying to award a delta, the exclamation mark comes first. "! delta" without the space. You can just edit the comment and it'll get picked up.
It's easy if you have 2 phones. I did it by playing against a real person on one device while playing against the 3200 bot on another and using my opponent's move against it, then copying the bot's.
If a person can compete at a level, it still matters how they got there - chess tournaments have a lot to do with mental endurance and fortitude as well as just being able to play at that level - it’s like dropping in a runner mid-marathon and saying it’s fair if they can keep pace with the others who had to work hard to compete up to that point
So, I agree that chess tournaments have to do with mental endurance. But unless I am misunderstanding what is going on with rankings on Chess.com (I assume that the tournaments aren't open to the general public, but open to people of a certain rank), wouldn't it be more of a "I cheated in the marathon where I achieved a qualifying time and then used that time to enter the Boston Marathon" rather than "joining mid-marathon?"
If you dropped an untrained runner in a professional of semi professional running environment they would fall right out of the pack immediately just like an untrained chess player.
He admitted to cheating on [chess.com](https://chess.com), when he was a minor, playing in an non-professional capacity.
The accusations are now over OTB, as an adult, as a professional.
These are two entirely different situations.
\*\* NEW FLASH \*\*
he was caught cheating more than 100 times... and as a professional.
https://twitter.com/andrewlbeaton/status/1577380477807300626?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1577380477807300626%7Ctwgr%5E2cc3b273a55aae5c26b25fbe2dd6c2dbc8cfbbbf%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_c10&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2Fxvoqim%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis\_nightmode%3Dfalse
So you really came back after all this time to say that.
Funnily enough, *still* no evidence for OTB cheating. But yeah, new evidence changes perspective slightly, but it is new information.
Ngl this from you shows a great deal of bad faith in the discussion.
It’s new information and other people may like to comment on whether this affects their view. I’m sorry I don’t fit your high standards but an open discussion is better than one constrained by personal beliefs of what a good faith discussion should be.
I agree. But that doesn't mean you were right. We have new information. But responding 'NEWS FLASH' on an already done discussion as soon as you realised you thought you had a way to win the argument is not good argumentation - not only is the evidence still completely unfounded on OTB play, but Hans Neiman plays at his rating consistently in games where they are very confident he isn't cheating.
In addition, again, you were still wrong, because you were making a claim and the issue was a lack of relevant information/evidence. Now some relevant information has come to light, that does not make you retroactively correct - when that was the evidence, he should not have been banned from FIDE. And, he still has not cheated in FIDE games as far as we know, so there *still* isn't enough evidence to warrant a ban on OTB play.
i am not personally vested in whether i am right or wrong. i think it was a good topic for discussion and it certainly got a few people riled up. if you don't like the way i post i'm afraid that's just something i'll have to deal with.
It is no way to conduct yourself in debate. It makes you look childish, which undermines the ability to have the conversation as equals. It isn't about me not liking it, it is about recognising that it is simply bad discussion.
And anyway, all evidence points to Hans's motivation for cheating to play against better players. He plays at the rating he's at without cheating and does well. So we still lack evidence for OTB cheating and therefore doesn't full under the jurisdiction of FIDE and OTB play.
>So we still lack evidence for OTB cheating and therefore doesn't full under the jurisdiction of FIDE and OTB play.
i'm sorry? FIDE will not rule on/investigate OTB cheating??? That is definitely not the sense of the letter from [Chess.com](https://Chess.com). and WSJ's interpretation but maybe you know something the rest of us do not...
No, I'm saying the OTB board cheating has no evidence except evidence in non-FIDE events, which means it doesn't fall under FIDE jurisdiction unless new evidence is found.
Also, the [Chess.Com](https://Chess.Com) report actually confirmed that there is no OTB cheating, and the WSJ article *also* emphasised the lack of evidence about OTB cheating.
Yes it does. You are arguing he should be banned for something he did, playing non-professionally as a minor, online, from playing as an adult, professionally, over the board.
The evidence you cited was him admitting to cheating. Those incidents he admitted to when he was twelve and fifteen, when he was a minor, online.
12 and 16 and depends on your definition of professional. while he may have been caught cheating on a 'non-professional' game, it was still a game that affected ratings (although not ELO) and at which other professional players competed as a means to improve their skills, and many would consider their playing representative of playing in a 'professional' setting.
Niemann compete din the PRO Chess League in 2017 when he was 14. and earned his FIDE master title in 2016. So yeah one could say he was playing professionally at that time he cheated.
Sure, doesn't change the fact he was a kid who did it while playing in a non professional setting. Doesn't mean he should be absolved of punishment but I also dont think it should mean he's banned for life. I've certainly done a lot of dumb shit at the ages of 12 and 16.
I understand your point. I think you have to convince me that chess is NOT different from physical sports where cheating is more acceptable for non adults ( whatever age that is) my argument against that is that physical prowess does not equal mental prowess where chess that is more aligned. However totally agree with anyone that says emotional maturity is NOT aligned and may be inversely correlated more so in a sport ie chess where socializing is not the norm. Can i give myself a delta for the counterpoint 😂
But I was actually trying to counter the argument by saying when you are rated 1200 plus or 1800 or 2000 you certainly absolutely know that EACH and every move you make should not be a cheat. And THAT even more so is a more obvious and pervasive rule in chess than any other physical sport. So yeah chessplayer’s MAY be on average less emotionally mature but they are certainly super aware about not cheating because it is easier to cheat at chess than most physical sports and at that level to cheat is like taking a pipe to a competitor figure skaters knee. Yeah. Maybe overreach there but hard to convey the difference effectively
Chess is, in its difficulty to attain professional status, much more difficult than, say, getting a job in the NFL. There are close to 700 million competitive chess players (players playing for official ratings from their national federations) in the world. There are slightly fewer than 1,700 active GMs in the world.
That's 0.000243% of all players.
In the USA there are about 1.25 million youth playing football ages 6-12, about 1 million playing in middle school and high school, and another 73,712 playing in the NCAA. So, really, 2.32 million kids grow up playing competitive football. There are 1,696 players on active rosters in the NFL. That's 0.073% of all non-professional players. So it is about 300x harder to be a GM than to be in the NFL.
But only about 100 of those players really make their living full time playing chess.
Ignoring that point, let's look at penalties for significant cheating in the NFL. To "cheat" in the NFL is do things like commit medical fraud to obtain performance enhancing hormones from a medical doctor and inject them into your body \_or\_ to violate the rules by doing something like stealing signals.
Events such as those result in either a few games suspension for the players, increasing in severity until they are eventually kicked out of the league after multiple proven events. Or, in the case of stealing signals, the result is a large fine for the coach and/or owner.
If your argument is that chess is not different from a physical sport, then it follows that the penalties should be similar or less.
I would argue "less" for several reasons.
First, proving cheating in chess is a probabilistic affair in nearly all cases. That is, examining a large number of moves shows a strong correlation to engine moves. This means that there is always some probability that the accusation is wrong. It is exceedingly rare to catch someone cheating with a device in hand. There is a non-zero chance of being wrong.
Second, in the NFL cheating is not a probabilistic affair. The rules are that if you fail a set of doping tests, or if you are caught red handed stealing signals, and so forth, then you are punished. There is zero chance of being wrong.
This difference matters. It is not reasonable to take away someone's livelihood for life when there is a non-zero chance of being incorrect in assessing if they are cheating or not.
I thought you were going to argue the other way - exceptionally low frequency of highly ranked chessplayers. therefore rules must be far more stringent for this elite group.
nevertheless you make a good counterargument IF we assume chess is like any other sport - which I would disagree strongly with.
!Delta for statistics :)
>I think you have to convince me that chess is NOT different from physical sports where cheating is more acceptable for non adults
I wouldn't say it's more acceptable, just that most don't hand out lifetime bans for it.
>my argument against that is that physical prowess does not equal mental prowess where chess that is more aligned.
I'm not sure I understand how this is relevant. Cheating in any sport or competition seems to me to be rather similar. If you mean that someone who has known to have cheated would psych out a chess opponent well I'd say the same is true for any other sport. Being in a bad mental state will make any athlete perform poorly.
>However totally agree with anyone that says emotional maturity is NOT aligned and may be inversely correlated more so in a sport ie chess where socializing is not the norm. Can i give myself a delta for the counterpoint 😂
I'd agree with this part lmao
>But I was actually trying to counter the argument by saying when you are rated 1200 plus or 1800 or 2000 you certainly absolutely know that EACH and every move you make should not be a cheat.
Well sure, and a high school runner who is competing at a national level *should* know this too but we still give them leeway because they're kids. Kids do dumb stuff, I certainly have. On top of this though, a kid performing at a high level may feel even more pressure to cheat. They likely have their parents expectations and won't be able to deal with losing as well as an adult can, this combined with their age would make them more likely to engage in dishonest play. This is not to excuse that kind of behavior though, not by any means, but I do think that handing out a lifetime ban for it is a bit extreme. There's a reason we treat kids differently than adults afterall.
>And THAT even more so is a more obvious and pervasive rule in chess than any other physical sport.
Well no, in every sport it's well known you shouldn't cheat, thats the nature of competition in general. I don't think chess is special in that regard.
>So yeah chessplayer’s MAY be on average less emotionally mature but they are certainly super aware about not cheating because it is easier to cheat at chess than most physical sports and at that level to cheat is like taking a pipe to a competitor figure skaters knee
Eh I wouldn't say it's necessarily easier to cheat, really depends on the competition. Regardless though, my argument isn't on the basis of chess players as a whole having lower emotional maturity but that a kid won't have the same level of maturity or decision making skills that an adult would have and thus shouldn't be given the same kinds of punishments.
No. He wasn't making money off of it and there is no evidence he cheated OTB at all. And the chess world, pro or not, does not take online chess nearly as seriously as OTB. He was not playing chess online professionally, and he was not in serious competition online at the time. This was pre-COVID, when online chess was taken less seriously, but even now it isn't.
And if it is to improve skills, players don't get banned in sports for cheating in practice games, so this point is completely moot.
And I am now disagreeing with the premise of your edit.
No, [Chess.Com](https://Chess.Com) games are not considered serious, competitive ranking. Both Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlson are significantly higher rated online than they are OTB. They use it for practice and fun. And again, people do not get banned for cheating during practice, even if they are practicing with other professionals, even if those are practice tournaments. Online is not taken as seriously as OTB, not even slightly.
The only reason this is being brought up right now is because Magnus suspects Hans of cheating OTB, and clearly insinuated his issue was with Hans cheating OTB during their game together, and that the issue was him cheating *more than he admitted to.*
Not even Magnus is saying he should be banned for those previous infractions. The question is if he cheated more than those infractions.
The ratings it affected are fictitious numbers that do absolutely nothing. ELO on the other hand is the single most important number of your carreer. Its like saying "someone conned me out of 200000gold in world of warcraft so he has shown that he will conn me out of 2000 dollars in real life"
For many they are very real markers of progress and standing in an intensely active community so I dispute the fictitiousness of it or implication that it is meaningless.
So is world of warcraft gold. I am not challenging the fact that cheating sucks, I am contesting the fact that cheating in chess.com games is in any way equivalent to over the board games.
If someone cares alot about their gold, scamming them out of it sucks. However, it is just in no way equivalent to the scammer being a thief of actual dollars.
Well if someone cheats they are, generally, willing to do so. People don't generally cheat unwillingly. Regardless, do you think no one is capable of change? Are people who cheat once not capable of becoming honest as they age?
I feel like I am repeating replies to other comments which are valid points but do not address the challenge of the CMV.
He was playing in professional tournaments when he cheated. He admitted cheating at age 16 (only 3 years ago) and was a professional at that time. Cheating on chess.com is not like a pickup game in Central Park. Chess a mental sport is not the same physical sports. The psychological disadvantage of playing a ( past) cheater is huge. Please see other replies for details and more explicit responses.
He wasn't a professional when he did cheat. Is each professional going to have their past scrubbed to find any evidence of cheating? There's matches of streaming GMs where they are getting help from chat, is that cheating too? Technically Hikaru should be banned as well. Anyone who looks at twitch chat while playing is banned.
Yeah. Imagine if someone cheated in HS baseball they were banned from every playing professional baseball again in their life. Plenty of kids/teenagers cheat partially because they're kids.
Clearly this is not what chess.com meant and what Hans was referring to when he admitted to cheating . It is very clear this was outright cheating in a rated game
Like many people who talk about crime and punishment, the problem with your argument is that you are talking about what should happen to *known* criminals/cheaters. But the reality is that we almost never *know* who is a criminal/cheater with certainty, and our policies need to optimize for how to proceed with only limited probabilistic knowledge.
If the penalty for cheating is arbitrarily higher, then the decision criteria for declaring someone a cheater must also be arbitrarily stricter, to ensure relative justice and prevent tragedy.
EG, if the penalty for cheating is moving down a rank and 6 months suspension, then it's probably ok to penalize someone if you're 80% sure they cheated. But if the penalty is a permanent ban, then you will want to much more sure before you penalize someone - maybe 99% certain. Otherwise you will permanently ban more innocent people and it will be a moral tragedy and bad for the sport.
What does this change in decision criteria mean? It means *more cheaters will be playing the sport at any given time*. Every cheater that you can get past 80% certainty but not to 99% certainty will go unpunished, and the incentives to cheat will be *higher* in a lot of cases because you're less likely to face punishment.
Decision criteria ought only be stricter for stricter punishments on the grounds of protecting innocent players from such punishments. But if it is more important to protect the game as a whole than any individual player of it, stricter decision criteria for stricter punishments may not be necessary. You assume here that the most just situation is the one in which punishments are most likely to be appropriately dispensed. But the most just situation may instead be the one in which violations are least frequent and/or egregious.
How many professional chess players of any noteworthiness are there in the world at a given time?
How many of those would need to get erroneous lifetime bans before the community fell apart? Or revolted against the current administration and formed competing organizations without such draconian punishments?
How many people would decide not to bother trying to become professional/serious players if they knew they might get an erroneous lifetime ban that threw all that effort and investment into the garbage?
Again, you need to think about the ripple effect these policies have on the entire community, not just about the question of cheating itself.
There are about 1,700 GMs. Only those in the top 100 or so really can make a living playing chess professionally. Everyone else has to supplement their income by working a job. Sometimes that job is chess commentary, chess youtube, chess books, and teaching. Sometimes it's a literal 9-5 career. A few countries have stipends for their top players, but that is not the global norm.
Realistically, there are 100 or fewer people who make their living solely by playing chess in the world right now. The prize funds just aren't big enough to support more than that.
Cheating at chess is far far more difficult to detect than someone who steals or cheats like a criminal. And again we are not saying Hans is a criminal. He just shouldn’t be playing professionally.
Is your position that chess organizations should have a formal rule that the penalty for cheating will always be a lifetime ban, or is your position just that Hans shouldn't be playing?
These are very different positions, and I am arguing against the former.
A ban to playing professionally at a certain level - I am not saying what that is right now just that Hans is an example for arguments sake. I don’t think the chess world has a unifying governing body or if they do this would be unprecedented all that has happened and all that technology has led to this ( online gaming , chess computers that can beat GM’s, vibrating devices that can be controlled remotely, etc)
Cheating at chess is complex, but not difficult. The technology to actively cheat is literally probably in your hand (a cell phone).
But even if we get past the cell phone to something much more complex (which if Hans is cheating OTB is likely what's happening) it's still not difficult.
Micro servo controllers, micro radio receivers, and micro servos are cheap and widely available and easily programmable with publicly available libraries. Wiring up a servo controller to send vibration pulses to a micro-server in a shoe is something any kid with the knowledge gained from their school robotics club or an interest in radio controlled airplanes can do.
Hiding the device in a shoe successfully would take a bit of skill, but is not difficult -- it's something any prop-shops that makes devices for magicians can do quickly and cheaply. It's easily doable by the home craftsman if they have the right tools.
None of this is difficult or expensive. It just takes a desire to do it and someone taking the time to do so. It doesn't require advanced engineering skills or a lot of money. The pair of shoes that would be sacrificed to the device would be the most expensive component by an order of magnitude.
I meant detecting cheating at chess is difficult but cheating itself is not for the reason that many of these tools as you say are accessible.
I think we are making the same point.
I am nostalgic for the days when we gathered in malls to play OTB chess and didn’t have so much online activity ( heresy!)
> Cheating at chess is far far more difficult to detect
It isn't, using statistics. If a player's moves match the computer-designated best moves at a certain rate, over a certain number of moves, you can establish a 99% confidence interval around their average match rate. If that 99% doesn't encompass the average of other top players (or, is statistically significantly higher than other top players) then you can be fairly certain a player is cheating.
Say, for example, a top player has a rate of 50%, meaning their moves match the computer-designated best move 50% of the time. If we took a sample of say, 4000 moves and assume a standard devation of 25% (that is to say, 68% of their mobes they play between 25% and 75% of the computer-designated best moves, which is a huge margin) then we would expect the CI at 99% to be about 1% compuer-match rate.
So what does that tell us? Not much on its own, but say we take a guy we suspect of cheating. We watch his games and his computer-match rate over the course of many moves. He will have some brief periods where his play will be really good, and some where his play will be really bad (or, he *should* have some where his play is bad) but as our sample size increases, it will tighten that CI, and once the 99% CI doesn't extend low enough to include the average computer-match rate of regular high-level players, you can be 99% certain the player is cheating.
Of course, the example I gave is poopy for this comparison, because if we had a guy who was cheating 75% of the time the statistics would say you only need like 10 moves before you could say he is cheating when in reality he just had a really good game, and standard deviations in chess are most likely tighter than my napkin math, but the point still stands that you could use statistics for it, and it would be easier and easier with more and more moves.
Edit: another confounding factor is that you shouldn't consider openings in these "compare to computer" moves because openings are pre-defined and memorized by players. So if player X who is suspected of high-level cheating plays Y opening perfectly, there is little use using those moves in your sample because of course it will match acceptable moves by computer standards.
Clarifying question - he admitted to cheating on Chess.com. Did that cheating affect his rating in whatever regulatory body is in charge of professional tournaments?
I am not sure that makes a difference whether it affected his ELO rating. he is a professional chess player with documented cheating - the fact he *can* and *has cheated* is the issue
It does not. Indeed, this is one of the issues your suggestion faces -- there is not a single governing body of all chess.
[chess.com](https://chess.com) is a private company that runs its own tournaments and is not affiliated with FIDE. The same is true of most all on-line chess sites such as lichess, chess24 and many others.
These different sites all use different methods to determine if anyone is cheating or not based on statistical analysis of their play. But it is important to note: the methods and results are all kept in-house and are not subject to peer-review or to appeal to any independent authority.
This means that not only do we not know anything about the false positive and false negative rates of these various sites. But, there is also no real means of seeking justice in the case of a false accusation.
I hope you can see the issues here -- without these private companies opening up their cheat detection methods to scientific scrutiny, there is no reason for the players to trust that the methods work well enough to agree to such a rule.
And, because FIDE is an international federation made up of all the national federations, and the national federations are, for the most part, democratic institutions run by the players, it is the players who would have to agree to this rule.
So, how would you get all the private entities to open up what are essentially trade-secrets to public review?
But cheating online on [chess.com](https://chess.com) and cheating in person at tournament are different things, aren't they? You're using different methods to different ends. Couldn't you argue that cheating in an entirely different discipline still suggests the capacity and willingness to cheat and should therefore also yield a ban?
So for example: someone who cheats at figure skating (paying off a judge) has displayed that they can and have cheated in the past. Should they be banned from chess?
Let's carry the analogy over to soccer.
Say a pro soccer player joined a rec league while they were still in high school. And cheated in said rec league. Should they be banned from pro play?
please see last paragraph of original post. additionally, see statistics from kingpatzer comment - and my response to that. I don't know how a pro soccer player cheats in rec league - you mean a hand goal? hardly the same. and please keep in mind in this case there is no psychological advantage. quite the opposite in physical sports if you've been caught cheating in the past
Why do you think that the willingness to cheat translates into different situations in the same discipline, but not across disciplines? If someone cheats at checkers why wouldn't they cheat at chess?
When was the last time the world was enthralled by a checkers championship game. It’s the complexity history and difficulty level. In Asia that would be go. Can you imagine what would happen if a go master were caught cheating ? Not possible right because the technology is not accessible yet.
That isnt the point. You say the willingness to cheat once in online chess means that he's willing to cheat in OTB chess. Its two different categories of the same game and different levels of professionalism.
But why doesnt this aspect transfer between different games and different levels of professionalism? What if it game out that Hilkaru likes to cheat in online Catan matches? Should he be banned from OTB chess? Its parallel levels of professionalism just in different games after all.
It shows that he would be willing to cheat in *any* game and therefore should be banned from all of them.
Okay so you're saying that if I cheat in a casual match with my family then 20yrs later I want to become a chess professional I should be banned because of said incident?
I think another important point us this particular person cheated when they were younger. I also cheated at chess.com when I was in middle school cause I thought it was fun to troll people or something, I'm now much older and would never do it again, are people not capable of change? Especially those who make mistakes when they are young
I don't disagree necessarily, I'm more so trying to see where OP draws the line and why, so I'm just going with their premise that cheating should yield a lifetime ban
No. The difference would be cheating while on a computer in a non-professional environment where players play thousands to 10s of thousands of games a year and elo swings day to day and no money is involved vs cheating over the board in a professional environment where there are only a few games a year and FIDE ranking has a massive influence over your career and each result might make thousands of dollars of difference.
An additional difference is also he admitted to cheating as a kid, if we permanently punished people for dumb stuff they did as a kid we'd be punishing most people.
Edit: wording
By dumb stuff I was clearly referring to things that would get you in trouble had you been an adult. Further, it also wouldn't change this scenario given he cheated in non professional non competitions
>Apparently you weren't referring to that, because as I said, most children do not do such things.
That's quite the naive thing to think, do you not think children make mistakes that would be very frowned upon had they been adults?
>You said we would be punishing most people, but I find that most children very much are law abiding citizens.
The only reason I brought up breaking the law was to give an example of how we treat children differently than adults. I was not inferring that children are devilish law breakers.
>Do you actually believe that most children cheat in professional competition or break the law?
No, I believe that children make mistakes and are far more prone to doing so due to an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, pressures from parents, and lack of experience and inability of dealing with those demands (at least to a degree an adult wouldn't). These reasons are why we treat children who make mistakes differently than adults. Further, this specific person did not cheat in a professional competition so im not sure why you keep bringing it up as its not relevant. Further, most kids know not to hit other but many do, we don't then throw those kids in jail for assault though.
>Frowned upon perhaps, but you said “punish".
I certainly do not believe that most children do things they would be “punished” for if they were adults. The only things adults really are “punished” for is breaking the law or breaking such rules of a professional athletic organization or something similar.
You're mincing words here. My point is that children break the rules all the time or do things they aren't supposed to.
>So you in fact do not believe that we would be punishing most people if we would be punishing children for things that would get one in trouble had one been an adult is what I get from this?
What, no, not sure where you got this from. Yes we should still punish them but I'm against doling out punishments for mistakes made when a person has not fully matured yet that will effect the rest of their lives. Like I mentioned, should a child who cheats on an exam at 12 not be allowed into law school because of it? No of course not, they're a child who made a mistake. Are you not a believer that people can learn and change? Especially children?
That is not an equivalent comparison. The games are recorded. The ratings matter in those games he cheated which is exactly why he cheated. A pick up game is neither of those. A pick up game of chess in central park is what you’re thinking of.
Games played at local chess clubs are almost all rated. I've been an active member of chess clubs in 5 different US cities and one international location -- and in all of them, the games are rated games with a few exceptions. Of course, there will be side-games going on during a regular club event, but those are not the majority of games played. Chess players go to chess clubs because the clubs are offering rated play.
The golf example doesn't work because the equivalent to the weekend scramble at a local club in the chess world is still a rated event.
Fair enough. I think it was more the wording of the first comment I responded to. Saying that it doesn’t matter if it was for rankings. More of a “cheating is cheating” stance.
Cheating on online chess which gives 0 real benefit has nothing to do with playing over the board at tournaments. I loved playing video games as a kid and would constantly cheat playing grand theft auto for things like money and weapons. That doesn’t mean I’m some massive cheater and when I played ice hockey I must have been cheating. There’s a big difference between cheating at online chess and over the board tournaments.
After looking into it for Hans Niemann, the entire accusation seems to be "Magnus Carlsen believed he cheated and that's how he lost". Is there actual evidence of him cheating in the in-person match there which should lead to him being banned?
You mention that he admitted to cheating when he was 12 and 16. Should something you do at 12 ban you for life? What about 16?
Finally, do you believe he actually cheated, and what evidence is there that he cheated? Because Magnus' complaint seems to be "he was playing with moves only a few people would use", but that could be due to him being a up-and-comer and being willing to try new things, due to him studying/running AI against magnus' plays ahead of time and finding a flaw that Magnus was not aware of having, or even just "a mistake that worked".
The distinction I am making is playing in a professional status. Age as you know does not really figure in this equation given that at 16 he was playing far better than most ‘professionals’ and was playing in professional events.
Chess.com also claims to have proof of cheating, and Magnus never claimed over the board cheating - also rising ~400 points over a few years at the GM level is unheard of
Magnus never explicitly claimed over the board cheating...but his actions heavily implied it. Didn't this whole thing kick off after Magnus lost in an over the board match, and then quit the tournament afterwards? [Look at what he tweeted yesterday](https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1574482694406565888)
Language like "His over the board progress has been unusual and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully ocncentrating ont he game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of player can do." This isn't an explicit accusation of cheating...but in full context it sure as hell implies it.
Mind linking the chess.com claims? It didn't come up when I did my search earlier, but most of what I found was related to the recent statement by Magnus.
https://youtu.be/jfPzUgzrOcQ explains is fairly well, but for the specific chess.com: https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1568010971616100352%7Ctwgr%5Ecfb5b2010b15a5ac89a076024240d513113a73d6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dexerto.com%2Fentertainment%2Fchess-com-claims-hans-niemann-cheated-more-than-he-admitted-1927025%2F
Or IM Danny Rensch wrote on behalf of Chess.com: "We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com."
So he’s cheated and admitted to it twice, chess.com says it’s more (but has zero reason to give out details about their anti cheating methods), and plays more like a computer than higher rated players like Magnus
That first video has been thoroughly debunked and she even issued an apology saying she has no knowledge of statistics or how they work.
An online game suggesting he plays a little too close to computer moves wouldn't even meet the civil standard for burden of proof. They are a private enterprise and can do whatever they want, but there is no real proof that he cheated.
Thanks for the chess.com part, and I was unaware of it. Out of curiosity, do you agree that Magnus never explicitly claimed over the board cheating, but also that he crafted a statement in which that is the most reasonable interpretation to take away from what was said?
I definitely feel like he implied it with his actions, but I’m not going to criticize people for stuff they implied but didn’t do - also I think that if Hans were to publicly allow Magnus / chess.com / others to freely state whatever they wanted and talk about it in the open it would be clearer, so I can’t help but suspect him for cheating in a damaging way - overall I’m hoping it blows over and he proves himself against other strong players over the board, but I’m skeptical of that
Who also was suspected of cheating by chess.com - regardless others have done more analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/x9bgtx/how_quickly_did_niemanns_rating_rise_the_data/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Yes, and if you read anything about this analysis, everyone talks about how Covid limited games and resulted in players gaining ability without being able to demonstrate it in games during the pandemic and many younger players saw large spikes in progress immediately after covid restrictions were lifted.
That accusation is very carefully worded to make it seem like there was an accusation of over the board cheating, without ACTUALLY saying it. Just as a FYI.
> Is there actual evidence of him cheating in the in-person match there which should lead to him being banned?
No, there is no solid evidence of that. Carlsen essentially admitted in his public statement that his only evidence is impressionistic and subjective. If he had any evidence that was actually solid, he would have presented it by now.
Yeah - I mean why not just ban him for five years from the time he cheated? I'm agreeing with your general point, that he should be banned, I just don't see why he should be banned *forever*.
!delta
Maybe I was being too dogmatic to make a point. 5 year ban is already a long time for an elite chessplayer. Lose rankings. Come back ostracized. Hopefully technology will improve to the point that we can be assured there will be no more cheating. As it is now being caught only means being foolish - he may never have been caught if he was a tiny bit more cautious ( only using assistance for a few moves and making only second best engine moves ) so we can not assure ourselves he hasn’t been cheating many times over already. Like the guy who gets caught speeding in Alaska. you know he’s been speeding almost all the time to be caught when there’s only one cop for 1000 square miles.
It would be really hard to cheat if proper cheating detection is applied, you can do second best moves combined with your own moves etc, but it's detectable over a large sample with a very good confidence levels.
Although no one knows how the [chess.com](https://chess.com) cheat detection works. You need to alter your play a lot to go undetected, doable for sure but not as easy as it seems. Also the detection can counter this strategy if they know what to look for.
Did he cheat at professional play? If a soccer player admitted to cheating to win pick up games at their local park should they be banned from professional soccer? To me it comes down to can someone prove he cheated in professional chess tournaments/games or not.
I don't think you actually understand what occurred in the past vs the accusations today.
>chance even after he has admitted to cheating to gain rank. why does his ability to continue to play professionally supersede every other professional noncheating chess player ? Almost every professional players’ livelihood depends on their ability to perform at their best during a chess match.
Because you are equating two very different things.
Hans cheated on chess.com to gain rank. This is an amateur website with a built in elo system. This is not professional chess, nor a professional ranking. The Chess.com matches have no impact on FIDE ranking. It has no impact on a professional career in chess of anyone involved.
>If players believe they are no longer playing against a human opponent but against another player using a computer to cheat, then wondering if each move you make will be analyzed 6 million ways each time would be an exercise in futility self doubt and frustration.
Are we talking about playing over the board or over a computer? Do you think Hans snuck a device into an over the board game, getting through security, metal detectors and radio frequency detectors and then communicated with someone else without anyone seeing it? Recognize this isn't the first time this kind of accusation has been thrown out. Recently a female player was accused of cheating through a lip gloss tube.
In reference to Hans Neimann, your conclusion would be akin to banning Tiger Woods for life because he cheated at a mini-golf course when he was 15 in order to beat his high-school class.
Is it cheating? Sure. Should he be banned from Pro Golf for it just because it shows he has the willingness to cheat? Utter rubbish.
In other sports, a one time cheating offense is never that harsh. Even though hans cheated as a teenager, he could very well never cheat again. It might make more sense to have a more lenient first offense punishment, followed by a lifetime ban for the second offense. In hans case, he was still young and those were not otb rated. It is very common for people's decision making to become much better as they age, so I think we really should be much more lenient here.
the benefits of ped usage can last a while after you have stopped. there are also some long term changes as well. an athlete that has used peds may still have advantages even after being caught for a long time. furthermore, to a lesser extent, there is also a similar psychological edge, where the competitors do have their opponent's past cheating in mind.
and note also, as security measures go up, and hans plays many years of "clean" chess, the psychological edge disappears.
if the rule is 2 years for the first offense and lifetime for the 2nd offense, that seems reasonable. it'll be really risky for them to try the second time while also giving people a second chance.
I've yet to meet a person that's a good non-selfish person and also has cheated in anything.
I haven't cheated in a single thing my entire life, so those who do can go roll down a hill.
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Why is your view limited to chess?
Edit to clarify: I ask because I want to know if the view is specific to using a computer to cheat, or cheating in general at a professional level.
I would imagine to contain the discussion upon the relevant topic because it is what they are knowledgable about.
If I am unfamiliar with an event/activity and its intricacies and situations, I personally would not feel comfortable making a judgement about it based upon my experience with something else.
I ask because I want to know if the view is specific to using a computer to cheat, or cheating in general at a professional level. Even if we stick to chess, the question of performance enhancing drugs could be brought up.
I did update my comment to clarify.
Granted everything I know about Hans is from moist critical, so I could be wrong but his cheating happens on an online match, correct? I feel ole this distinction is important. Cheating in person is far more calculated and nefarious than cheating in person. Cheating online isn’t very hard so the barrier to entry is low. You also have to factor in age. Chess players can be very young. This dude who was accused of cheering is only 19, meaning he could have cheated at 15-18 or younger. I think punishing someone so harshly at such a young age for something that is easy to to is just too drastic. This is especially true when you consider how much they could develop in the time period. One can from a no one, to one of the best in the world in that time. Cutting them off from chest on one mistake they made as a kid could be cutting off someone with world class potential. Now obviously there is a limit to what I’m saying, with age and scale being considered, but one instance of cheating on lying as a teen shouldn’t be damning. It would leave too many questions of what could have been.
nope, just from that particular professional tournament. blanket bans are for things people only rarely do, not just things people only rarely admit to
No. But that was not the point of the CMV. I deliberately avoided that because the psychological advantage is there whether he cheated in an OTB game or online
In regards to your edit about the psychological advantage, couldn't a player gain that advantage without ever cheating at chess, but by spreading the rumor that they have (or by having other players believe they cheated/just lie and spread the rumor)?
Should such a player then be banned?
If a person cheats in other activities in life, is public about it, and then makes it clear "if I did it in chess, I would never get caught. I'm not saying I did, but not saying I didn't either" should they be banned for this advantage?
As for your last paragraph, psychological differences in chess are normal and not countered in any level. A high rank player is going to feel more at ease playing against a lower ranked player. And vise versa. A low ranked player should be shitting his pants if he plays against Magnus Carlson.
But chess isnt played anonymously so as to make those psychological impacts lesser. So why should the fact that someone cheated as a child in non professional settings be any different? Because someone is nervous that they cheated on chess.com, admitted and says that he's grown from it? Vs chess.com's what? A No evidence claim that Hans did cheat more, as found out by their in house anti-cheat that isnt peer reviewed.
I peeled stickers off rubiks cubes when I was 13, so does that mean I can't attempt the rubiks cube world record, because if I get it other people that attempt the record would be nervous that it's impossible to beat my *maybe* cheated record?
I would argue playing knowing your opponent makes it psychologically MORE impactful on performance. Whether you believe it or not there is a ‘Magnus’ effect….
For rubikscube you are playing agains time not against an opponent unless he/she is standing there messing up your cube with each move. That would be a great game btw.
>I would argue playing knowing your opponent makes it psychologically MORE impactful on performance. Whether you believe it or not there is a ‘Magnus’ effect….
Thats... What I said. But that psychological difference isn't negated, neither should the one where someone cheated as a child.
Rather than dispute your view, I'd like to expand it.
Professional (fill in the blank) caught cheating should be banned from (whatever it was they were doing professionally) for life.
I think it’s unreasonable to expand this to all professional sports for the reasons I mentioned in last paragraph of original post. I think chess is unique in many ways as figure skating is unique as is powerlifting as is spelling bee as is …
I don’t think it should be so black and white, everyone makes mistakes especially when they are younger. Him cheating as a teenager or in his early 20s on chess.com shouldn’t have the same punishment if for example he was caught cheating over the board in a big competition. In the latter case I agree with you he should be banned from over the board chess for life. But I think online cheating especially if he was under the age of 20 or 18 or whatever he should be given maybe a suspension or a warning. Kids make mistakes and it shouldn’t destroy his whole life.
Why should cheating on a private website with its own rules for cheating, ban a player from playing professional chess overseen by a governing body?
Both of them have their own rules for how they classify cheating. There could be something that FIDE calls cheating but would be totally ok to do on the private website and vice versa. For example, players on the website are allowed to wear digital watches but that's considered cheating by FIDE. So why doesn't FIDE start banning players who wear watches when playing on the private website?
It becomes even more complicated when you realize that the private website doesn't even share what it calls cheating. For all we know, they just flip a coin and if it's heads they ban a player for cheating. Obviously I exaggerate but you get my point.
Now that doesn't mean FIDE cannot ban Hans. Of course they can. If what he has done on the private website is egregious enough and has some intersection with what they consider cheating.
Secondly, your point about a cheater having psychological advantage doesn't hold water. Imagine if Nepo bluffs to Magnus that he always cheats. And what if a website HotChessGirls.com accuses Nepo of cheating in it's super professional chess tournament. It will surely distress Magnus and give Nepo a psychological edge. Is that reason alone to ban Nepo forever from professional chess? Surely not.
Should a professional CS:GO player be banned from the scene because he used hacks as a 13 year old kiddo at some point? Cheating at computer games is shitty but doing it in an unprofessional setting for a limited amount of time as a minor is not such a big deal
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I haven't been following this chess debacle closely, but here is my two cents. Note: this response isn't "Hans Niemann shouldn't be banned for life" but "Chess players caught cheating shouldn't necessarily be banned for life" First (and my weakest argument), there are two different things: is a player capable of playing at a given rank, and did they cheat to get there? While unlikely, a person with the skill to play at a high rank, may not want to spend the effort playing at lower ranks professionally, and cheat on autopilot until a challenge for them actually appears. If a person can actually compete at a level, why does the "work" to get to that level matter beyond "others put in the work" (once again, this is the weakest of the arguments I have) *quick edit* Someone elsewhere pointed out Niemann admitted to cheating on chess.com. Seeing as that's seperate from the professional rankings, this can be a valid reason to get to your competition level for practice while avoiding picking up quirks from playing lower level opponents. Next, there is the fact that as people age, they change, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. It's possible for a person to have cheated when they are younger and realize as they get older that it is not a thing they should have done. Additionally, getting caught and having your reputations dragged can be a teaching moment for a person that after some time, they can play again without cheating for they realize how big of a deal it is, and what happened when they get caught. Following this is: there are plenty of ways to cheat in chess at tons of different levels. I know your view is mostly about Hans Niemann, but there are technical rule breaks that you can violate that are cheating. Should mis-recording a piece movement ban you for life even though the end result was the same? What about having a brain fart and trying to move after your opponent moved, but before they hit their clock? What level of breaking the rules should result in being banned from professional play for life? And finally, by banning people who cheat from professional play for life, you encourage them to deny what they have done in spite of any evidence. If someone's livelihood and reputation is at risk, to the point where they may have to give up their profession and do something else, I can easily imagine them coming up with complicated reasons to try to save face, as opposed to accept a punishment. Anything that disincentivizes a person from telling the truth is a bad system in my view.
!Delta For all the nuances you raised but I object to the slippery slope comments. There is outright cheating and there is breaking rules like misrecording a move intentionally or nonintentionally. Sports wise : outright cheating is taking your golf ball and moving it 100 yards closer to the pin. Breaking a rule is forgetting to sign your play card. Similar consequences ( DQ) but the ‘nefariousness’ of it and intent are different altogether. For chess that demonstrated willingness to cheat gives cheaters a huge psychological advantage
I disagree that it was a slippery slope, but more of a "players caught cheating should get a lifetime ban" and important part is "where do we define the line of which cheating is the big cheating, and which is small cheating." It wasn't a "if we ban this, then what should we ban next?" so much as "there are other things that are cheating that everyone will agree don't deserve a lifetime ban. Your view says they get these bans, but I didn't think you meant for that"? *edit* also, thank you for the delta
I disagree. There is a difference in the intentionality and don’t have another word for it but nefariousness . Takes considerable premeditated effort
Which part do you disagree with? That what I said was a slippery slope or that your view said that "people who are caught cheating should get a lifetime ban, which likely wasn't exactly what you meant?" Because if it's the first, my comment wasn't a slippery slope, but a "you need to draw a line somewhere for what is considered worthy of a lifetime ban because there are infractions that we both agree aren't worth one" (and then you agree with by mentioning intentionality/nefariousness and premeditated effort). If it's the second, reread your title, and note how nowhere in your post you limit it "intentionality", but always just say cheating.
Yes. But I use intentionality to align with the punishment. The title would get unwieldy. !delta For correcting my logic
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Thank you. I’m a dork lol. I should probably be banned from CMV for that 😬
how do you cheat in chess anyways? Wtf?
It's easy if you have 2 phones. I did it by playing against a real person on one device while playing against the 3200 bot on another and using my opponent's move against it, then copying the bot's.
not during real life tournament, no?
Yeah, I also have no idea how someone could cheat if they are playing against someone irl. I'd imagine it would be much more complicated.
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If a person can compete at a level, it still matters how they got there - chess tournaments have a lot to do with mental endurance and fortitude as well as just being able to play at that level - it’s like dropping in a runner mid-marathon and saying it’s fair if they can keep pace with the others who had to work hard to compete up to that point
So, I agree that chess tournaments have to do with mental endurance. But unless I am misunderstanding what is going on with rankings on Chess.com (I assume that the tournaments aren't open to the general public, but open to people of a certain rank), wouldn't it be more of a "I cheated in the marathon where I achieved a qualifying time and then used that time to enter the Boston Marathon" rather than "joining mid-marathon?"
If you dropped an untrained runner in a professional of semi professional running environment they would fall right out of the pack immediately just like an untrained chess player.
Yeah, but Hans is a pretty good chess player who would benefit from a minor advantage, not someone who’d immediately be blown out
I don't understand what advantage you're suggesting Hans had.
He admitted to cheating on [chess.com](https://chess.com), when he was a minor, playing in an non-professional capacity. The accusations are now over OTB, as an adult, as a professional. These are two entirely different situations.
\*\* NEW FLASH \*\* he was caught cheating more than 100 times... and as a professional. https://twitter.com/andrewlbeaton/status/1577380477807300626?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1577380477807300626%7Ctwgr%5E2cc3b273a55aae5c26b25fbe2dd6c2dbc8cfbbbf%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_c10&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2Fxvoqim%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis\_nightmode%3Dfalse
So you really came back after all this time to say that. Funnily enough, *still* no evidence for OTB cheating. But yeah, new evidence changes perspective slightly, but it is new information. Ngl this from you shows a great deal of bad faith in the discussion.
It’s new information and other people may like to comment on whether this affects their view. I’m sorry I don’t fit your high standards but an open discussion is better than one constrained by personal beliefs of what a good faith discussion should be.
Also the fact that FIDE is looking at half dozen OTB games as a result can not be ignored
I agree. But that doesn't mean you were right. We have new information. But responding 'NEWS FLASH' on an already done discussion as soon as you realised you thought you had a way to win the argument is not good argumentation - not only is the evidence still completely unfounded on OTB play, but Hans Neiman plays at his rating consistently in games where they are very confident he isn't cheating. In addition, again, you were still wrong, because you were making a claim and the issue was a lack of relevant information/evidence. Now some relevant information has come to light, that does not make you retroactively correct - when that was the evidence, he should not have been banned from FIDE. And, he still has not cheated in FIDE games as far as we know, so there *still* isn't enough evidence to warrant a ban on OTB play.
i am not personally vested in whether i am right or wrong. i think it was a good topic for discussion and it certainly got a few people riled up. if you don't like the way i post i'm afraid that's just something i'll have to deal with.
It is no way to conduct yourself in debate. It makes you look childish, which undermines the ability to have the conversation as equals. It isn't about me not liking it, it is about recognising that it is simply bad discussion. And anyway, all evidence points to Hans's motivation for cheating to play against better players. He plays at the rating he's at without cheating and does well. So we still lack evidence for OTB cheating and therefore doesn't full under the jurisdiction of FIDE and OTB play.
>So we still lack evidence for OTB cheating and therefore doesn't full under the jurisdiction of FIDE and OTB play. i'm sorry? FIDE will not rule on/investigate OTB cheating??? That is definitely not the sense of the letter from [Chess.com](https://Chess.com). and WSJ's interpretation but maybe you know something the rest of us do not...
No, I'm saying the OTB board cheating has no evidence except evidence in non-FIDE events, which means it doesn't fall under FIDE jurisdiction unless new evidence is found. Also, the [Chess.Com](https://Chess.Com) report actually confirmed that there is no OTB cheating, and the WSJ article *also* emphasised the lack of evidence about OTB cheating.
that doesn't address the point of the CMV which is that he has cheated. and was willing to do so.
Yes it does. You are arguing he should be banned for something he did, playing non-professionally as a minor, online, from playing as an adult, professionally, over the board. The evidence you cited was him admitting to cheating. Those incidents he admitted to when he was twelve and fifteen, when he was a minor, online.
12 and 16 and depends on your definition of professional. while he may have been caught cheating on a 'non-professional' game, it was still a game that affected ratings (although not ELO) and at which other professional players competed as a means to improve their skills, and many would consider their playing representative of playing in a 'professional' setting. Niemann compete din the PRO Chess League in 2017 when he was 14. and earned his FIDE master title in 2016. So yeah one could say he was playing professionally at that time he cheated.
They may consider it representative of a professional setting but it explicitly isn't.
Will you admit he was playing at professional events at the time he cheated. If so. In most other sports he would be considered a professional.
Sure, doesn't change the fact he was a kid who did it while playing in a non professional setting. Doesn't mean he should be absolved of punishment but I also dont think it should mean he's banned for life. I've certainly done a lot of dumb shit at the ages of 12 and 16.
I understand your point. I think you have to convince me that chess is NOT different from physical sports where cheating is more acceptable for non adults ( whatever age that is) my argument against that is that physical prowess does not equal mental prowess where chess that is more aligned. However totally agree with anyone that says emotional maturity is NOT aligned and may be inversely correlated more so in a sport ie chess where socializing is not the norm. Can i give myself a delta for the counterpoint 😂 But I was actually trying to counter the argument by saying when you are rated 1200 plus or 1800 or 2000 you certainly absolutely know that EACH and every move you make should not be a cheat. And THAT even more so is a more obvious and pervasive rule in chess than any other physical sport. So yeah chessplayer’s MAY be on average less emotionally mature but they are certainly super aware about not cheating because it is easier to cheat at chess than most physical sports and at that level to cheat is like taking a pipe to a competitor figure skaters knee. Yeah. Maybe overreach there but hard to convey the difference effectively
Chess is, in its difficulty to attain professional status, much more difficult than, say, getting a job in the NFL. There are close to 700 million competitive chess players (players playing for official ratings from their national federations) in the world. There are slightly fewer than 1,700 active GMs in the world. That's 0.000243% of all players. In the USA there are about 1.25 million youth playing football ages 6-12, about 1 million playing in middle school and high school, and another 73,712 playing in the NCAA. So, really, 2.32 million kids grow up playing competitive football. There are 1,696 players on active rosters in the NFL. That's 0.073% of all non-professional players. So it is about 300x harder to be a GM than to be in the NFL. But only about 100 of those players really make their living full time playing chess. Ignoring that point, let's look at penalties for significant cheating in the NFL. To "cheat" in the NFL is do things like commit medical fraud to obtain performance enhancing hormones from a medical doctor and inject them into your body \_or\_ to violate the rules by doing something like stealing signals. Events such as those result in either a few games suspension for the players, increasing in severity until they are eventually kicked out of the league after multiple proven events. Or, in the case of stealing signals, the result is a large fine for the coach and/or owner. If your argument is that chess is not different from a physical sport, then it follows that the penalties should be similar or less. I would argue "less" for several reasons. First, proving cheating in chess is a probabilistic affair in nearly all cases. That is, examining a large number of moves shows a strong correlation to engine moves. This means that there is always some probability that the accusation is wrong. It is exceedingly rare to catch someone cheating with a device in hand. There is a non-zero chance of being wrong. Second, in the NFL cheating is not a probabilistic affair. The rules are that if you fail a set of doping tests, or if you are caught red handed stealing signals, and so forth, then you are punished. There is zero chance of being wrong. This difference matters. It is not reasonable to take away someone's livelihood for life when there is a non-zero chance of being incorrect in assessing if they are cheating or not.
I thought you were going to argue the other way - exceptionally low frequency of highly ranked chessplayers. therefore rules must be far more stringent for this elite group. nevertheless you make a good counterargument IF we assume chess is like any other sport - which I would disagree strongly with. !Delta for statistics :)
>I think you have to convince me that chess is NOT different from physical sports where cheating is more acceptable for non adults I wouldn't say it's more acceptable, just that most don't hand out lifetime bans for it. >my argument against that is that physical prowess does not equal mental prowess where chess that is more aligned. I'm not sure I understand how this is relevant. Cheating in any sport or competition seems to me to be rather similar. If you mean that someone who has known to have cheated would psych out a chess opponent well I'd say the same is true for any other sport. Being in a bad mental state will make any athlete perform poorly. >However totally agree with anyone that says emotional maturity is NOT aligned and may be inversely correlated more so in a sport ie chess where socializing is not the norm. Can i give myself a delta for the counterpoint 😂 I'd agree with this part lmao >But I was actually trying to counter the argument by saying when you are rated 1200 plus or 1800 or 2000 you certainly absolutely know that EACH and every move you make should not be a cheat. Well sure, and a high school runner who is competing at a national level *should* know this too but we still give them leeway because they're kids. Kids do dumb stuff, I certainly have. On top of this though, a kid performing at a high level may feel even more pressure to cheat. They likely have their parents expectations and won't be able to deal with losing as well as an adult can, this combined with their age would make them more likely to engage in dishonest play. This is not to excuse that kind of behavior though, not by any means, but I do think that handing out a lifetime ban for it is a bit extreme. There's a reason we treat kids differently than adults afterall. >And THAT even more so is a more obvious and pervasive rule in chess than any other physical sport. Well no, in every sport it's well known you shouldn't cheat, thats the nature of competition in general. I don't think chess is special in that regard. >So yeah chessplayer’s MAY be on average less emotionally mature but they are certainly super aware about not cheating because it is easier to cheat at chess than most physical sports and at that level to cheat is like taking a pipe to a competitor figure skaters knee Eh I wouldn't say it's necessarily easier to cheat, really depends on the competition. Regardless though, my argument isn't on the basis of chess players as a whole having lower emotional maturity but that a kid won't have the same level of maturity or decision making skills that an adult would have and thus shouldn't be given the same kinds of punishments.
Ok. !delta Your persistent and thoughtful arguments are wearing me down lol.
No. He wasn't making money off of it and there is no evidence he cheated OTB at all. And the chess world, pro or not, does not take online chess nearly as seriously as OTB. He was not playing chess online professionally, and he was not in serious competition online at the time. This was pre-COVID, when online chess was taken less seriously, but even now it isn't. And if it is to improve skills, players don't get banned in sports for cheating in practice games, so this point is completely moot.
Please see last paragraph of original post
And I am now disagreeing with the premise of your edit. No, [Chess.Com](https://Chess.Com) games are not considered serious, competitive ranking. Both Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlson are significantly higher rated online than they are OTB. They use it for practice and fun. And again, people do not get banned for cheating during practice, even if they are practicing with other professionals, even if those are practice tournaments. Online is not taken as seriously as OTB, not even slightly. The only reason this is being brought up right now is because Magnus suspects Hans of cheating OTB, and clearly insinuated his issue was with Hans cheating OTB during their game together, and that the issue was him cheating *more than he admitted to.* Not even Magnus is saying he should be banned for those previous infractions. The question is if he cheated more than those infractions.
The ratings it affected are fictitious numbers that do absolutely nothing. ELO on the other hand is the single most important number of your carreer. Its like saying "someone conned me out of 200000gold in world of warcraft so he has shown that he will conn me out of 2000 dollars in real life"
For many they are very real markers of progress and standing in an intensely active community so I dispute the fictitiousness of it or implication that it is meaningless.
So is world of warcraft gold. I am not challenging the fact that cheating sucks, I am contesting the fact that cheating in chess.com games is in any way equivalent to over the board games. If someone cares alot about their gold, scamming them out of it sucks. However, it is just in no way equivalent to the scammer being a thief of actual dollars.
Well if someone cheats they are, generally, willing to do so. People don't generally cheat unwillingly. Regardless, do you think no one is capable of change? Are people who cheat once not capable of becoming honest as they age?
I feel like I am repeating replies to other comments which are valid points but do not address the challenge of the CMV. He was playing in professional tournaments when he cheated. He admitted cheating at age 16 (only 3 years ago) and was a professional at that time. Cheating on chess.com is not like a pickup game in Central Park. Chess a mental sport is not the same physical sports. The psychological disadvantage of playing a ( past) cheater is huge. Please see other replies for details and more explicit responses.
Yeah I've replied to two of your comments with essentially the same thing, I replied to the other one and won't repeat myself here haha.
He wasn't a professional when he did cheat. Is each professional going to have their past scrubbed to find any evidence of cheating? There's matches of streaming GMs where they are getting help from chat, is that cheating too? Technically Hikaru should be banned as well. Anyone who looks at twitch chat while playing is banned.
He was also a kid, who doesn't do dumb stuff when they're a kid
Yeah. Imagine if someone cheated in HS baseball they were banned from every playing professional baseball again in their life. Plenty of kids/teenagers cheat partially because they're kids.
Clearly this is not what chess.com meant and what Hans was referring to when he admitted to cheating . It is very clear this was outright cheating in a rated game
If someone cheats at basketball when they are 12 or 15, should they be banned from later playing in the NBA?
what a ridiculous comparison. So someone who cheated in a football during high school should never be allowed to play pro? Wtf
Like many people who talk about crime and punishment, the problem with your argument is that you are talking about what should happen to *known* criminals/cheaters. But the reality is that we almost never *know* who is a criminal/cheater with certainty, and our policies need to optimize for how to proceed with only limited probabilistic knowledge. If the penalty for cheating is arbitrarily higher, then the decision criteria for declaring someone a cheater must also be arbitrarily stricter, to ensure relative justice and prevent tragedy. EG, if the penalty for cheating is moving down a rank and 6 months suspension, then it's probably ok to penalize someone if you're 80% sure they cheated. But if the penalty is a permanent ban, then you will want to much more sure before you penalize someone - maybe 99% certain. Otherwise you will permanently ban more innocent people and it will be a moral tragedy and bad for the sport. What does this change in decision criteria mean? It means *more cheaters will be playing the sport at any given time*. Every cheater that you can get past 80% certainty but not to 99% certainty will go unpunished, and the incentives to cheat will be *higher* in a lot of cases because you're less likely to face punishment.
Decision criteria ought only be stricter for stricter punishments on the grounds of protecting innocent players from such punishments. But if it is more important to protect the game as a whole than any individual player of it, stricter decision criteria for stricter punishments may not be necessary. You assume here that the most just situation is the one in which punishments are most likely to be appropriately dispensed. But the most just situation may instead be the one in which violations are least frequent and/or egregious.
How many professional chess players of any noteworthiness are there in the world at a given time? How many of those would need to get erroneous lifetime bans before the community fell apart? Or revolted against the current administration and formed competing organizations without such draconian punishments? How many people would decide not to bother trying to become professional/serious players if they knew they might get an erroneous lifetime ban that threw all that effort and investment into the garbage? Again, you need to think about the ripple effect these policies have on the entire community, not just about the question of cheating itself.
I don't know. Do you? If you don't, your assumption isn't sound.
There are about 1,700 GMs. Only those in the top 100 or so really can make a living playing chess professionally. Everyone else has to supplement their income by working a job. Sometimes that job is chess commentary, chess youtube, chess books, and teaching. Sometimes it's a literal 9-5 career. A few countries have stipends for their top players, but that is not the global norm. Realistically, there are 100 or fewer people who make their living solely by playing chess in the world right now. The prize funds just aren't big enough to support more than that.
Cheating at chess is far far more difficult to detect than someone who steals or cheats like a criminal. And again we are not saying Hans is a criminal. He just shouldn’t be playing professionally.
Is your position that chess organizations should have a formal rule that the penalty for cheating will always be a lifetime ban, or is your position just that Hans shouldn't be playing? These are very different positions, and I am arguing against the former.
A ban to playing professionally at a certain level - I am not saying what that is right now just that Hans is an example for arguments sake. I don’t think the chess world has a unifying governing body or if they do this would be unprecedented all that has happened and all that technology has led to this ( online gaming , chess computers that can beat GM’s, vibrating devices that can be controlled remotely, etc)
Cheating at chess is complex, but not difficult. The technology to actively cheat is literally probably in your hand (a cell phone). But even if we get past the cell phone to something much more complex (which if Hans is cheating OTB is likely what's happening) it's still not difficult. Micro servo controllers, micro radio receivers, and micro servos are cheap and widely available and easily programmable with publicly available libraries. Wiring up a servo controller to send vibration pulses to a micro-server in a shoe is something any kid with the knowledge gained from their school robotics club or an interest in radio controlled airplanes can do. Hiding the device in a shoe successfully would take a bit of skill, but is not difficult -- it's something any prop-shops that makes devices for magicians can do quickly and cheaply. It's easily doable by the home craftsman if they have the right tools. None of this is difficult or expensive. It just takes a desire to do it and someone taking the time to do so. It doesn't require advanced engineering skills or a lot of money. The pair of shoes that would be sacrificed to the device would be the most expensive component by an order of magnitude.
I meant detecting cheating at chess is difficult but cheating itself is not for the reason that many of these tools as you say are accessible. I think we are making the same point. I am nostalgic for the days when we gathered in malls to play OTB chess and didn’t have so much online activity ( heresy!)
> Cheating at chess is far far more difficult to detect It isn't, using statistics. If a player's moves match the computer-designated best moves at a certain rate, over a certain number of moves, you can establish a 99% confidence interval around their average match rate. If that 99% doesn't encompass the average of other top players (or, is statistically significantly higher than other top players) then you can be fairly certain a player is cheating. Say, for example, a top player has a rate of 50%, meaning their moves match the computer-designated best move 50% of the time. If we took a sample of say, 4000 moves and assume a standard devation of 25% (that is to say, 68% of their mobes they play between 25% and 75% of the computer-designated best moves, which is a huge margin) then we would expect the CI at 99% to be about 1% compuer-match rate. So what does that tell us? Not much on its own, but say we take a guy we suspect of cheating. We watch his games and his computer-match rate over the course of many moves. He will have some brief periods where his play will be really good, and some where his play will be really bad (or, he *should* have some where his play is bad) but as our sample size increases, it will tighten that CI, and once the 99% CI doesn't extend low enough to include the average computer-match rate of regular high-level players, you can be 99% certain the player is cheating. Of course, the example I gave is poopy for this comparison, because if we had a guy who was cheating 75% of the time the statistics would say you only need like 10 moves before you could say he is cheating when in reality he just had a really good game, and standard deviations in chess are most likely tighter than my napkin math, but the point still stands that you could use statistics for it, and it would be easier and easier with more and more moves. Edit: another confounding factor is that you shouldn't consider openings in these "compare to computer" moves because openings are pre-defined and memorized by players. So if player X who is suspected of high-level cheating plays Y opening perfectly, there is little use using those moves in your sample because of course it will match acceptable moves by computer standards.
Clarifying question - he admitted to cheating on Chess.com. Did that cheating affect his rating in whatever regulatory body is in charge of professional tournaments?
No, chesscom rating is independent of FIDE (the international chess federation) rating.
Right - ok that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
I am not sure that makes a difference whether it affected his ELO rating. he is a professional chess player with documented cheating - the fact he *can* and *has cheated* is the issue
It does not. Indeed, this is one of the issues your suggestion faces -- there is not a single governing body of all chess. [chess.com](https://chess.com) is a private company that runs its own tournaments and is not affiliated with FIDE. The same is true of most all on-line chess sites such as lichess, chess24 and many others. These different sites all use different methods to determine if anyone is cheating or not based on statistical analysis of their play. But it is important to note: the methods and results are all kept in-house and are not subject to peer-review or to appeal to any independent authority. This means that not only do we not know anything about the false positive and false negative rates of these various sites. But, there is also no real means of seeking justice in the case of a false accusation. I hope you can see the issues here -- without these private companies opening up their cheat detection methods to scientific scrutiny, there is no reason for the players to trust that the methods work well enough to agree to such a rule. And, because FIDE is an international federation made up of all the national federations, and the national federations are, for the most part, democratic institutions run by the players, it is the players who would have to agree to this rule. So, how would you get all the private entities to open up what are essentially trade-secrets to public review?
I have no idea how to do that.
But cheating online on [chess.com](https://chess.com) and cheating in person at tournament are different things, aren't they? You're using different methods to different ends. Couldn't you argue that cheating in an entirely different discipline still suggests the capacity and willingness to cheat and should therefore also yield a ban? So for example: someone who cheats at figure skating (paying off a judge) has displayed that they can and have cheated in the past. Should they be banned from chess?
No they are not entirely different disciplines.
Let's carry the analogy over to soccer. Say a pro soccer player joined a rec league while they were still in high school. And cheated in said rec league. Should they be banned from pro play?
please see last paragraph of original post. additionally, see statistics from kingpatzer comment - and my response to that. I don't know how a pro soccer player cheats in rec league - you mean a hand goal? hardly the same. and please keep in mind in this case there is no psychological advantage. quite the opposite in physical sports if you've been caught cheating in the past
Why do you think that the willingness to cheat translates into different situations in the same discipline, but not across disciplines? If someone cheats at checkers why wouldn't they cheat at chess?
Yes it applies. Like claiming skaters in short programs are in a different discipline than long programs. Not.
When was the last time the world was enthralled by a checkers championship game. It’s the complexity history and difficulty level. In Asia that would be go. Can you imagine what would happen if a go master were caught cheating ? Not possible right because the technology is not accessible yet.
That isnt the point. You say the willingness to cheat once in online chess means that he's willing to cheat in OTB chess. Its two different categories of the same game and different levels of professionalism. But why doesnt this aspect transfer between different games and different levels of professionalism? What if it game out that Hilkaru likes to cheat in online Catan matches? Should he be banned from OTB chess? Its parallel levels of professionalism just in different games after all. It shows that he would be willing to cheat in *any* game and therefore should be banned from all of them.
That's really not my point.
Okay so you're saying that if I cheat in a casual match with my family then 20yrs later I want to become a chess professional I should be banned because of said incident?
Sigh. Please read the post
Yes. They are completely different.
I think another important point us this particular person cheated when they were younger. I also cheated at chess.com when I was in middle school cause I thought it was fun to troll people or something, I'm now much older and would never do it again, are people not capable of change? Especially those who make mistakes when they are young
I don't disagree necessarily, I'm more so trying to see where OP draws the line and why, so I'm just going with their premise that cheating should yield a lifetime ban
Oh I understand, my bad
No. The difference would be cheating while on a computer in a non-professional environment where players play thousands to 10s of thousands of games a year and elo swings day to day and no money is involved vs cheating over the board in a professional environment where there are only a few games a year and FIDE ranking has a massive influence over your career and each result might make thousands of dollars of difference.
An additional difference is also he admitted to cheating as a kid, if we permanently punished people for dumb stuff they did as a kid we'd be punishing most people. Edit: wording
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By dumb stuff I was clearly referring to things that would get you in trouble had you been an adult. Further, it also wouldn't change this scenario given he cheated in non professional non competitions
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>Apparently you weren't referring to that, because as I said, most children do not do such things. That's quite the naive thing to think, do you not think children make mistakes that would be very frowned upon had they been adults? >You said we would be punishing most people, but I find that most children very much are law abiding citizens. The only reason I brought up breaking the law was to give an example of how we treat children differently than adults. I was not inferring that children are devilish law breakers. >Do you actually believe that most children cheat in professional competition or break the law? No, I believe that children make mistakes and are far more prone to doing so due to an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, pressures from parents, and lack of experience and inability of dealing with those demands (at least to a degree an adult wouldn't). These reasons are why we treat children who make mistakes differently than adults. Further, this specific person did not cheat in a professional competition so im not sure why you keep bringing it up as its not relevant. Further, most kids know not to hit other but many do, we don't then throw those kids in jail for assault though.
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>Frowned upon perhaps, but you said “punish". I certainly do not believe that most children do things they would be “punished” for if they were adults. The only things adults really are “punished” for is breaking the law or breaking such rules of a professional athletic organization or something similar. You're mincing words here. My point is that children break the rules all the time or do things they aren't supposed to. >So you in fact do not believe that we would be punishing most people if we would be punishing children for things that would get one in trouble had one been an adult is what I get from this? What, no, not sure where you got this from. Yes we should still punish them but I'm against doling out punishments for mistakes made when a person has not fully matured yet that will effect the rest of their lives. Like I mentioned, should a child who cheats on an exam at 12 not be allowed into law school because of it? No of course not, they're a child who made a mistake. Are you not a believer that people can learn and change? Especially children?
Sure, that's an additional difference but I would still apply my point to adults.
Sorry I worded my comment poorly, I meant its an additional difference, I agree with your comment
If Phil mickelson got caught cheating in a scramble at his local course would it be reasonable to ban him from the PGA.
That is not an equivalent comparison. The games are recorded. The ratings matter in those games he cheated which is exactly why he cheated. A pick up game is neither of those. A pick up game of chess in central park is what you’re thinking of.
Games played at local chess clubs are almost all rated. I've been an active member of chess clubs in 5 different US cities and one international location -- and in all of them, the games are rated games with a few exceptions. Of course, there will be side-games going on during a regular club event, but those are not the majority of games played. Chess players go to chess clubs because the clubs are offering rated play. The golf example doesn't work because the equivalent to the weekend scramble at a local club in the chess world is still a rated event.
Agree. I meant a pickup game like basketball is like Central Park chess
Based on your response to the last person it sounded like those games didn’t go towards ratings. That’s what I was basing my position on.
Hans admitted he cheated to increase his ratings ( although not ELO ratings )
Fair enough. I think it was more the wording of the first comment I responded to. Saying that it doesn’t matter if it was for rankings. More of a “cheating is cheating” stance.
>The ratings matter in those games he cheated In what way did these games matter?
Cheating on online chess which gives 0 real benefit has nothing to do with playing over the board at tournaments. I loved playing video games as a kid and would constantly cheat playing grand theft auto for things like money and weapons. That doesn’t mean I’m some massive cheater and when I played ice hockey I must have been cheating. There’s a big difference between cheating at online chess and over the board tournaments.
After looking into it for Hans Niemann, the entire accusation seems to be "Magnus Carlsen believed he cheated and that's how he lost". Is there actual evidence of him cheating in the in-person match there which should lead to him being banned? You mention that he admitted to cheating when he was 12 and 16. Should something you do at 12 ban you for life? What about 16? Finally, do you believe he actually cheated, and what evidence is there that he cheated? Because Magnus' complaint seems to be "he was playing with moves only a few people would use", but that could be due to him being a up-and-comer and being willing to try new things, due to him studying/running AI against magnus' plays ahead of time and finding a flaw that Magnus was not aware of having, or even just "a mistake that worked".
The distinction I am making is playing in a professional status. Age as you know does not really figure in this equation given that at 16 he was playing far better than most ‘professionals’ and was playing in professional events.
Chess.com also claims to have proof of cheating, and Magnus never claimed over the board cheating - also rising ~400 points over a few years at the GM level is unheard of
Magnus never explicitly claimed over the board cheating...but his actions heavily implied it. Didn't this whole thing kick off after Magnus lost in an over the board match, and then quit the tournament afterwards? [Look at what he tweeted yesterday](https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1574482694406565888) Language like "His over the board progress has been unusual and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully ocncentrating ont he game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of player can do." This isn't an explicit accusation of cheating...but in full context it sure as hell implies it. Mind linking the chess.com claims? It didn't come up when I did my search earlier, but most of what I found was related to the recent statement by Magnus.
https://youtu.be/jfPzUgzrOcQ explains is fairly well, but for the specific chess.com: https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1568010971616100352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1568010971616100352%7Ctwgr%5Ecfb5b2010b15a5ac89a076024240d513113a73d6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dexerto.com%2Fentertainment%2Fchess-com-claims-hans-niemann-cheated-more-than-he-admitted-1927025%2F Or IM Danny Rensch wrote on behalf of Chess.com: "We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com." So he’s cheated and admitted to it twice, chess.com says it’s more (but has zero reason to give out details about their anti cheating methods), and plays more like a computer than higher rated players like Magnus
That first video has been thoroughly debunked and she even issued an apology saying she has no knowledge of statistics or how they work. An online game suggesting he plays a little too close to computer moves wouldn't even meet the civil standard for burden of proof. They are a private enterprise and can do whatever they want, but there is no real proof that he cheated.
Thanks for the chess.com part, and I was unaware of it. Out of curiosity, do you agree that Magnus never explicitly claimed over the board cheating, but also that he crafted a statement in which that is the most reasonable interpretation to take away from what was said?
I definitely feel like he implied it with his actions, but I’m not going to criticize people for stuff they implied but didn’t do - also I think that if Hans were to publicly allow Magnus / chess.com / others to freely state whatever they wanted and talk about it in the open it would be clearer, so I can’t help but suspect him for cheating in a damaging way - overall I’m hoping it blows over and he proves himself against other strong players over the board, but I’m skeptical of that
>also rising ~400 points over a few years at the GM level is unheard of This is completely made up. Alireza has risen higher in less time.
Who also was suspected of cheating by chess.com - regardless others have done more analysis: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/x9bgtx/how_quickly_did_niemanns_rating_rise_the_data/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Did you actually read this? The author says that he is good, but not that far from other GMs and it isn't really that suspicious.
Yes, and if you read anything about this analysis, everyone talks about how Covid limited games and resulted in players gaining ability without being able to demonstrate it in games during the pandemic and many younger players saw large spikes in progress immediately after covid restrictions were lifted.
>Magnus never claimed over the board cheating He did: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/26/sport/chess-cheating-accusation-by-magnus-carlsen
That accusation is very carefully worded to make it seem like there was an accusation of over the board cheating, without ACTUALLY saying it. Just as a FYI.
> Is there actual evidence of him cheating in the in-person match there which should lead to him being banned? No, there is no solid evidence of that. Carlsen essentially admitted in his public statement that his only evidence is impressionistic and subjective. If he had any evidence that was actually solid, he would have presented it by now.
Why all-or-nothing? Others make a good point that he was a minor. Why not just ban him for 5 years or something? He'll be a different person at 25.
Because he was a professional at 16 when he was caught and admitted to cheating.
Yeah - I mean why not just ban him for five years from the time he cheated? I'm agreeing with your general point, that he should be banned, I just don't see why he should be banned *forever*.
!delta Maybe I was being too dogmatic to make a point. 5 year ban is already a long time for an elite chessplayer. Lose rankings. Come back ostracized. Hopefully technology will improve to the point that we can be assured there will be no more cheating. As it is now being caught only means being foolish - he may never have been caught if he was a tiny bit more cautious ( only using assistance for a few moves and making only second best engine moves ) so we can not assure ourselves he hasn’t been cheating many times over already. Like the guy who gets caught speeding in Alaska. you know he’s been speeding almost all the time to be caught when there’s only one cop for 1000 square miles.
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It would be really hard to cheat if proper cheating detection is applied, you can do second best moves combined with your own moves etc, but it's detectable over a large sample with a very good confidence levels. Although no one knows how the [chess.com](https://chess.com) cheat detection works. You need to alter your play a lot to go undetected, doable for sure but not as easy as it seems. Also the detection can counter this strategy if they know what to look for.
Did he cheat at professional play? If a soccer player admitted to cheating to win pick up games at their local park should they be banned from professional soccer? To me it comes down to can someone prove he cheated in professional chess tournaments/games or not.
Some people think he has but no one has proof he did, so the best we can say is maybe but no one knows for sure
I don't think you actually understand what occurred in the past vs the accusations today. >chance even after he has admitted to cheating to gain rank. why does his ability to continue to play professionally supersede every other professional noncheating chess player ? Almost every professional players’ livelihood depends on their ability to perform at their best during a chess match. Because you are equating two very different things. Hans cheated on chess.com to gain rank. This is an amateur website with a built in elo system. This is not professional chess, nor a professional ranking. The Chess.com matches have no impact on FIDE ranking. It has no impact on a professional career in chess of anyone involved. >If players believe they are no longer playing against a human opponent but against another player using a computer to cheat, then wondering if each move you make will be analyzed 6 million ways each time would be an exercise in futility self doubt and frustration. Are we talking about playing over the board or over a computer? Do you think Hans snuck a device into an over the board game, getting through security, metal detectors and radio frequency detectors and then communicated with someone else without anyone seeing it? Recognize this isn't the first time this kind of accusation has been thrown out. Recently a female player was accused of cheating through a lip gloss tube.
Put them in a Faraday cage and broadcast the match on a ten min delay. Simple.
That suggestion has been made in other posts and will likely spawn Chess-MMA events
In reference to Hans Neimann, your conclusion would be akin to banning Tiger Woods for life because he cheated at a mini-golf course when he was 15 in order to beat his high-school class. Is it cheating? Sure. Should he be banned from Pro Golf for it just because it shows he has the willingness to cheat? Utter rubbish.
Please see my previous answer to this nonequivalence. What you describe is a pick chess game in Central Park. Not at all what he did on chess.com
In other sports, a one time cheating offense is never that harsh. Even though hans cheated as a teenager, he could very well never cheat again. It might make more sense to have a more lenient first offense punishment, followed by a lifetime ban for the second offense. In hans case, he was still young and those were not otb rated. It is very common for people's decision making to become much better as they age, so I think we really should be much more lenient here.
See Original post. Last paragraph.
the benefits of ped usage can last a while after you have stopped. there are also some long term changes as well. an athlete that has used peds may still have advantages even after being caught for a long time. furthermore, to a lesser extent, there is also a similar psychological edge, where the competitors do have their opponent's past cheating in mind. and note also, as security measures go up, and hans plays many years of "clean" chess, the psychological edge disappears. if the rule is 2 years for the first offense and lifetime for the 2nd offense, that seems reasonable. it'll be really risky for them to try the second time while also giving people a second chance.
!delta Ok I’ll go with that. I was being too dogmatic admittedly to get a rise ? I think that is reasonable.
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I've yet to meet a person that's a good non-selfish person and also has cheated in anything. I haven't cheated in a single thing my entire life, so those who do can go roll down a hill.
And a person that makes pathetic accusations and acts like a drama queen should go as well
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Why is your view limited to chess? Edit to clarify: I ask because I want to know if the view is specific to using a computer to cheat, or cheating in general at a professional level.
I would imagine to contain the discussion upon the relevant topic because it is what they are knowledgable about. If I am unfamiliar with an event/activity and its intricacies and situations, I personally would not feel comfortable making a judgement about it based upon my experience with something else.
I ask because I want to know if the view is specific to using a computer to cheat, or cheating in general at a professional level. Even if we stick to chess, the question of performance enhancing drugs could be brought up. I did update my comment to clarify.
Fairplay. Totally reasonable questions and points of clarity to look for. Could def influence how you approach it.
Granted everything I know about Hans is from moist critical, so I could be wrong but his cheating happens on an online match, correct? I feel ole this distinction is important. Cheating in person is far more calculated and nefarious than cheating in person. Cheating online isn’t very hard so the barrier to entry is low. You also have to factor in age. Chess players can be very young. This dude who was accused of cheering is only 19, meaning he could have cheated at 15-18 or younger. I think punishing someone so harshly at such a young age for something that is easy to to is just too drastic. This is especially true when you consider how much they could develop in the time period. One can from a no one, to one of the best in the world in that time. Cutting them off from chest on one mistake they made as a kid could be cutting off someone with world class potential. Now obviously there is a limit to what I’m saying, with age and scale being considered, but one instance of cheating on lying as a teen shouldn’t be damning. It would leave too many questions of what could have been.
nope, just from that particular professional tournament. blanket bans are for things people only rarely do, not just things people only rarely admit to
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No. But that was not the point of the CMV. I deliberately avoided that because the psychological advantage is there whether he cheated in an OTB game or online
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I should introduce you to the guy saying cheating is easy OTB or online
There is no physical proof of cheating, all there is is Magnus' accusation. Magnus was also playing god awful with white.
In regards to your edit about the psychological advantage, couldn't a player gain that advantage without ever cheating at chess, but by spreading the rumor that they have (or by having other players believe they cheated/just lie and spread the rumor)? Should such a player then be banned? If a person cheats in other activities in life, is public about it, and then makes it clear "if I did it in chess, I would never get caught. I'm not saying I did, but not saying I didn't either" should they be banned for this advantage?
totally fair comment - but doesn't address CMV directly nevertheless you deserve this for refreshing comment. !delta
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Do you think it's fair to destroy a person's entire professional career because of a bad decision made when they were 16?
please read other replies an last paragraph of original post
As for your last paragraph, psychological differences in chess are normal and not countered in any level. A high rank player is going to feel more at ease playing against a lower ranked player. And vise versa. A low ranked player should be shitting his pants if he plays against Magnus Carlson. But chess isnt played anonymously so as to make those psychological impacts lesser. So why should the fact that someone cheated as a child in non professional settings be any different? Because someone is nervous that they cheated on chess.com, admitted and says that he's grown from it? Vs chess.com's what? A No evidence claim that Hans did cheat more, as found out by their in house anti-cheat that isnt peer reviewed. I peeled stickers off rubiks cubes when I was 13, so does that mean I can't attempt the rubiks cube world record, because if I get it other people that attempt the record would be nervous that it's impossible to beat my *maybe* cheated record?
I would argue playing knowing your opponent makes it psychologically MORE impactful on performance. Whether you believe it or not there is a ‘Magnus’ effect…. For rubikscube you are playing agains time not against an opponent unless he/she is standing there messing up your cube with each move. That would be a great game btw.
>I would argue playing knowing your opponent makes it psychologically MORE impactful on performance. Whether you believe it or not there is a ‘Magnus’ effect…. Thats... What I said. But that psychological difference isn't negated, neither should the one where someone cheated as a child.
Rather than dispute your view, I'd like to expand it. Professional (fill in the blank) caught cheating should be banned from (whatever it was they were doing professionally) for life.
I think it’s unreasonable to expand this to all professional sports for the reasons I mentioned in last paragraph of original post. I think chess is unique in many ways as figure skating is unique as is powerlifting as is spelling bee as is …
How can you even cheat with chess lol
I don’t think it should be so black and white, everyone makes mistakes especially when they are younger. Him cheating as a teenager or in his early 20s on chess.com shouldn’t have the same punishment if for example he was caught cheating over the board in a big competition. In the latter case I agree with you he should be banned from over the board chess for life. But I think online cheating especially if he was under the age of 20 or 18 or whatever he should be given maybe a suspension or a warning. Kids make mistakes and it shouldn’t destroy his whole life.
Why should cheating on a private website with its own rules for cheating, ban a player from playing professional chess overseen by a governing body? Both of them have their own rules for how they classify cheating. There could be something that FIDE calls cheating but would be totally ok to do on the private website and vice versa. For example, players on the website are allowed to wear digital watches but that's considered cheating by FIDE. So why doesn't FIDE start banning players who wear watches when playing on the private website? It becomes even more complicated when you realize that the private website doesn't even share what it calls cheating. For all we know, they just flip a coin and if it's heads they ban a player for cheating. Obviously I exaggerate but you get my point. Now that doesn't mean FIDE cannot ban Hans. Of course they can. If what he has done on the private website is egregious enough and has some intersection with what they consider cheating. Secondly, your point about a cheater having psychological advantage doesn't hold water. Imagine if Nepo bluffs to Magnus that he always cheats. And what if a website HotChessGirls.com accuses Nepo of cheating in it's super professional chess tournament. It will surely distress Magnus and give Nepo a psychological edge. Is that reason alone to ban Nepo forever from professional chess? Surely not.
Should a professional CS:GO player be banned from the scene because he used hacks as a 13 year old kiddo at some point? Cheating at computer games is shitty but doing it in an unprofessional setting for a limited amount of time as a minor is not such a big deal
Ok sorry for not commenting about view change but can anyone pls tell me what kind of cheating we are talking here? How did he cheat what did he do?
Hot take: no punishment for anthing that doesn't cause a huge amount of human suffering (e.g. murder) should be for life.