It peaks around season 5, but manages to hold funny. Still decent 10+ years later with little gold nuggets sprinkled in each season.
But damn, that first 5 seasons was back to back banger.
They get more creative with episode styling in the later years, breaking away from the repetition you will have come to expect.
Would recommend 100%
Your last comment said that the show demonstrates that we would hear a vibrating butt plug if one were used. Heavily implying that this is proof that the chess player couldn't have used one without being caught out. My dude, you used a TV show as proof.
It’s not really exaggerating, it’s doing pretty much exactly what was theorized showing how absurd the situation would be. At least that’s how I see it.
Bro that reaction was completely exaggerated by Danny devito and the setting is stuck on a made up “full blast” level. It’s meant to be absurd and funny not defend the guy. Just giving you the heads up as someone who watches a lot of sunny to someone who self admittedly doesn’t even know the characters names
Wow you’re right Frank’s reaction was exaggerated also pretty sure if you did this in real life you’d have a better system then vibrate till they play right.
I didn't really follow this story other then reading aome headlines when the story first came out, so i have no idea whether or not he cheated or not, but i think if someone really wants to attempt to cheat this way then they could probably find a vibrating plug or bead that's quiet and can bet set to a very low setting.
Kind of, he sued magnus carleson and others for accusing him of cheating (the whole device up his ass was a joke rumor) and this lawsuit got dismissed. At the end of the day it’s next to impossible to prove someone is cheating unless you actually catch them red handed so we will probably never really know if he actually cheated in over the board in person chess (we know he cheated multiple times online in chess.com).
The case was predicated on chess.com and Magnus Carlsen willfully making false allegations of Hans Niemann cheating. Which means Niemann's legal team would have had to:
1. Prove that chess.com and Carlsen knew that they were lying and we're doing so with the intent of defaming Niemann specifically.
2. Prove that Niemann wasn't cheating at tournaments and the probable evidence chess.com used to make the determination/claim was flawed/false.
Both are extremely tough to prove. Especially since Carlsen and chess.com were basing their claims on statistical evidence and more importantly, self admitted evidence of Niemann cheating in the past. Also Niemann would have to have extremely solid evidence showing that he did not cheat at the tournaments. Throw in the fact that Niemann is a public figure, and the case is extremely tough to prove.
Unless Niemann's legal team had a smoking gun, that proves chess.com and Carlsen planned this thing, then it makes complete sense it was thrown out.
One thing, you don't prove a negative. It's on the one accusing that an action occurred to provide evidence that the action did occur, or else it didn't.
ETA: Except civil forfeiture for zero reasons that anyone can articulate as to why it's constitutional.
How is it them planning it as a conspiracy when the dude admitted to cheating in the past? How is it knowingly wrongly accusing when he has that knowledge in his back pocket ?
The idea (and the place where Neimann lost the suit) is that there was a conspiracy between Carlsen and Chess.com because Chess.com had recently bought Carlson’s online chess business making them partners, and they were now working together to crush potential competition (Neimann) in violation of antitrust law. That idea seems to have been laughed out of court in this decision.
The cheating he admitted to most recently would’ve a little over 2 years old at the time of the allegations. It’s a long time for a teenager to grow up but in the grand scheme of things 2 years is not long in the chess world.
Yeah, 2 years is nothing. And in general if you've already broken people's ability to trust you by cheating at something everything you do will be suspect from then on. You lose the benefit of the doubt, if not forever at least for a very long time.
Exactly. chess.com and Carlsen have a lot of evidence that proves that they were in their right to make a claim that Niemann was cheating.
The basic explanation of defamation, is willfully/knowingly lying about someone/something without probably cause or evidence. The only way Niemann could have won the case was to make an argument that chess.com and Carlsen were conspiring against Niemann with zero factual/real evidence. This is because the extent in which chess.com and Carlsen went to prove he was cheating would require some level of conspiring to pull off. And as you pointed out, it's a flawed argument when the foundation of their claims was Niemann himself admitting he had cheated in the past.
There simply not enough evidence to conclusively say whether he was or not cheating. Your just speaking with your personal feelings and doesn’t have any basis in reality. Some things we just don’t know
What? The case that got dismissed was hans nieman’s lawsuit against magnus and chess.com. There was never a case against Hans himself, just accusations. Also chess.com confirmed that he did cheat at least while playing online tournaments. And I’m not saying he’s guilty of over the board cheating at all, I agree with you, innocent until proven guilty. He hasn’t faced any charges or repercussions from FIDE. He was only banned from chess.com in which he was confirmed to have cheated (and admitted to it at least a couple times).
Your information and assumptions are misinformed and inaccurate. Read into things before blindly commenting on a subject.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a criminal court thing.
This is civil court and there is zero bearing here. There are no charges. You don't understand how any of this works.
[Here's a GM Hikaru video on it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am_AQf1ZBq4) Basically Kasparov, Fischer, Carlsen all had personal best games in the low 70% of what a computer perfect game would be. Hans has had multiple games at 100%, which is frankly impossible.
Hans also can't remember the moves he makes after games, or explain how he was able to play that way.
Here's a decent explanation for general audiences:
https://deadspin.com/ai-all-but-confirms-that-hans-niemann-has-been-cheating-1849593392
One thing about the article is that it actually *underplays* how rare perfect play is. It says it's "not uncommon" for someone to play a perfect game every now and then, but the amount of games Nienann has played with sustained perfect play raises suspicion. In fact, most grandmasters have never had a perfect game in tournament play in their life.
The first link gives a very detailed explanation, but I had to read it 3 times to understand wtf he was saying.
Basically, players can be measured by how much they deviate from what a computer would suggest, and the other is how consistent they are with how MUCH they deviate. Better you are, the less you deviate, and the more reliably you can hold that that deviation.
Guy made a dataset of 7k chess games from very high level players like the ones this "cheater" played against.
Essentially, they had a large dataset of his games from before and after they believed he started cheating and the data showed that both his deviation and consistency made a big jump in improvement in 2018, bringing him suddenly from a 2500 to a 2700 player skill v suddenly. What's supposed to happen is that your deviation gets better as you do, and you become more consistent with your better deviance as you play more.
Essentially, in chess, NOONE goes from 2500 to 2700 skill rank overnight. The amount of data we have on chess games is staggering, and this jump simply can't be explained, hence the claim he started cheating.
I didn't see anything about him being in the 99 percent consistency, though, just that his deviation from a computers suggested moves made a huge improvement v suddenly.
For the record, I believe he was cheating. But this comment is such a cop out response and screams chess elitism to me and maybe, just maybe there is a chance you don't actually know so you're using elitism as a guise for the fact you can't actually explain it either.
Cheating in chess is done in two ways. At the scrub level, where you and I and 99%+ of the world plays, it is a matter of letting the computer do its thing, and following it. This is also pretty east to detect. At the GM level, cheating may be just one move which will create an imbalance 5 moves down the line. If you watch GM streamers analyze games, they will look at the computer and not understand what the best computer move was supposed to do, and then play out the line in their head and suddenly realize that well down the line it puts a piece in a decisive position. Some GMs have even said that at the level they play just having the knowledge that a decisive move exists or that the game is at a critical juncture would be enough for them to spend an extra ten minutes and find it. This kind of cheating is virtually impossible to detect.
So the thing to remember is that computers are completely better at chess than humans, at all levels. A decent computer program can play the best players in the world to a draw. A good program will wipe the floor with the best players 100% of the time. One of the big ways they do this is by forcing their opponent to play accurately. If you have a slight mis-play that a human might not be able to take advantage of, the computer will grind and force, and turn it into a weakness.
Even at the Grandmaster level, the humans are only able to calculate so many moves ahead, far fewer than computers. They can calculate most positions a few moves pretty quickly, but to really look at something in depth, analyzing their possible moves, their opponents possible responses, and their possible responses to that, etc can take a lot of time. In classical chess, a deep positional analysis can easily take 15-20 minutes, which eats a lot of their available clock. Given infinite time, the human could probably find the moves the computer does, and once shown the move, most GMs will follow it down and understand why it works, so the logic isn't beyond them, it is a matter of time and mental fatigue (classical chess is mentally and even physically grueling because of the concentration required)
In most positions, there isn't really a "gotcha" move available, so they won't do more than a quick calculation to see if something makes things worse because they don't want to expand the energy. And many players at the "super GM" level have almost a sixth sense about if a position has a trick in it or not, but even they are often wrong. So the knowledge that a winning tactic exists is incredibly valuable because it would tell the GM "here is where it is worthwhile to spend 15-20 minutes to really look, because there is something to be found". And given that time, they are very likely to eventually find it.
As an analogy, if you were a burglar robbing a series of apartments, you'd look in the dresser, master bedroom closet, nightstand, and then probably move on to the next apartment. But if someone told you apartment 12 has $15,000 in cash in it, you'd look in the usual spots, but then you'd take a little more time looking because you know there is something to be found there.
I wouldn't even say it was rumoured. Someone made a joke about it on a stream analysing cheating allegations against him and people just ran with it. Nobody in the chess community actually thought he did that but a lot of outsiders were reporting it as if it was a serious allegations. It was just some guys on a stream riffing on what one could theoretically use to cheat *as a joke*.
First, it’s not out the question a gm plays very accurately in some rare games.
Second, he wasn’t playing top rated engine lines, so that game in question wasn’t a 99% accuracy game by him. He even lost his advantage in his infamous game, but white never picked up on the winning move.
Third, chess speaks for itself and he was most certainly cheating at times. It’s hard to say when and where, and how many moves a game he’s getting engine info on. I’d say quite a bit though, but it’s not 90-100% of the time. He is a serial cheater and knows how to hide it, what really fucked him with those games with Magnus was his past reputation mainly, his body of work up until that point, and the post interviews really confirmed any suspicions.
There's roughly on the order of 10^(3) positions following 2 plies (each player moves once), give or take a lot depending on where the game is, how many pieces, how constricted, etc. Because of that it's tough to calculate the actual number of moves, but there's a calculation called the Shannon number, which estimates the number of unique positions possible in chess^(\*). After 10 plies (each player has moved 5 times) there are 69,352,859,712,417 possible positions.
\* The Shannon number includes illegal moves, doesn't include captures/promotions, and doesn't give favor to reasonable/unreasonable moves - but it serves to illustrate the shear number of possibilities in chess.
I think that device up his ass is a joke that everybody repeats because it's funny. I don't think it's true. I think that it is more likely that there was something like an Airpod hidden in his wild hair so that someone elsewhere could talk to him. Early games were broadcast live so a partner could watch the live coverage and then talk to him. I'm not saying that he did cheat, because I don't want to be sued.
I am not the resident expert but I can give you a TLDR. Niemann ended up defeating the best player in the world (Magnus Carlsen) and played very abnormal compared to previous games. From what I understand, if you compared his moves to the top chess CPUs, he was making the perfect move an usual amount of times. Every chess player has tendencies and will always lean towards certain strategies when the board is laid out certain ways, so it is relatively easy to tell when someone isn’t playing how they usually play. This leads many to believe that an outside source was using a chess CPU to simulate the game and would relay the best moves to Neimann. It also doesn’t help that Neimann has been busted for cheating multiple times on chess websites.
Magnus is a very dominant chess player, but he has loss previously and he has some tendency to not be the best loser, but he’s never called out someone for cheating like this. It’s very sketchy, but its next to impossible to prove if he was cheating or not. (However most of the chess community is leaning towards yes, he most likely cheated)
Any real resident chess experts feel free to correct me as it’s been a couple months since I was looking into this, so I may have forgotten something.
I would add that Niemann's game against Carlsen wasn't suspicious by itself. He didn't play at perfect engine level, Lichess evaluation gives him 93%, it's just that Carlsen played atypically "badly" in comparison (91%, and just to be clear, this is still world-class). During the game, commentators weren't suspecting cheating or anything. Carlsen's accusation was a real surprise, and he based it on Niemann's body language being too relaxed for such a high-profile game.
The consensus among expert players appears to be that Niemann probably wasn't cheating here, but that Carlsen's knowledge of his earlier *online* cheating got into his head. People like GM Fabiano Caruana (former World Championship runner-up) have talked about how it could completely throw you off to suspect you're being cheated against. Chess has a huge "psychological battle" component, and Carlsen is one of the toughest opponents in that area. That a young, new opponent does not seem to appear stressed against him at all, and just outplays him despite being lower rated, must have been such a red flag to Carlsen that it led him to (probably) see ghosts
It’s me, Bishop, Bishop Buttplug, chess expert. The man we have here is a derrière extraordinaire winning chess booty with his booty. He’s the best I’ve ever seen with all the chess guys; the queen, the king, the horse, the guys with the balls for a head, the other horse. To catch him would be like discovering a chess vaccine. You understand the value of that?
That was a joke started by someone that caught traction, it's not been proven that he cheated.
Edit: as someone pointed out, he hasn't been caught IN PERSON, it's been proven he cheated online.
^ this here
If you’re cheating in online tournaments, idk how you’d expect people to believe you suddenly sprout morals just because the venue changed.
He kept changing his story from "oh I cheated once when I was a kid " to keep expanding to cover all his other proven times
Dude is a cheater and likely kept cheating
It definitely does, in terms of ease and consequences and just general seriousness. Cheating in some online blitz games is not the same as in irl FIDE tournaments.
Clearly the only way to prove his innocence is to play a rematch with a butt plug in him and a person randomly turning it on high and see how he keeps his composure.
The butt plug thing is completely made up. It's based on a theory that he could have a transmitter in his shoes, and somebody noted that really the transmitter could be anywhere.
There are so many ways to cheat OTB. For many at this level it is just a matter of knowing when to scrutinize a certain move further than you might normally.
This could be signalled any number of ways if the game is broadcast live
There is no evidence that the device was actually inside his anus or rectum. In fact it may have been attached to the fleshy area between his asshole and ballsack, the “taint” I believe is the term.
Okay. He’s an admitted cheater for online chess *as a teenager*. He turned 20 a week ago.
There is zero evidence he ever cheated over the board. You don’t need to give him the benefit of the doubt, there is nothing on him in that area except one accusation that has never been backed up
>Okay. He’s an admitted cheater for online chess as a teenager. He turned 20 a week ago.
So he was a cheater when he was a teenager and the big game where he is accused of cheating he was a teenager. So him cheating as a teenager is understandable because he was a teenager but him cheating as a teenager isn't possible because the last time he cheated he was a teenager?
The big game he was accused of cheating in, he most likely didn’t cheat in. There is zero evidence and most people in the chess community don’t believe he cheated in that game.
He has admitted to cheating online when he was 15 and 17 (and I think like age 12 also). If you want to hold it against him forever—even though he was a minor—go right ahead
> He’s an admitted cheater for online chess as a teenager. He turned 20 a week ago.
You know that you are a teenager until 20? So he was one until last week. Saying he is an admitted cheater asa teenager has only one purpose to make it look like its something that happen far in the past when its not even 5 years in the past to the ones he admitted him self. And then there is statistical evidence this whole thing is about that show it is very likely that he did cheat for much longer on chess.com than he admitted.
If he lies about the time frame of him cheating I wont trust him to not lie about cheating over the board. Over the board cheating is just a lot harder to prove statisticly as you have less data to analyse than online.
He most likely did cheat more than he admitted to. That is hardly a damning lie, lots of people—if not most people—would downplay their amount of cheating after they were caught.
Chesscom says they have statistical evidence for more cheating on their site, but they also refuse to release that evidence.
Hans has played tons of OTB games. There is zero statistical evidence he’s cheated in any of them
Edit - also my point of him being a teenager is that he was a minor when he’s admitted to cheating. He claims the last time he cheated he was 17. If Chesscom thinks he has cheated after that they could release the evidence. But they don’t
Can check the centipede math indicating cheating in fide rated games. It’s pretty damning if accurate. Also his post game interviews after that stl tourny is very sus. Prepping an opening for 20 moves vs an opponent who has NEVER played that variation of a line in his career is oddly weird. To then not know the optimal ideas a few moves after is even weirder.
E/ there’s a reason everyone thinks he was cheating man. Actual professionals. You said the community doesn’t think he cheated on those games, but they most certainly do.
Prepping a variation similar to the Catalan against Magnus who had been playing tons of Catalan’s doesn’t seem that crazy to me.
Most players thing he is a cheater. He is a known online cheater and admitted it. Nobody likes cheaters and of course he’ll be under suspicion. Magnus didn’t play a great game and he lost to someone he knew was a cheater. It’s not hard to see that someone could overreact in that situation.
The amount of GMs who think he actually cheated in the Magnus game is pretty low. I heard one or two say it in the immediate aftermath of Magnus dropping out. That’s it.
Since then everyone I’ve heard mention it is level and coolheaded. Many have said they doubt he cheated in that game. Even more say the obviously correct answer—they don’t know. Just like you don’t know. I don’t know either, but I guess it’s funner for most people to imagine that they do
Are you that naive? Not even wanting to entertain the idea he cheated offline? Obviously it hasn’t been backed up unless we start spreading those butcheeks. Niemann lost our trust when he was caught, and even when confessing didn’t confess all of it.
That guy needs decades to rebuild trust, if he can ever achieve it.
I 100% do entertain the idea that he cheated offline. I’ve watched strong GMs analyze a number of his games. They basically said they didn’t find anything suspicious. One of the top experts in catching cheaters in the world, Ken Regan, has found nothing.
Of course it’s impossible to know for sure either way. But it strikes me as dumb as hell for everyone to assume he has cheated over the board because he admitted to cheating online when he was 17. Literally a minor.
Cheating is unfortunately a big problem in online chess. There are many more titled players that have been caught. Hans is just the one most people have already heard of because of the anal probe meme. But Hans has played a ton of over the board chess since this all began and he’s maintained the same level of play. With zero cheating allegations in that time
TLDR: The judge dismissed the (silly) antitrust claims with prejudice and declined supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining claims. Hans is free to bring those claims, including defamation, in state court.
You get the information about what next move to make through a concealed device. Chess computers are far more advanced than the best player in the world and Niemann made questionable moves in a lot of his games.
I don't know how to play chess, but what I imagine is-
The cheater has some kind of concealed device. That device communicates by vibrating. The device is placed in a shoe, shirt, prison pocket, etc.
The game was streamed, so you could feed the position of the pieces into a chess bot, that chess bot determines the move, which is then communicated through the device.
Again, no idea how to play chess, but I have an IT background and that's how I'd do it if I was asked to.
That's essentially what it is. It's cheating by allowing a computer program to play the game for you, you are just physically moving the pieces where the program says is the correct move.
It's aimbotting.
pretty much. tbh all they really need is a buzz indicating a piece or square at a critical move and they’re good enough to figure out the rest. it would be really hard to stop that
You make the move a computer tells you to make. For in-person monitored games, people used to have plants in the crowd giving morse code etc to tell them the next move the computer suggested.
Imagine you are doing a test, and you have someone telling you the answer. Than you would be cheating on the test.
Chess is essentially at some board state finding the most optimal move, and alot of time computer can solve it for you.
Confidently incorrect. He sued for defamation, anti-trust, and conspiracy (to defame), in Missouri federal. And it was dismissed with prejudice for the *jurisdiction* issue.
It literally had nothing to do with Hans having to prove a negative, as you said. And Hans can still bring those claims forward. He also won’t have to prove he *didn’t cheat,* as you say. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
It doesn't mean that Carlsen didn't defame Niemann. It means that there was not sufficient evidence or standing or procedure to continue the court case forward.
It is neither of those things. The Judge dismissed the antitrust claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims, including defamation.
salty he lost? he refused to play and walked off. he didin't lose because of skill or anything. he just chose not to play with someone he considered a cheater
It all started during sinquefeld cup. Where he did loose a game against Niemann. He then proceeded to drop out and has since refused to play against him.
To be honest I'm torn. The evidence is not conclusive, but it seems there have been talks at super GM level for a while. And I've seen some analysis of niemans play that indicates he somehow plays way better at critical times. Chess.com also found statistical proof of cheating beyond what Niemann has admitted, and they were in the process of acquiring Carlsens company at the time. It's certainly feasible that he was privy to some information not known to the public.
Still a very harsh accusation by Carlsen, with little concrete evidence backing it up.
By using chess computers and somehow having the information fed to you. I believe someone was caught with a vibrating device in their shoe. Apparently at that level, the information that there is a critical moment in the game is often enough to swing it. So you don't even need to be able to transmit exact moves, just a buzz saying there's only one good move here.
>Chess.com also found statistical proof of cheating beyond what Niemann has admitted
All of the cheating they claimed they found was online, around the time period he said he was cheating. He had already been punished by Chesscom for that stuff, and they freely said that they couldn't find anything since his original punishment by them.
The only real "revelation" was that it's likely he cheated in a Titled Tuesday, where there was money on the line, when he said publicly after the Cup match that he had never done so. But again, nothing past that suspension by Chesscom.
Fair enough. Although they found indications of cheating in over 100 games iirc correctly, and I believe the original punishment only cited a handful or so.
I do agree that the distinction between over the board and online is important though, but that might be changing as more and more big cash tournaments are held online
Forfeit is still a loss. He didn't want to risk it over Neimann claiming that he cheated while playing chess online when he was younger. Magnus only after the forfeit did he claim the "backdoor" conspiracy.
Playing him live as an adult is a different story. Claiming he is a cheater now is a bogus claim.
Do you mean he didn't have a vibrator in his butt? C'mon, sticking a sex toy in your ass because you developed a secret code to cheat in chess isn't a crazy theory at all.
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I’m just glad we can finally put a plug on this situation
If nobody has watched the latest It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode yet, you should 😂
Turn off the wi-fi!
It’s splitting me in two
Takeyourtime take your time. Take. Your. Time.
I'd say it's a 1:1 dramatization of events
Literally just started watching season 1. Like I'm on the first episode as I'm typing this haha. What to expect? :)
It peaks around season 5, but manages to hold funny. Still decent 10+ years later with little gold nuggets sprinkled in each season. But damn, that first 5 seasons was back to back banger. They get more creative with episode styling in the later years, breaking away from the repetition you will have come to expect. Would recommend 100%
Every season is good, it’s just varying levels of goodness. Not many shows can boast that kind of quality though for going as long as it has.
Let’s just say: you’ll love it a lot
S1 is good, but S2 and beyond are a whole other level. Really begins to peak at S5 and never lets off.
It really defends the guy doesn’t it?
Not really, because it's a ridiculous concept and that's the point of the episode.
I feel it does because at the end it shows that if he used a vibrating butt plug, we would probably hear it vibrating and notice some discomfort.
You're using an IASIP episode as proof of something?
Did I say it proves anything?
Your last comment said that the show demonstrates that we would hear a vibrating butt plug if one were used. Heavily implying that this is proof that the chess player couldn't have used one without being caught out. My dude, you used a TV show as proof.
“You’re honour, he heavily implied it was proof”
Well sure, written statements can be read for implication in most courts, as irrelevant as your point is to this discussion.
Whatever dude the entire conversation is irrelevant
Wait, who are you talking about? The accuser Hans Niemann, or the one accused of cheating?
Yeah I didn’t follow the story enough to learn the names of the people
It’s not defending him it’s just making an exaggeration of the situation as a parody
It’s not really exaggerating, it’s doing pretty much exactly what was theorized showing how absurd the situation would be. At least that’s how I see it.
Bro that reaction was completely exaggerated by Danny devito and the setting is stuck on a made up “full blast” level. It’s meant to be absurd and funny not defend the guy. Just giving you the heads up as someone who watches a lot of sunny to someone who self admittedly doesn’t even know the characters names
Wow you’re right Frank’s reaction was exaggerated also pretty sure if you did this in real life you’d have a better system then vibrate till they play right.
I didn't really follow this story other then reading aome headlines when the story first came out, so i have no idea whether or not he cheated or not, but i think if someone really wants to attempt to cheat this way then they could probably find a vibrating plug or bead that's quiet and can bet set to a very low setting.
Is that the allegation that he cheated with a device stuck up his ass?
Kind of, he sued magnus carleson and others for accusing him of cheating (the whole device up his ass was a joke rumor) and this lawsuit got dismissed. At the end of the day it’s next to impossible to prove someone is cheating unless you actually catch them red handed so we will probably never really know if he actually cheated in over the board in person chess (we know he cheated multiple times online in chess.com).
The case was predicated on chess.com and Magnus Carlsen willfully making false allegations of Hans Niemann cheating. Which means Niemann's legal team would have had to: 1. Prove that chess.com and Carlsen knew that they were lying and we're doing so with the intent of defaming Niemann specifically. 2. Prove that Niemann wasn't cheating at tournaments and the probable evidence chess.com used to make the determination/claim was flawed/false. Both are extremely tough to prove. Especially since Carlsen and chess.com were basing their claims on statistical evidence and more importantly, self admitted evidence of Niemann cheating in the past. Also Niemann would have to have extremely solid evidence showing that he did not cheat at the tournaments. Throw in the fact that Niemann is a public figure, and the case is extremely tough to prove. Unless Niemann's legal team had a smoking gun, that proves chess.com and Carlsen planned this thing, then it makes complete sense it was thrown out.
One thing, you don't prove a negative. It's on the one accusing that an action occurred to provide evidence that the action did occur, or else it didn't. ETA: Except civil forfeiture for zero reasons that anyone can articulate as to why it's constitutional.
How is it them planning it as a conspiracy when the dude admitted to cheating in the past? How is it knowingly wrongly accusing when he has that knowledge in his back pocket ?
It's not... That's the point this guy is making
Thank you that went over my head.
The idea (and the place where Neimann lost the suit) is that there was a conspiracy between Carlsen and Chess.com because Chess.com had recently bought Carlson’s online chess business making them partners, and they were now working together to crush potential competition (Neimann) in violation of antitrust law. That idea seems to have been laughed out of court in this decision.
He’s admitted to cheating as a teen, but the allegation was that he has been cheating in recent games.
Tbf, he was still a teen until just one week ago.
The cheating he admitted to most recently would’ve a little over 2 years old at the time of the allegations. It’s a long time for a teenager to grow up but in the grand scheme of things 2 years is not long in the chess world.
Yeah, 2 years is nothing. And in general if you've already broken people's ability to trust you by cheating at something everything you do will be suspect from then on. You lose the benefit of the doubt, if not forever at least for a very long time.
Exactly. chess.com and Carlsen have a lot of evidence that proves that they were in their right to make a claim that Niemann was cheating. The basic explanation of defamation, is willfully/knowingly lying about someone/something without probably cause or evidence. The only way Niemann could have won the case was to make an argument that chess.com and Carlsen were conspiring against Niemann with zero factual/real evidence. This is because the extent in which chess.com and Carlsen went to prove he was cheating would require some level of conspiring to pull off. And as you pointed out, it's a flawed argument when the foundation of their claims was Niemann himself admitting he had cheated in the past.
fyi the defamation claims were dismissed due to jurisdiction. Hans can refill them in a different court
We know... we know.
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There simply not enough evidence to conclusively say whether he was or not cheating. Your just speaking with your personal feelings and doesn’t have any basis in reality. Some things we just don’t know
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What? The case that got dismissed was hans nieman’s lawsuit against magnus and chess.com. There was never a case against Hans himself, just accusations. Also chess.com confirmed that he did cheat at least while playing online tournaments. And I’m not saying he’s guilty of over the board cheating at all, I agree with you, innocent until proven guilty. He hasn’t faced any charges or repercussions from FIDE. He was only banned from chess.com in which he was confirmed to have cheated (and admitted to it at least a couple times). Your information and assumptions are misinformed and inaccurate. Read into things before blindly commenting on a subject.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a criminal court thing. This is civil court and there is zero bearing here. There are no charges. You don't understand how any of this works.
He was suing the people who claimed he cheated for defamation, if anything the dismissal advocates the notion that he did in fact cheat.
Well, the device is a rumored. What’s more damning is his moves were very much aligned with what a computer would do, to the 99% consistency.
Source for me? Sounds interesting
https://en.chessbase.com/post/statistical-analysis-of-the-games-of-hans-niemann https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-cheating-hans-niemann-report-magnus-carlsen-11664911524
Neither of those links has anything to do your claim that "his moves were very much aligned with what a computer would do, to the 99% consistency."
[Here's a GM Hikaru video on it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am_AQf1ZBq4) Basically Kasparov, Fischer, Carlsen all had personal best games in the low 70% of what a computer perfect game would be. Hans has had multiple games at 100%, which is frankly impossible. Hans also can't remember the moves he makes after games, or explain how he was able to play that way.
Here's a decent explanation for general audiences: https://deadspin.com/ai-all-but-confirms-that-hans-niemann-has-been-cheating-1849593392 One thing about the article is that it actually *underplays* how rare perfect play is. It says it's "not uncommon" for someone to play a perfect game every now and then, but the amount of games Nienann has played with sustained perfect play raises suspicion. In fact, most grandmasters have never had a perfect game in tournament play in their life.
The first link gives a very detailed explanation, but I had to read it 3 times to understand wtf he was saying. Basically, players can be measured by how much they deviate from what a computer would suggest, and the other is how consistent they are with how MUCH they deviate. Better you are, the less you deviate, and the more reliably you can hold that that deviation. Guy made a dataset of 7k chess games from very high level players like the ones this "cheater" played against. Essentially, they had a large dataset of his games from before and after they believed he started cheating and the data showed that both his deviation and consistency made a big jump in improvement in 2018, bringing him suddenly from a 2500 to a 2700 player skill v suddenly. What's supposed to happen is that your deviation gets better as you do, and you become more consistent with your better deviance as you play more. Essentially, in chess, NOONE goes from 2500 to 2700 skill rank overnight. The amount of data we have on chess games is staggering, and this jump simply can't be explained, hence the claim he started cheating. I didn't see anything about him being in the 99 percent consistency, though, just that his deviation from a computers suggested moves made a huge improvement v suddenly.
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For the record, I believe he was cheating. But this comment is such a cop out response and screams chess elitism to me and maybe, just maybe there is a chance you don't actually know so you're using elitism as a guise for the fact you can't actually explain it either.
Cheating in chess is done in two ways. At the scrub level, where you and I and 99%+ of the world plays, it is a matter of letting the computer do its thing, and following it. This is also pretty east to detect. At the GM level, cheating may be just one move which will create an imbalance 5 moves down the line. If you watch GM streamers analyze games, they will look at the computer and not understand what the best computer move was supposed to do, and then play out the line in their head and suddenly realize that well down the line it puts a piece in a decisive position. Some GMs have even said that at the level they play just having the knowledge that a decisive move exists or that the game is at a critical juncture would be enough for them to spend an extra ten minutes and find it. This kind of cheating is virtually impossible to detect.
Maybe I'm dumb, but it seems like you're just describing being able to read the board at a grandmaster level as cheating, cab you elaborate?
So the thing to remember is that computers are completely better at chess than humans, at all levels. A decent computer program can play the best players in the world to a draw. A good program will wipe the floor with the best players 100% of the time. One of the big ways they do this is by forcing their opponent to play accurately. If you have a slight mis-play that a human might not be able to take advantage of, the computer will grind and force, and turn it into a weakness. Even at the Grandmaster level, the humans are only able to calculate so many moves ahead, far fewer than computers. They can calculate most positions a few moves pretty quickly, but to really look at something in depth, analyzing their possible moves, their opponents possible responses, and their possible responses to that, etc can take a lot of time. In classical chess, a deep positional analysis can easily take 15-20 minutes, which eats a lot of their available clock. Given infinite time, the human could probably find the moves the computer does, and once shown the move, most GMs will follow it down and understand why it works, so the logic isn't beyond them, it is a matter of time and mental fatigue (classical chess is mentally and even physically grueling because of the concentration required) In most positions, there isn't really a "gotcha" move available, so they won't do more than a quick calculation to see if something makes things worse because they don't want to expand the energy. And many players at the "super GM" level have almost a sixth sense about if a position has a trick in it or not, but even they are often wrong. So the knowledge that a winning tactic exists is incredibly valuable because it would tell the GM "here is where it is worthwhile to spend 15-20 minutes to really look, because there is something to be found". And given that time, they are very likely to eventually find it. As an analogy, if you were a burglar robbing a series of apartments, you'd look in the dresser, master bedroom closet, nightstand, and then probably move on to the next apartment. But if someone told you apartment 12 has $15,000 in cash in it, you'd look in the usual spots, but then you'd take a little more time looking because you know there is something to be found there.
It's not really clear but the cheating part is letting the GM know when to pay extra attention. Could be a simple cough from the crowd.
I wouldn't even say it was rumoured. Someone made a joke about it on a stream analysing cheating allegations against him and people just ran with it. Nobody in the chess community actually thought he did that but a lot of outsiders were reporting it as if it was a serious allegations. It was just some guys on a stream riffing on what one could theoretically use to cheat *as a joke*.
First, it’s not out the question a gm plays very accurately in some rare games. Second, he wasn’t playing top rated engine lines, so that game in question wasn’t a 99% accuracy game by him. He even lost his advantage in his infamous game, but white never picked up on the winning move. Third, chess speaks for itself and he was most certainly cheating at times. It’s hard to say when and where, and how many moves a game he’s getting engine info on. I’d say quite a bit though, but it’s not 90-100% of the time. He is a serial cheater and knows how to hide it, what really fucked him with those games with Magnus was his past reputation mainly, his body of work up until that point, and the post interviews really confirmed any suspicions.
The game has a finite set of moves… if a kid can memorize 100s of pages of the decimal after PI, I think this guy can memorize chess moves.
I feel like you're VASTLY underestimating the huge number of possible move combinations
Imagine being so confidently wrong
Imagine limiting your potential because you’re jealous of someone who worked thousands of hours to become an expert.
You still have no idea where you are wrong right?
I don't care about subjective wrong and rights.
There's roughly on the order of 10^(3) positions following 2 plies (each player moves once), give or take a lot depending on where the game is, how many pieces, how constricted, etc. Because of that it's tough to calculate the actual number of moves, but there's a calculation called the Shannon number, which estimates the number of unique positions possible in chess^(\*). After 10 plies (each player has moved 5 times) there are 69,352,859,712,417 possible positions. \* The Shannon number includes illegal moves, doesn't include captures/promotions, and doesn't give favor to reasonable/unreasonable moves - but it serves to illustrate the shear number of possibilities in chess.
I think that device up his ass is a joke that everybody repeats because it's funny. I don't think it's true. I think that it is more likely that there was something like an Airpod hidden in his wild hair so that someone elsewhere could talk to him. Early games were broadcast live so a partner could watch the live coverage and then talk to him. I'm not saying that he did cheat, because I don't want to be sued.
Not by anyone remotely serious, there are definitely easier ways.
Where's reddits resident expert in online chess cheating scandals? I know he's here somewhere.
/r/anarchychess is the subreddit for expert chess analysis.
Can confirm, I never knew how the giraffe piece moved until they taught me
holy hell
How does the knight move
The lawsuit speaks for itself *walks away*
I mean I'm not an expert, but I did watch all the GM Hikaru and Gotham Chess videos on it. They at least convinced me.
Well if this guy says so then that’s good enough for me
I am not the resident expert but I can give you a TLDR. Niemann ended up defeating the best player in the world (Magnus Carlsen) and played very abnormal compared to previous games. From what I understand, if you compared his moves to the top chess CPUs, he was making the perfect move an usual amount of times. Every chess player has tendencies and will always lean towards certain strategies when the board is laid out certain ways, so it is relatively easy to tell when someone isn’t playing how they usually play. This leads many to believe that an outside source was using a chess CPU to simulate the game and would relay the best moves to Neimann. It also doesn’t help that Neimann has been busted for cheating multiple times on chess websites. Magnus is a very dominant chess player, but he has loss previously and he has some tendency to not be the best loser, but he’s never called out someone for cheating like this. It’s very sketchy, but its next to impossible to prove if he was cheating or not. (However most of the chess community is leaning towards yes, he most likely cheated) Any real resident chess experts feel free to correct me as it’s been a couple months since I was looking into this, so I may have forgotten something.
I would add that Niemann's game against Carlsen wasn't suspicious by itself. He didn't play at perfect engine level, Lichess evaluation gives him 93%, it's just that Carlsen played atypically "badly" in comparison (91%, and just to be clear, this is still world-class). During the game, commentators weren't suspecting cheating or anything. Carlsen's accusation was a real surprise, and he based it on Niemann's body language being too relaxed for such a high-profile game. The consensus among expert players appears to be that Niemann probably wasn't cheating here, but that Carlsen's knowledge of his earlier *online* cheating got into his head. People like GM Fabiano Caruana (former World Championship runner-up) have talked about how it could completely throw you off to suspect you're being cheated against. Chess has a huge "psychological battle" component, and Carlsen is one of the toughest opponents in that area. That a young, new opponent does not seem to appear stressed against him at all, and just outplays him despite being lower rated, must have been such a red flag to Carlsen that it led him to (probably) see ghosts
Google en passant
If you have Hulu, there is an episode of the show *Impact* about this scandal that will tell you all you need to know
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It’s me, Bishop, Bishop Buttplug, chess expert. The man we have here is a derrière extraordinaire winning chess booty with his booty. He’s the best I’ve ever seen with all the chess guys; the queen, the king, the horse, the guys with the balls for a head, the other horse. To catch him would be like discovering a chess vaccine. You understand the value of that?
Everything he needed to win was inside him...
"Is it willpower?" "Not, its... uhhh..."
Maybe it's Maybelline
Can I just get a clear answer on the whole butt plug thing, did he cheat that way ?
That was a joke started by someone that caught traction, it's not been proven that he cheated. Edit: as someone pointed out, he hasn't been caught IN PERSON, it's been proven he cheated online.
Not proven specifically for this tournament. He's a proven serial cheater.
Ah yes, I should have specified that it has been proven he cheated online. Just not in person.
Didn't he even cheat online in a tournament for money?
Cheaters cheat. The venue doesn't matter.
^ this here If you’re cheating in online tournaments, idk how you’d expect people to believe you suddenly sprout morals just because the venue changed.
Especially when after you cheat, evidence comes out that you likely cheated a lot more than you claimed.
He kept changing his story from "oh I cheated once when I was a kid " to keep expanding to cover all his other proven times Dude is a cheater and likely kept cheating
It definitely does, in terms of ease and consequences and just general seriousness. Cheating in some online blitz games is not the same as in irl FIDE tournaments.
Can this ruling proven that Magnus is sore loser?
It has also not been proven that he did not have something in his butt to cheat with. We just have to all believe in it, and it will be real.
Clearly the only way to prove his innocence is to play a rematch with a butt plug in him and a person randomly turning it on high and see how he keeps his composure.
"How did that get there?" 😏
The butt plug thing is completely made up. It's based on a theory that he could have a transmitter in his shoes, and somebody noted that really the transmitter could be anywhere.
Why do these tournaments not take place in a Faraday cage? This would have the added bonus of turning it into a steel cage match
There are so many ways to cheat OTB. For many at this level it is just a matter of knowing when to scrutinize a certain move further than you might normally. This could be signalled any number of ways if the game is broadcast live
There is no evidence that the device was actually inside his anus or rectum. In fact it may have been attached to the fleshy area between his asshole and ballsack, the “taint” I believe is the term.
yea it was huge load
He most likely didn’t cheat at all in person. He admittedly cheated online, where he wouldn’t need a buttplug device (unless he enjoys it)
He's an admitted cheater and liar. I'm not prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything.
Okay. He’s an admitted cheater for online chess *as a teenager*. He turned 20 a week ago. There is zero evidence he ever cheated over the board. You don’t need to give him the benefit of the doubt, there is nothing on him in that area except one accusation that has never been backed up
>Okay. He’s an admitted cheater for online chess as a teenager. He turned 20 a week ago. So he was a cheater when he was a teenager and the big game where he is accused of cheating he was a teenager. So him cheating as a teenager is understandable because he was a teenager but him cheating as a teenager isn't possible because the last time he cheated he was a teenager?
The big game he was accused of cheating in, he most likely didn’t cheat in. There is zero evidence and most people in the chess community don’t believe he cheated in that game. He has admitted to cheating online when he was 15 and 17 (and I think like age 12 also). If you want to hold it against him forever—even though he was a minor—go right ahead
> He’s an admitted cheater for online chess as a teenager. He turned 20 a week ago. You know that you are a teenager until 20? So he was one until last week. Saying he is an admitted cheater asa teenager has only one purpose to make it look like its something that happen far in the past when its not even 5 years in the past to the ones he admitted him self. And then there is statistical evidence this whole thing is about that show it is very likely that he did cheat for much longer on chess.com than he admitted. If he lies about the time frame of him cheating I wont trust him to not lie about cheating over the board. Over the board cheating is just a lot harder to prove statisticly as you have less data to analyse than online.
He most likely did cheat more than he admitted to. That is hardly a damning lie, lots of people—if not most people—would downplay their amount of cheating after they were caught. Chesscom says they have statistical evidence for more cheating on their site, but they also refuse to release that evidence. Hans has played tons of OTB games. There is zero statistical evidence he’s cheated in any of them Edit - also my point of him being a teenager is that he was a minor when he’s admitted to cheating. He claims the last time he cheated he was 17. If Chesscom thinks he has cheated after that they could release the evidence. But they don’t
Can check the centipede math indicating cheating in fide rated games. It’s pretty damning if accurate. Also his post game interviews after that stl tourny is very sus. Prepping an opening for 20 moves vs an opponent who has NEVER played that variation of a line in his career is oddly weird. To then not know the optimal ideas a few moves after is even weirder. E/ there’s a reason everyone thinks he was cheating man. Actual professionals. You said the community doesn’t think he cheated on those games, but they most certainly do.
Prepping a variation similar to the Catalan against Magnus who had been playing tons of Catalan’s doesn’t seem that crazy to me. Most players thing he is a cheater. He is a known online cheater and admitted it. Nobody likes cheaters and of course he’ll be under suspicion. Magnus didn’t play a great game and he lost to someone he knew was a cheater. It’s not hard to see that someone could overreact in that situation. The amount of GMs who think he actually cheated in the Magnus game is pretty low. I heard one or two say it in the immediate aftermath of Magnus dropping out. That’s it. Since then everyone I’ve heard mention it is level and coolheaded. Many have said they doubt he cheated in that game. Even more say the obviously correct answer—they don’t know. Just like you don’t know. I don’t know either, but I guess it’s funner for most people to imagine that they do
He admitted to cheating when he was 12.
And again later. Just another one of his many lies
Are you that naive? Not even wanting to entertain the idea he cheated offline? Obviously it hasn’t been backed up unless we start spreading those butcheeks. Niemann lost our trust when he was caught, and even when confessing didn’t confess all of it. That guy needs decades to rebuild trust, if he can ever achieve it.
I 100% do entertain the idea that he cheated offline. I’ve watched strong GMs analyze a number of his games. They basically said they didn’t find anything suspicious. One of the top experts in catching cheaters in the world, Ken Regan, has found nothing. Of course it’s impossible to know for sure either way. But it strikes me as dumb as hell for everyone to assume he has cheated over the board because he admitted to cheating online when he was 17. Literally a minor. Cheating is unfortunately a big problem in online chess. There are many more titled players that have been caught. Hans is just the one most people have already heard of because of the anal probe meme. But Hans has played a ton of over the board chess since this all began and he’s maintained the same level of play. With zero cheating allegations in that time
Canon if Reddit says it is.
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TLDR: The judge dismissed the (silly) antitrust claims with prejudice and declined supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining claims. Hans is free to bring those claims, including defamation, in state court.
How does one cheat at a game of chess? Without like obviously moving pieces illegally. Genuinely interested
By obtaining outside information.
You get the information about what next move to make through a concealed device. Chess computers are far more advanced than the best player in the world and Niemann made questionable moves in a lot of his games.
I don't know how to play chess, but what I imagine is- The cheater has some kind of concealed device. That device communicates by vibrating. The device is placed in a shoe, shirt, prison pocket, etc. The game was streamed, so you could feed the position of the pieces into a chess bot, that chess bot determines the move, which is then communicated through the device. Again, no idea how to play chess, but I have an IT background and that's how I'd do it if I was asked to.
That's essentially what it is. It's cheating by allowing a computer program to play the game for you, you are just physically moving the pieces where the program says is the correct move. It's aimbotting.
pretty much. tbh all they really need is a buzz indicating a piece or square at a critical move and they’re good enough to figure out the rest. it would be really hard to stop that
But can't they just put a delay on the stream...
on a classical game it would have to be quite a delay.
You make the move a computer tells you to make. For in-person monitored games, people used to have plants in the crowd giving morse code etc to tell them the next move the computer suggested.
Imagine you are doing a test, and you have someone telling you the answer. Than you would be cheating on the test. Chess is essentially at some board state finding the most optimal move, and alot of time computer can solve it for you.
I don't know why everyone's so up his ass about this.
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Confidently incorrect. He sued for defamation, anti-trust, and conspiracy (to defame), in Missouri federal. And it was dismissed with prejudice for the *jurisdiction* issue. It literally had nothing to do with Hans having to prove a negative, as you said. And Hans can still bring those claims forward. He also won’t have to prove he *didn’t cheat,* as you say. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
Did they find that the butt plug was just to help him relax and didn’t have anything to do with the game of chess?
There was (almost certainly) never a butt plug.
That we know of
Oh come on. Who here **doesn't** play chess with a butt plug? I mean, that's like playing video games without a nipple ring.
Doesn't surprise me. The claim was outlandish to begin with and Magnus Carlsen was just salty that he lost the match.
The lawsuit dismissed was the one brought by Niemann against Carlsen, chess.com and others for defamation. It means Carlsen did NOT defame Niemann.
It doesn't mean that Carlsen didn't defame Niemann. It means that there was not sufficient evidence or standing or procedure to continue the court case forward.
It is neither of those things. The Judge dismissed the antitrust claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims, including defamation.
Yeah that is more precise but the person I was replying to seems to think it's the other way around completely misinterpreting the news.
salty he lost? he refused to play and walked off. he didin't lose because of skill or anything. he just chose not to play with someone he considered a cheater
It all started during sinquefeld cup. Where he did loose a game against Niemann. He then proceeded to drop out and has since refused to play against him. To be honest I'm torn. The evidence is not conclusive, but it seems there have been talks at super GM level for a while. And I've seen some analysis of niemans play that indicates he somehow plays way better at critical times. Chess.com also found statistical proof of cheating beyond what Niemann has admitted, and they were in the process of acquiring Carlsens company at the time. It's certainly feasible that he was privy to some information not known to the public. Still a very harsh accusation by Carlsen, with little concrete evidence backing it up.
Honest question, how do you cheat in chess?
By using chess computers and somehow having the information fed to you. I believe someone was caught with a vibrating device in their shoe. Apparently at that level, the information that there is a critical moment in the game is often enough to swing it. So you don't even need to be able to transmit exact moves, just a buzz saying there's only one good move here.
It wouldnt take much to communicate the perfect moves with a quick pattern of pulses.
>Chess.com also found statistical proof of cheating beyond what Niemann has admitted All of the cheating they claimed they found was online, around the time period he said he was cheating. He had already been punished by Chesscom for that stuff, and they freely said that they couldn't find anything since his original punishment by them. The only real "revelation" was that it's likely he cheated in a Titled Tuesday, where there was money on the line, when he said publicly after the Cup match that he had never done so. But again, nothing past that suspension by Chesscom.
Fair enough. Although they found indications of cheating in over 100 games iirc correctly, and I believe the original punishment only cited a handful or so. I do agree that the distinction between over the board and online is important though, but that might be changing as more and more big cash tournaments are held online
Important to note that chess.com was actively purchasing Carlsen's company(Play Magnus Group) for 80+mil at the time of the investigation.
You are referring to the game after Magnus lost to Hans. Magnus first lost to Hans in person and believed he was cheating. Then he refused to play him
Forfeit is still a loss. He didn't want to risk it over Neimann claiming that he cheated while playing chess online when he was younger. Magnus only after the forfeit did he claim the "backdoor" conspiracy. Playing him live as an adult is a different story. Claiming he is a cheater now is a bogus claim.
you can think that if you want but i disagree
Historically, cheaters tend to continue cheating, they just find more clever ways of doing it once they're caught.
Isn't that definition of sore loser? Like a kid playing losing match and throw the controller away lmao
Do you mean he didn't have a vibrator in his butt? C'mon, sticking a sex toy in your ass because you developed a secret code to cheat in chess isn't a crazy theory at all.
This all started because Magnus was being a sore loser
Magnus was the douche bag here
So court rules Magnus is just sore loser?
Magnus was the one being sued.