Chess Scandal
Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2022 10:26 am
Has anyone been following this recent chess scandal, where one player has been, rightly or wrongly, suspected of cheating? And now he is suing another player and chess.com for defamation?
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/11304423 ... defamation
The story is that Hans admits to cheating online on a few occasions when he was 12 and 16. He's now 19 and claims he has never cheated since then or in an over-the-board tournament as opposed to online. The cheating generally means getting recommendations from the computer about which move is optimal. Sometimes good chess players are already following those recommendations, but sometimes they deviate, or there are options, or humans think about the situation differently than the computer for other reasons (e.g. an intimidating move is chosen because you know the opponent is under time pressure and you're sending a message).
However, he was suspected of unfair play in the last few months by the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, and the chess.com people (who had sanctioned him), and others who have performed various analyses of uncertain import. The chess.com people say he has cheated more in the past than he admitted to, which is a big strike against him because if you want to be believed today, you should be fully forthcoming about your past sins. Apparently he has not been - though maybe that's one of the items disputed in the lawsuit.
The other complaint his defenders will make (and that the lawsuit makes) is that Carlsen was just angry and saving face with these claims after Niemann beat him. In their next match, Carlsen quit after making only one move, causing a great scandal in the chess world! Did he somehow know Niemann was cheating, was he just mad, or what? However, the claim that Magnus is a sore loser makes no sense because he loses all the time to brilliant younger teenage players despite overall remaining dominant at the game, and he is always gracious and supportive of these newcomers. So it makes no sense to say he reacts badly to losses - nobody can challenge his GOAT status at present, certainly not Hans, who is top ten in the US but far behind many others worldwide who are a greater threat (and younger, with more room to develop). Maybe Magnus dislikes Hans personally, so reacted worse to losing to him? Who knows.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, a fascinating issue is how being trained by computers that are better at chess will affect the development of human players. Are we now seeing this with young people who have spent several years learning by looking at what the computer recommends? Or have new technologies for cheating been created that permit people to take a few cues from the computer? If you could know the computer's recommendation in just 2 or 3 places, combined with your own superior chess skill, it might be enough to profoundly affect the outcomes.
Hans is also a very odd duck, but interesting. Supposedly he was born in the US and lived most of his life here, but has lived a year or two overseas - it's not clear why he is said to have a Hawaiian family background as well. Yet if you listen to him speak, it appears that he speaks with wildly different and pronounced accents at different times - sometimes he seems to be affecting a European accent and other times it's impossible to say what accent it is, except that it's not standard "grew up in California and New York" speech. He sulks and scowls all the time but is also naturally unusual-looking, so maybe that's just his face in the normal state? Most other chess players at his level seem to dislike him but he has friends and defenders as well, so it's not clear how that shakes out. The chess players are weird and the chess world is weird, so who can really understand it? The lawsuit seems pretty crazy but the accusations against him are confusing and are indeed unfairly damaging if untrue. Can they really know he has cheated? Lots of people are disputing the methods they would even use to figure this out. Without obvious evidence like "we find a radio chip in your ear", it's hard to say.
The other TRULY weird thing about this situation is that Hans, despite being accused of cheating, is BY FAR the most popular player in the US with all these seemingly deranged online followers, even though other players are obviously better than him and also charismatic, chatty, etc. I can see why some of those guys aren't developing an online following because they're very quiet and unglamorous, but Hans is not special among them apart from the cheating accusations and his greater quantity of hair. Maybe they really like his hair? It's a mystery. He's popular with online jabberers in the same way that you see people complaining about the Woke kids and Vaccine dangers and Ukraine being the actual nazis. What does that mean? Is the same group of idiots also the group of Niemann fans? Or are they a different group, dumb in their own unique way? Why are they so outnumbering normal chess fans - like people who follow chess and are good at it tend not to be Niemann fans, but jokers who know less about chess seem to love him. It's almost like shitty people are specially attracted to and supportive of him precisely BECAUSE he was accused of cheating. Like the liars want to stick with someone they think is one of them? Why? I want to know!
Anyway, now that I've gone down this rabbithole my phone wants to show me nothing else, so presumably, I'll find out eventually.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/11304423 ... defamation
The story is that Hans admits to cheating online on a few occasions when he was 12 and 16. He's now 19 and claims he has never cheated since then or in an over-the-board tournament as opposed to online. The cheating generally means getting recommendations from the computer about which move is optimal. Sometimes good chess players are already following those recommendations, but sometimes they deviate, or there are options, or humans think about the situation differently than the computer for other reasons (e.g. an intimidating move is chosen because you know the opponent is under time pressure and you're sending a message).
However, he was suspected of unfair play in the last few months by the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, and the chess.com people (who had sanctioned him), and others who have performed various analyses of uncertain import. The chess.com people say he has cheated more in the past than he admitted to, which is a big strike against him because if you want to be believed today, you should be fully forthcoming about your past sins. Apparently he has not been - though maybe that's one of the items disputed in the lawsuit.
The other complaint his defenders will make (and that the lawsuit makes) is that Carlsen was just angry and saving face with these claims after Niemann beat him. In their next match, Carlsen quit after making only one move, causing a great scandal in the chess world! Did he somehow know Niemann was cheating, was he just mad, or what? However, the claim that Magnus is a sore loser makes no sense because he loses all the time to brilliant younger teenage players despite overall remaining dominant at the game, and he is always gracious and supportive of these newcomers. So it makes no sense to say he reacts badly to losses - nobody can challenge his GOAT status at present, certainly not Hans, who is top ten in the US but far behind many others worldwide who are a greater threat (and younger, with more room to develop). Maybe Magnus dislikes Hans personally, so reacted worse to losing to him? Who knows.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, a fascinating issue is how being trained by computers that are better at chess will affect the development of human players. Are we now seeing this with young people who have spent several years learning by looking at what the computer recommends? Or have new technologies for cheating been created that permit people to take a few cues from the computer? If you could know the computer's recommendation in just 2 or 3 places, combined with your own superior chess skill, it might be enough to profoundly affect the outcomes.
Hans is also a very odd duck, but interesting. Supposedly he was born in the US and lived most of his life here, but has lived a year or two overseas - it's not clear why he is said to have a Hawaiian family background as well. Yet if you listen to him speak, it appears that he speaks with wildly different and pronounced accents at different times - sometimes he seems to be affecting a European accent and other times it's impossible to say what accent it is, except that it's not standard "grew up in California and New York" speech. He sulks and scowls all the time but is also naturally unusual-looking, so maybe that's just his face in the normal state? Most other chess players at his level seem to dislike him but he has friends and defenders as well, so it's not clear how that shakes out. The chess players are weird and the chess world is weird, so who can really understand it? The lawsuit seems pretty crazy but the accusations against him are confusing and are indeed unfairly damaging if untrue. Can they really know he has cheated? Lots of people are disputing the methods they would even use to figure this out. Without obvious evidence like "we find a radio chip in your ear", it's hard to say.
The other TRULY weird thing about this situation is that Hans, despite being accused of cheating, is BY FAR the most popular player in the US with all these seemingly deranged online followers, even though other players are obviously better than him and also charismatic, chatty, etc. I can see why some of those guys aren't developing an online following because they're very quiet and unglamorous, but Hans is not special among them apart from the cheating accusations and his greater quantity of hair. Maybe they really like his hair? It's a mystery. He's popular with online jabberers in the same way that you see people complaining about the Woke kids and Vaccine dangers and Ukraine being the actual nazis. What does that mean? Is the same group of idiots also the group of Niemann fans? Or are they a different group, dumb in their own unique way? Why are they so outnumbering normal chess fans - like people who follow chess and are good at it tend not to be Niemann fans, but jokers who know less about chess seem to love him. It's almost like shitty people are specially attracted to and supportive of him precisely BECAUSE he was accused of cheating. Like the liars want to stick with someone they think is one of them? Why? I want to know!
Anyway, now that I've gone down this rabbithole my phone wants to show me nothing else, so presumably, I'll find out eventually.