Accusations of cheating in the highest tournament levels of chess
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Askthepizzaguy
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"Civ speaks for itself"
FriendlyFire
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Watches as Mech Infantry is defeat by a Phalanx
Narz
keeping it real
Ben claims if he played Magnus 50 times he might win 2 & lose 48. But in reality he would lose 50 of 50, if he played him 500 games he'd lose 500. The gap between Ben & Magnus is wider than the gap between myself & Ben.
Many people cheat online & many cheat OTB, they're just gonna be a lot more careful IRL with money @ stake. And it's a lot more work to cheat IRL.
To speculate someone has cheated who's been caught multiple times cheating (including online where money was on the line) is only logical. To say past actions are irrelevant is just goofy.
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Askthepizzaguy
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Listen, mafia is an inherently probabilistic game.
(Oh, Civ IV is actually probabilistic as well... I GUESS.)
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
Hans average Chess rating is around 2500
Compared with Magnus Chess rating around 2850
Someone said It is like an average GM beating the World champion and greatest chess player of all time.
It probably would have been better for Magnus to keep quiet and notify the organizers to collect evidence and figure out how Hans was cheating.
The inconsistency of Hans playing is hugely suspect and in order to maintain hes high standing he would have had to continue to cheat, sooner or late people will figure it out.
As long as the hardware is controlled by the potential cheater I am not sure there is anything you can do. Webcams and microphones can be spoofed, I do not know how the "click off window" works but I would be surprised it could not be got round with some form of virtualization.
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Moriarte
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I think it would be near impossible to catch someone who cheats in a way you propose. More so at lower levels, such as my 1500-1600 rapid, where 8-12 moves of book is usually way above most players’ pay grade. At GM level, the book, long as it can be, (15-30 moves sometimes) is often a prelude to rich and uncertain middle game positions.
Eventually, a book cheater will memorise his cheats and.. stop being a cheater?
Provided he has good memory, which he would, being a chess player. For a chess player, memorising two-three A4 pages of text should be a matter of time, especially given how they constantly strengthen memories by replaying them. But book is just 1/3 of the story. There’s vast endgame field, which becomes important the higher you go up the rating ladder. And a vast potential for middle game tactics.I remember watching GM Sjugirov’s stream. So, someone shoots a question, in the stream chat: “which openings do you prefer?”. He immediately shoots back: “good ones”. I feel that’s more than just a joke when it comes to GM chess. These guys generally have opening preparation solved. And if you surprise them, well, you just have to prove your win through the mid/end game, which can be very difficult if all you have is opening traps.
I doubt book cheating alone will take one much higher than 1300. It would need to be increasingly, prohibitively deep, approaching 2000, in order to avoid middle game/end game specifics.
Moriarte
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Not the image one would want to associate with chess
It’s not that bad
. Now, if there were gloves involved I’d say chess is in trouble…Speaking of Hans, he continues to play the role of chess villain, refusing to provide post game analysis with megalomaniac: “chess speaks for itself”. Such provocative behaviour is sure crafted to impress 12 y. olds and I’m sure it does that, but some others (like me) would be even more impressed if he dispelled the notion of not having understanding of chess appropriate to his current rating level. I’d like to like the guy, but between psychopathic outbursts and refusal to cooperate in a respectful way it’s hard to be sympathetic.
He did just win again against a good opponent, so maybe he doesn't have to say more - given he was full-body scannedIt’s not that bad
Speaking of Hans, he continues to play the role of chess villain, refusing to provide post game analysis with megalomaniac: “chess speaks for itself”. Such provocative behaviour is sure crafted to impress 12 y. olds and I’m sure it does that, but some others (like me) would be even more impressed if he dispelled the notion of not having understanding of chess appropriate to his current rating level. I’d like to like the guy, but between psychopathic outbursts and refusal to cooperate in a respectful way it’s hard to be sympathetic.
And he is 19, so in theory he might just be an edge-lord and enjoying this on some level.
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FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
It’s not that bad
Free colonoscopy for every chess player whats not to like ?
I am in no way anywhere good enough for competitive chess and never will be, but my sincere recommendation would be, if I were ever at risk of cheating in any profession, sports, or whatever, to not indulge my inner edgelord / jackass.
Askthepizzaguy
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It really depends on their other skill sets.
Ben did this long video on why people don't get better at chess, and one of the early points was when he was discussing with another GM and that GM was like, if you're not 2200, don't you just need to do tactical puzzles until you're 2200?
Opening theory irrelevant, pawn structure irrelevant, endgame technique irrelevant, everything except tactics irrelevant, because if you're under a certain ELO, the thing that makes the biggest difference in whether you win or lose is that you do or do not blunder pieces or blunder mate.
If you play terribly but your opponent drops a whole queen to a fork, with even basic skills you're now going to win that game. Especially if you don't blunder your own piece, because you know tactics.
He suggested a Magnus Carlsen who was as good as Magnus Carlsen at literally everything, but he blunders a piece every game.
Now Magnus is a 1200 strength player. He's great at everything but he loses to literally anyone who doesn't blunder a piece.
Which is why, if you don't know tactics, there's only so strong you can really get. Ben was a chess coach, and all the other lessons he taught were irrelevant because the results of every game was, student blundered a piece, and that made all the difference.
If you can get through every game without making a one move tactical blunder, and can spot when your opponents do make a tactical blunder, now it makes any sense at all to develop any of your other skills, opening theory, checkmating patterns, pawn structure, general strategy, and so forth.
Now the outcome of games will be determined based on those skills, rather than pieces being dropped.
Until both players are not blundering pieces or pawns every game, all other skills irrelevant.
For comparison, it would be like if TheMeInTeam was as good as he is at Civ IV but he also just left his cities undefended on the border of Montezuma who was plotting war.
Then I'd be better than TMIT. But only in that specific scenario, never any other scenario! XD
The main thing beginners and intermediate chess players need to have as a skill is spotting blunders before they happen, and taking advantage of opposing tactical blunders.
All other skill sets are nice, but you can't really advance and get stronger if every game, you make a move that puts your opponent at plus 5, literally always winning if they don't blunder the game back to you.
It's definitely an oversimplification, but it's a very important and useful oversimplification because it does illustrate how important it is to not blunder away pieces and pawns or blunder mate.
Just like it is important not to let Monty walk in and take half of your empire while you're off doing other things in Civ. Unless you know that that's a threat and stop it, you can't get better.
Know how to make wonders faster irrelevant, know how to pop important techs faster irrelevant, good worker micro irrelevant, Monty kills you, you lose.
Askthepizzaguy
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Agadmator made a far better video of the same game, but this has a funnier comment:
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Askthepizzaguy
Know the Dark Side
Not mentioned in the video or in my previous spiel that I want to add to, but king safety. That's often not a one move blunder.
Spoiler :
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TheMeInTeam
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you see kids, when i was your age, we didn't have this newfangled maasheen learning ai. we had to cheat the old fashioned way, and we *liked* it!TheMe was using a civengine, btw
should depend on the format. in faster time formats of online games, it might be reasonable to expect ben to hit ~4% winrate vs magnus for example. also note that even with a several hundred elo difference, there is still non-zero estimated winrate by elo.
i haven't played people massively above my chess rating, but i did beat a semi-pro in warcraft 3 back in the day. in normal games he'd massacre me and i had a terrible record against him, but i managed wins twice. the most memorable one was going kotg + hunt and correctly guessing creep route to all-in his army early (it was an unusual route to avoid this too haha), then immediately pressuring base so he couldn't macro out of it and the difference in micro capability was minimized (not many units on either side, and I had more). trash win, but it was a win vs someone who really would be likely to go on 20-50+ game wins streaks vs me in normal conditions. (fwiw, the other win was a tower rush before we knew each other well, which never worked vs him again lol).
i believe ben could pull something off similarly in blitz. magnus makes way fewer mistakes on average in fast time controls, in fact he and hikaru are some of the best in the world at it. but they do make mistakes, so if you spam games there will inevitably come a point where ben gets something in his ~top 5% of games and they make their bad blunder and lose. we don't observe this much in reality, as noted earlier many super gms avoid rated games generally because weaker players have a non-trivial likelihood to draw them and lower their rating points as a result of the draw. in fact, pressure against draw could make super gms press in what are otherwise very draw-like positions, making objectively worse moves to complicate/fish for opponent mistakes and losing as a result if their lower-rated opponent doesn't make them.
the main way they catch cheaters that go to this extent is if the moves are matching engines too frequently. though most cheaters are far less subtle than hans, so it's super obvious. it's not known to what extent people who are more cautious with cheating are caught, hopefully a large % still.
technically true, if he can memorize to that extent...not everybody can do it, and this would allow people without the ability to access the same capability without the combination of talent (for memory) and work (doing the memorization) required. it's an interesting grey area, but imo would typically be considered "cheating" in standard formats until such time as the moves can be called from memory.
yeah, as i mentioned in the post i talked about it, the advantage gets completely nullified vs skilled players.
there are a good number of possible openings that do not confer opponent an advantage >1 point of material per engine and are comparable enough that even top engines haven't yet fully "solved" them. i presume this is what gms would call "good openings", with choices that start handing winning chances to the opponent being increasingly bad.
yeah, as i think about it this will depend on two things:
- how good is the hypothetical book cheater at replicating book moves, right now?
- how good is the book cheater at other aspects of the game
either way though, if you wind up +3 or better out of the opening because opponent made a mistake in book sequence, the opponent must then play significantly better (or you blunder) to compensate. otherwise book cheater can (relatively brainlessly) trade down into an endgame while retaining a big advantage and win more often on average than otherwise.
even gms make tactical blunders, including 1 movers! it's just far, far more rare than lower rated players.
my point here is that book theory necessarily involves some tactical threats. thus somebody with less skill can get a material lead by cheating in this way pretty often at low-mid level elo, by letting the book pick up tactical patterns they can't see themselves. i'm also assuming the cheater isn't completely braindead, and has at least some level of tactical knowledge, and it's just behind that of his opponents.
obviously, this won't help the cheater improve much. but if the cheater were trying to improve as a player, cheating wouldn't be the choice anyway. the whole point of cheating in chess is to inflate rating/perform at a level that skill otherwise can't attain.
one thing about tactical puzzles: it tends to be the case that *because* you are presented the puzzle, you know a winning solution is there. in real games, you don't know this (though some alleged forms of cheating are not specific moves, but 1 bit of information conveying something like this). thus tactical puzzles are training pattern recognition. i wonder if that couldn't be organized more efficiently than chess.com does it (like chaining many different looks of the same tactical idea together and and then doing 100s of those).
For reference, I was referring to this bit in BJ's post:
The letter added that Niemann’s suspicious moves coincided with moments when he had opened up a different screen on his computer—implying that he was consulting a chess engine for the best move.
“We are prepared to present strong statistical evidence that confirm each of those cases above, as well as clear ‘toggling’ vs ‘non-toggling’ evidence, where you perform much better while toggling to a different screen during your moves,” Rensch wrote.
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