Chess

Captain Suave · Oct 5, 2022

So the report from Chess.com is released:

Hans Niemann Report

We appreciate your patience over the last several weeks as we have been working on a comprehensive report on Hans Niemann and the events following Magnus’ resignation in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. We know many of you have been eager to hear from Chess.com, and while there is more we want to...

www.chess.com

The fucking baffling part to me is that Chess.com clearly offered Hans a way out if he would just fess up, admit what he'd done, and move forward. Really classy move on their part. But amazingly, given that this is all now public it seems Hans chose to decline.

"I’m going to bring my letter to a close with an offer to have a call. If you are willing to correct the false statements you made about having never cheated when it mattered (now that you have said these untruths publicly), acknowledge the full breadth of the above violations, and cooperate with us to compete under strict Fair Play measures, Chess.com would be happy to consider bringing you back to our events. In fact, I think it would be a wonderful redemption story for the full truth to come out, for the chess world to see this and acknowledge your talent regardless of your past, and give the community what they deserve: The truth."

Captain Suave · Oct 5, 2022

These were interesting as well. The poster did a analysis of 400,000 positions by elite players and calculated their accuracy relative to Stockfish 15 along with their move consistency. The tldr is that there is a very clear path that players take as they grow, with accuracy and consistency improving with rating, and those metrics being shared by other competitors at the same rank. Hans, however, experienced in 2018 (2300 ELO) a massive jump in accuracy and consistency but then failed to improve as a player as his rating climbed to 2700. He was winning games despite having significantly lower and noisier performance than his peers. Very odd indeed.

The statistical analysis was less interesting, as the guy obviously isn't a statistician, abused some concepts of correlation, and didn't do any actual hypothesis testing or provide error information.

Cutlery · Oct 5, 2022

Captain Suave said:
So the report from Chess.com is released:

Hans Niemann Report

We appreciate your patience over the last several weeks as we have been working on a comprehensive report on Hans Niemann and the events following Magnus’ resignation in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. We know many of you have been eager to hear from Chess.com, and while there is more we want to...

www.chess.com

The fucking baffling part to me is that Chess.com clearly offered Hans a way out if he would just fess up, admit what he'd done, and move forward. Really classy move on their part. But amazingly, given that this is all now public it seems Hans chose to decline.

"I’m going to bring my letter to a close with an offer to have a call. If you are willing to correct the false statements you made about having never cheated when it mattered (now that you have said these untruths publicly), acknowledge the full breadth of the above violations, and cooperate with us to compete under strict Fair Play measures, Chess.com would be happy to consider bringing you back to our events. In fact, I think it would be a wonderful redemption story for the full truth to come out, for the chess world to see this and acknowledge your talent regardless of your past, and give the community what they deserve: The truth."

Hes 19. He lacks the wisdom to understand what the correct thing to do is. He's gonna keep doubling down on stupid shit because that's what you do when you're a dumb fuck 19 year old.

Gankak · Oct 5, 2022

Cutlery said:
Hes 19. He lacks the wisdom to understand what the correct thing to do is. He's gonna keep doubling down on stupid shit because that's what you do when you're a dumb fuck 19 year old.

Especially when his coach is a cheater as well

Gavinmad · Oct 6, 2022

James Stanley - Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes

incoherency.co.uk

Abigailicious · Oct 7, 2022

I don't know much about chess, except I play okay for someone who doesn't play. I do know this, this guy cheated. He's 19, he didn't defeat the world champion by blind luck or his own acumen. He's admitted to cheating as far back as age 12, he is accused of cheating over 100 times by analysts.

The one time in my professional career we had a little office chess tournament going, the asshole in the group cheated. So yeah, people cheat.

He cheated.

Hateyou · Oct 19, 2022

I wish this had sound. Why’d he take his king and break the cross off? Lol

Grabbit Allworth · Oct 19, 2022

I know only the absolute basics about Chess and I've probably played 2 or 3 complete games in my entire life. That said, I have a question.

At this point, isn't Chess a 'solved' game where there is always a 'correct' move/counter-move?

Cutlery · Oct 19, 2022

Grabbit Allworth said:
I know only the absolute basics about Chess and I've probably played 2 or 3 complete games in my entire life. That said, I have a question.

At this point, isn't Chess a 'solved' game where there is always a 'correct' move/counter-move?

Yes, and it's fucking annoying.

I haven't played in 25 years, and the game is so much different now. Now it's all computer engine driven. When you play online, you can fucking tell when someone's loading up an engine. You put them in a bad position and all of a sudden they take an extra minute to move and do some off the wall bullshit that only makes a difference 8 turns later.

At rating 1300. Yeah, naw dawg, dont believe that shit for a minute.

The entire meta of the game now is to do it fast so that you can prove you're not using a fucking engine to play

Gavinmad · Oct 19, 2022

Individual board states can become solvable, Chess is not a solved game.

Gankak · Oct 19, 2022

Grabbit Allworth said:
At this point, isn't Chess a 'solved' game where there is always a 'correct' move/counter-move?

No it is not solved Hikaru was on Lex Friedman's podcast 2 days ago and was asked that very question and said no. Yes engines are used at the highest level for position evaluations but its far from being solved.

Captain Suave · Oct 19, 2022

Grabbit Allworth said:
At this point, isn't Chess a 'solved' game where there is always a 'correct' move/counter-move?

It's believed to be inherently a drawn game with perfect play, but given the staggering number of possible positions we don't have the computing power to truly reduce it to a "if this move then that move" decision tree. Even the engines that can look 30-40 moves deep don't see everything (of course they utterly destroy any human player by insurmountable margins).

Cutlery said:
you can fucking tell when someone's loading up an engine

This is why I basically only play games with people I know.

Cutlery said:
The entire meta of the game now is to do it fast so that you can prove you're not using a fucking engine to play

The fast time controls are legit more fun to play and watch because there's so much more instinct and pattern matching involved. I'd like to see more traction for some of the randomized variants, too (Fisher/960).

The latest meme of "duck chess" is hilarious. I tried it OTB with my son and it's quite fun.

Cutlery · Oct 19, 2022

Last guy i played on Chess.com....96.7% accuracy. Suuuuuure.

I find Lichess to actually be a better site. I suspect Hikaru drives too many shitbags to chess.com.

Djay · Oct 19, 2022

I legitimately had a game a week or two ago that was somewhere around 94-96%. It was against a bot...trying to see if I can find it, but it looks like chess.com only archives human games.
Not sure my point...it can happen like monkeys at a typewriter writing Shakespeare, but whether it's legitimate or not it will be suspicious now.

I've never been a fan of speed chess...because I always overanalyzed things, but I did like the randomized variants since I also didn't like to memorize openings. Not sure if those variants help with the computer issues, though.

Chris · Oct 20, 2022

Cutlery said:
Last guy i played on Chess.com....96.7% accuracy. Suuuuuure.

I find Lichess to actually be a better site. I suspect Hikaru drives too many shitbags to chess.com.

Problem for me is that I'm 1200-1300 on chess.com and 1500-1600 on lichess.

Chess.com games seem much more difficult to me, though maybe that's cheaters.

Gankak · Oct 20, 2022

Im ~1700 on Chess.com and haven't had run ins with the number of cheaters you guys claim. Occasionally I get an email from them saying they gave me some ratings points cause they found one of my opponents used a computer but Ive not had that big an issue

Cutlery · Oct 20, 2022

Chris said:
Problem for me is that I'm 1200-1300 on chess.com and 1500-1600 on lichess.

Chess.com games seem much more difficult to me, though maybe that's cheaters.

I am also about 400 rating higher on Lichess. And I am baffled as fuck about it.

Captain Suave · Oct 20, 2022

Cutlery said:
I am also about 400 rating higher on Lichess. And I am baffled as fuck about it.

Lichess overall has higher ratings by several hundred points. It's just a symptom of their player population dynamics and implementation of ELO. Both Lichess and Chess.com will give ratings somewhat higher than you'd get OTB.

Cutlery · Oct 20, 2022

Captain Suave said:
Lichess overall has higher ratings by several hundred points. It's just a symptom of their player population dynamics and implementation of ELO. Both Lichess and Chess.com will give ratings somewhat higher than you'd get OTB.

I figured that was probably the case with 10x more players on chess.com, I just didn't think it would be quite so drastic.

Captain Suave · Oct 20, 2022

LOOOOOOL

Hans Niemann Files $100 Million Lawsuit Against Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com Over Cheating Allegations

The legal action fires back against allegations that Niemann is a cheater and accuses chess power players of colluding against the American grandmaster.

www.wsj.com

Edit: Non-paywall link.

Chess cheating row: Hans Niemann sues accusers Magnus Carlsen and Chess.com for libel

Hans Niemann is suing grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and others after they accused him of cheating.

www.bbc.com

I expect Hans to lose this badly, stupid damage requests aside. You can't get pissed at being called a cheater when you're in the act of lying about how much you cheated.

Chess

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Potato del Grande

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Kill All the White People

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