Everything That You Need To Know About Chess Cheaters

@i776 maybe not if they admit and apologize.

If they stubbornly deny despite 100% proof, then sure.

@AlwaysShortOnTime27 said in #19:

This.

I strongly believe, that lying, cheating and doing all kinds of things, that are considered morally wrong are preconditions for every mature human being, to develop their conscience.

Hell, I don't remember the age, but I stole from my Mom's purse at one point (must've been around 12) and I even cheated in rated chess-games on lichess- or chess.com (I don't even remember, which), as an adult, when (after years of abstinence from the game), I discovered there are chess engines, running on my laptop, that could beat grandmasters and I also discovered there exists a thriving chess-internet-world (which all didn't exist, when I was a youngster).
An account of mine got banned for it, and I'm thankful for that experience, because it helped me understand and cherish the world of online-chess, as it exists today.

None of this (stealing or cheating) led me into a criminal career as a bank-robber or a repeated cheater and I believe it is the post-processing of such experiences, which leads to more criminally-inclined vs. responsible lifes. Hans' passionate and disclosive responses don't make me suspicious of him, but that, ofc, is just my personal take on things.

I don't know (and I don't feel like I have the knowledge to judge), whether or not Hans Niemann cheated in that Cup.

But one thing I do know: All the insinnuations, even using evidence of "fake accents", behavior & sub-par analysis-skills, in interviews directly following a game with a stockfish-equipped and prepared interviewer, directly after the game, as well as past cheating in non-critical situations (non-tourney-games with prize money), which he admitted to, openly, as a kid and a teenager, already, are no "evidence" to be taken seriously and can be explained easily by common traits, that every experienced human should be able to relate to.

I wish the organizers of that tourney would either open up, explicitly, what (if any) reasons for MC's drop-out were given, or would protect their participants more, from such devastating accusations (which, if true, would also partly be their responsibility, to prevent).

I also wish, that "chess" as a social construct would have (and listen to) some elders (like Kasparov), who know this world with all its complications, and the life of chess-players, in general - on the loosing and the winning end of matches and psychological warfare and who are mostly beyond the point of being personally involved with consequences, of any outcome of this drama.

This, too.
Here's an idea, let's stop attacking a 2688 rated, 19 year old grandmaster for winning a beautiful game vs the world champion!!!
And let's stop calling him a "Cheater" for something that happened when he was 12!

can't people play in faraday cages with closed walls? or better yet, even if OTB, players moves gets displayed on some digital sreen and each player has to move own physical board accordingly, but player have no direct eye contact with other humans while playing (i mean all the spectators and such)...

or let people have marathon toward full mixing, over many games, not necessarily in matches but in a non-tiered pool... and after so many game, one would stop playing. and everybody waits until all players have played same amount of random paired games. and the best accumulated scores or event performance, second one, and third one get a podium, and all the non-chess gizmos that are usually going with the confetties. make tournament less tiered and more like online chess, where mixing is stronger all the time (my understanding).. as long as tournaments are negligeable protion (i mean tiered events).

diluting the pressure on single game.. with tier it is both the player and the games that have increased pressure to be seen performing in an all or none fashion.. heavy damocles, or pressure to cheat if unsure of constant performance (with age too), or with the limited social perspective of a teenager, all sort of psychological trajectories likely to be sucked in that funnel, to "fame" or prize money, or making a living? Maybe the problem is people expectation out of tournaments.... as if chess was a well oiled performance discipline, like throwing a javelot... No wonder people also complain about conservative play in high levels.. for people being too afraid to risk losing in such high pressure few games, small mixing, are rarefied competitors (tier, toward unique winner). Chess is still about exploring, and winning while doing it.. not a done sport.... so perhaps revisiting what winning many games means should be revisited.. Are there not mental blocks in that whole mess...

i only see online offering that physical possibility, no need for everybody to be physically in the same place.... Which i understand as the reason for limited pool events.

The assumption that anonymity creates increased cheating psychological temptation, might need to be documented in the context of online non-tiered chess strength measure system, with big enough pools. The cheater needs the punctual attention, might be another assumption to consider... take off the fame shining and reward sustained quality, make the punctual stuff be on top of the sustained experience..

My points may not be practical or even making sense in the end.. I am just trying to open some conceptual doors...... (well i think , there is not enough global perspective thinking and too much let's keep doing what we have been doing for ages... that's what makes sense, because that's what we've been doing for ages, it ought to be the best.... and the cheaters are just modern witches, that have only their human nature to blame, not the vaccum cleaner, or glory aspirator, or prize money, or singling out machine, bringing them to get rewarded for cheating.

I don't know what i am talking about, of course. looking from outside has is perks.

Honestly, without the accuser and accused asking me to mediate, all I can offer is software and criticism...

So I guess I'll start work on "inquisitor.py" which the general public can use to determine how much public evidence Chess.com game records contain to suggest that a Chess.com player may be cheating. Science, including statistics, is best conducted in public trust.

all is flawed from the start without open source and open data policy. All sort of influencing, and crowd manipulation can occur.
Hard to tell the motivations, and the degree of retort recursive thinking, and moral attributions...

swampy rational grounds, makes for lots of pathos expenditure.. I agree that previous post might be putting finger on something: shaky fact verification power foundations.

Carlsen effectively lost the game at move 13, Rfd1. He should have played bishop takes knight and had an even game. After his move 13 blunder, both players made good moves, with Hans getting a slight edge. Most of his next 14 moves were forced responses with Carlsen doing just one weak move in that series which is what slightly improved Hans’s position. Then Carlsen on move 28 blunders badly, and follows up with 3 more blunders in a row. Let me say that again: a world champion makes 4, I repeat 4, blunders in a row? Moves 28, 29, 30, and 31.

So, one must ask, why did Carlsen play so badly? And why did he withdraw? If he thought Hans was cheating he should have voiced his concern to the tournament directors. Perhaps he did and it has not been published because the directors did not agree with him. Or perhaps he withdrew because he recognized he was going to continue playing badly and did not want to lose more games. He needs to step up and say why he withdrew.

OTB chess is different from online chess. I accept that Hans as a 12 year old cheated online. I suspect many 12 year olds have done so. Chess.com now banning Hans due to cheating is most likely due to his triggering chess.com’s cheat detection system in his recent adult play on chess.com. They have offered to allow him to appeal. Let’s wait and see what he does. Why chess.com banned him at this time instead of earlier can be because of many reasons. The most likely reason is because chess.com finally concluded they were right that he is cheating online after due diligence review and had no reason to delay the ban

Hans will have to appeal chess.com’s decision and if they reject his appeal either accept it is not worth pursuing or take legal action.

Lastly, many say his OTB rating increase is proof of cheating because only a few other players in history have had phenomenal improvement. All any statistician can tell you is that his performance and that of the others with great improvement are outliers. And as conditions for each player’s grow is different, in reality the data can’t be combined and used for any meaningful conclusions. What would Bobby Fischer’s improvement have been if he had access to online play, computer analysis and Covid restrictions? I suspect he would have left Hans’s increase in the dust.

If Hans has found a way to consistently cheat in OTB tournaments, he will either someday get caught or actions to prevent whatever cheating he may be doing will stop his winnings and his rating will crash. If he continues to win, then good for him. And if he wants to make a point to all that he doesn’t cheat and mock his accusers, he should play in a Speedo swimsuit and wear horse blinders. And win.

I conclude we should reserve judgment on his OTB performance, wait to see how his chess.com banning plays out, and see if Carlsen explains his play and reason for his withdrawal.

I know someone who created a seperate anonymous account back in the day and used an aggressive chess program on people. He just wanted to see how well it worked on people of different ratings. Kind of like people creating fake profiles on Tinder just to see how many matches they would get. His was caught and shut down. I think it climbed as high as 1900 in one day before getting caught.

Who is Hans?