For those interested, there’s also some info and discussion in this thread:
Since that is my post I just want to make it clear that, even as a Norwegian, I don’t really care what Magnus Carlsen gets up to.
My bad. I meant to link to the thread, and not your post. Not sure what happened.
I’d think live, over-the-board cheating could be reduced to close to zero if the players were escorted to and into the bathroom (or anywhere) by an official. If the player needs to use a stall, the stall would be randomly chosen by the official and checked before and after the player did his business. This along with pre-game sensitive electronic scans and strip searches should make live cheating all but impossible.
If cheating is suspected in a game (and the suspicion is lodged by the opponent immediately after the game) a post-game cavity search should also be required (for both players to reduce frivolous accusations).
There is still the problem of a player receiving pre-game analysis of an opponent’s studied moves through nefarious means and that should be better addressed, too. But that crime isn’t as damaging as using an engine during a live game.
I hope Hans Niemann is innocent and is found so. At this level of GM play, cheating is a significant taint on the game.
Nah, this wouldn’t really work. We know because they’ve already implemented bathroom restrictions and players still get caught trying by officials. Note those are only the ones who get caught - there are almost certainly players who don’t.
The time delay on broadcasts is a pretty good idea, though. Cheating in chess is nothing new. And workable anti-cheating measures have been bandied about for decades now.
Yes, time delay should be standard practice. But, I’m scratching my head wondering how a player could receive computer assistence if not by faulty pre-game scanning for devices or leaving a player unmonitored during a game?
I was at that game-we took a party bus there and back as part of a friend’s nephew’s bachelor party day. Losing to Appalachian State really put a damper on things. Maybe it was a harbinger of his upcoming marriage, which only lasted a couple years.
Well, that’s the thing. At the end of the day, these are human beings and competitive chess, while somewhat high profile, is nothing like securing a President or Pope. And this tournament wasn’t exactly a World Championship or something.
Strip and cavity searches? Personal escorts? For a random tournament? There are dozens of these around the world every year. And chess isn’t exactly a big money activity where organizers can really afford that sort of thing.
If each of these matches were million dollar affairs, perhaps. This one had a total (not grand prize, but total) prize pool of $350,000. At that, it’s one of the bigger events. It’s just not realistic to be able to implement those sorts of measures on a budget. They do their best, and that’s why relatively cheap measures (like time delay broadcasts) are favored - they are comparatively inexpensive to do. At the end of the day, no measure is totally foolproof but some definitely give more bang for the buck.
Apparently Carlsen “played” Niemann today in the Champion Chess tour, but resigned after one move. The tournament was online only and I’m only finding reporting from Norwegian News, who apparently also were the only ones interested ahead of time.
Yeah, it’s all over Twitter because it was being live streamed and obviously closely watched. It’s a very awkward video.
I was just about to post this. Saw it on a Youtube video that showed up in my recommendations. Damn, that was quick.
This whole drama is just so … odd.
Just checked r/chess on Reddit, and the thread there’s just blown up to 2k posts already, with most people getting their popcorn, and nobody expecting this to have happened today. This is some elite tier drama here. Has Magnus just completely cracked? Does he know something very few other people do and just isn’t talking? The drama is somewhat fun for chess, but Magnus is coming off as a bit of a sore loser to most at this point, I think. He’s got an interesting personality and can come off as grumpy at times, but this type of behavior is pretty much unprecedented from him. What in blazes is going on? He’s truly in “I don’t give a fuck” mode.
I think he’s a) a bit full of himself in general, b) a bit over chess after 16 years in the top 100 in the world and 11 years with the top FIDE ranking.
It looks to me like he genuinely believes Niemann is still the cheater he has admitted to being and just can’t be bothered to play nice and wait for Niemann to get caught.
He does certainly seem a bit bored and restless. I’ve always enjoyed him – he’s fun, a little bit cocky, but doesn’t seem to be someone as extreme as Nakamura, so as to grate on my nerves. I don’t know if I’ve ever really seen him angry at another player like this – angry at himself and his play? Yes. This seems out-of-character for him, but I can see his rabble-rousing side wanting to come out.
Even if he’s right that Niemann cheated in the Sinquefield Cup, all of this could have been handled in a more mature fashion, but Magnus seems to believe to his core something fishy is going on and literally does not care about appearing petulant (and putting a 19-year-old’s career and psychological health possibly in peril.) I wonder what, if anything, the next few weeks bring. (I didn’t think things were going to get any crazier, but they did today, so who knows.)
His taint did turn out to be significant, allegedly.
I believe it showed up on a Twitch stream GM Eric Hansen, aka “chessbrah”, had during the first kerfuffle. Someone in chat mentioned anal beads as a possible way someone could pull off over-the-board cheating, and he ran with it during the stream:
So the anal beads is theoretically possible but what is the more likely way that he cheated assuming that there was cheating?
I’m not sure anybody is really taking the anal beads stuff seriously, but who knows. As for likely ways, I haven’t heard of any serious theories being floated. I’ve been reading r/chess and watching the Youtube videos from the usual suspects (Gotham Chess, Eric Rosen, Hikaru, Danya, etc.) and I haven’t heard anyone really speculate in this tournament what could have happened in terms of feeding moves to Hans.
One thing that was thrown out there early was that Hans could have gotten access to Magnus’s opening prep somehow (some folks suggested someone in his camp tipped off Hans with his prep.) So perhaps not the direct type of cheating we are thinking of here, where someone is feeding a few moves here and there to give Hans the advantage.
What I have heard repeatedly is that at this level, nobody would cheat by playing all engine moves (too obvious), but would only need about three to five engine moves during the game to have a clear advantage over another grandmaster.
I think by far the most likely explanation is that Magnus thinks Hans has been cheating, and Magnus has just decided not to play him. There are rules preventing players from making public cheating allegations, so that would explain why Magnus hasn’t said anything specific.
Ben Finegold talks about it some in this video from just after the tournament ended.
Carlsen was interviewed today, and while he said he couldn’t address the topic specifically, he did say "I have to say, I am very impressed by Niemann’s play and I think his mentor Maxim Dlugy must have been doing a great job.”
Dlugy was Niemann’s trainer at one point, but perhaps more importantly, has also had an account banned from chess.com for cheating. [also, weirdly and tangentially, Dlugy once caught/outed a cheater in live play who used a device in his shoe]