Anyone following the huge chess cheating controversy?

PurpleStorm said:
  • WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Chess Investigation Finds That U.S. Grandmaster ‘Likely Cheated’ More Than 100 Times
An internal report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal alleges a previously unknown pattern of likely widespread cheating by Hans Moke Niemann, the player whose September victory over Magnus Carlsen has rocked the chess world.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-cheating-hans-niemann-report-magnus-carlsen-11664911524
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Just watched Levy read and review the article (since most of us can't read it without a subscription). Pretty damning. Hopefully chess.com releases the data so it can be broken down.
 
rj144 said:
I HIGHLY doubt that.
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Just look it up bro


AlphaZero pretty much dominated Stockfish. IDK much about these kind of things but my sisters boyfriend (geek who owns a Big Data company with a like 40 employees) told me that AlphaZero was used for other games and crushed it too.

I think it has to do with having way more resources but what do I know.. I'm 1100 at chess.com


Edit: In 2017 AlphaZero went 28 wins, 72 draws and 0 loses vs Stockfish. Next year AlphaZero beat Stockfish 155 to 6 with 839 draws.
 
SalvadorAllende said:
Just look it up bro


AlphaZero pretty much dominated Stockfish. IDK much about these kind of things but my sisters boyfriend (geek who owns a Big Data company with a like 40 employees) told me that AlphaZero was used for other games and crushed it too.

I think it has to do with having way more resources but what do I know.. I'm 1100 at chess.com
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Stockfish 8 was back in 2017 my dude. LOL!

We're at Stockfish 15 in 2022.

Stockfish dominates in the Top Chess Engine Championships:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Chess_Engine_Championship

It's not even close...
 
SalvadorAllende said:
IDK man.. they need to do Alpha Zero vs Stockfish 15. I'm not sold.
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Leela Chess Zero is the dedicated chess engine & spiritual successor to Alpha Zero. TCEC results are solid but there is clearly one overall best engine over the years and that is Stockfish.
 
Read most of the report.

1. Hans lied about cheating on close 100+ online games that were played in 2020 ~ the year he was banned. Some of them were cash tournaments.

2. It appears that when chess.com confronted him about the cheating he admitted to 5 games or so (which chess.com did not dispute at the time). Maybe they had not found the other games or maybe chess.com wanted to hold onto the extra cheated games info to see if he would cheat again.

3. Hans cheated a few more times DURING his ban discussion with chess.com and a little after the ban. The ban didn't prevent him from getting a new account with a title but he wasn't allowed to play in cash prize tourneys and big online tourneys. Notably he cheated against 3 GMs:
Daniel Naroditsky - 28 July 2020
David Paravyan - 25 Jul 2020
Benjamin Bok - 9 and 11 Aug 2020
*The fact that he continued to cheat during/after the ban is quite ballsy and stupid. I'd love to see people do a deep dive into these games. Did he really cheat in these (meaning why only cheat in these 3 sessions and then stop)?

4. Curiously after the aforementioned cheating sessions Hans no longer cheated on chess.com. Chess.com has no additional games noted tagged as cheating. Maybe Hans did and they are holding onto that info for the future? I don't know.

5. 100% games - Chess.com analysis has determined that Hans has one of the lowest percentage of perfect games compared to other relatively similar strength players/opponents. Not a red flag.

6. Confirms everything else that we already knew. Over the board (OTB) chess ranking rise is meteoric and becoming a GM @ 17 (which is way older than most phenoms) are just weird. His physical response to beating Magnus was incredulously muted. Nothing conclusive on whether Hans cheated on OTB games.

Can't think of anything else.

I'll be tracking the 2022 US Championship (starting tomorrow). Hans needs to perform really well to validate his meteoric raise and prove to everyone he is no longer a cheater. He definitely cheated and is a confirmed liar now. I still do not understand why he would lie about the amount of games he cheated.
 
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IamStryker said:
https://sports.yahoo.com/chesss-lar...-100-games-after-investigation-205907511.html
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Thank you for informing us.
daf0daffdfa23cf9f4661c874d919c6d
 
SaiWa said:
.5. 100% games - Chess.com analysis has determined that Hans has one of the lowest percentage of perfect games compared to other relatively similar strength players/opponents. Not a red flag.
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I was told on chess.com that percentage means nothing and isn't counted toward anything

I asked if I am averaging 95% plus accuracy how come my win/loss ratio is dead even at 888 wins-888 losses 2 draws and lower ranked players are playing with 95% accuracy ratings. I asked why are there so many lower-ranked players using 100% accurate moves and they replied because the accuracy rating means nothing.
 
i watched an episode of Comedians in Cars getting Coffee with Kramer and he talked about a chess savant homeless person he played against who beat him twice in under 2 minutes each time.
 
Chess.com looks sketchy as hell. Why invite him back knowing he had cheated so many times including in money games?
 
PBAC said:
I was told on chess.com that percentage means nothing and isn't counted toward anything

I asked if I am averaging 95% plus accuracy how come my win/loss ratio is dead even at 888 wins-888 losses 2 draws and lower ranked players are playing with 95% accuracy ratings. I asked why are there so many lower-ranked players using 100% accurate moves and they replied because the accuracy rating means nothing.
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As Madmick stated the percentage doesn't mean that much but it's a good guide towards knowing how well you played compared to how the engine would have played.

The engine that chess.com uses to rate the players on their website is solid but far from the best and doesn't go that deep so it's not that accurate.

The pros use multiple engines and let it crunch for a while so it calculates at deeper levels for better accuracy. Using different engines will give you different percentage rating. The analysis they used to review Hans's games were with more powerful engines.

Please note that the % next to your rating in your chess.com stats is not the aggregated percentage on how well you played overall. It is a percentage of how high your ranking is compared to the population of chess players in that game format. For example I have a ranking of 1425 in daily chess with 96.6%. It means at 1425 my rank is higher than 96.6% of the players on chess.com playing daily chess. It has nothing to do with your accuracy rating.

And making a single or several 100% in a game is not uncommon. Like if you are in check and there is only a few moves to make, you will more than likely pick one of the top moves because that's all that's possible to make.
 
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Hans beat Christopher Woojin Yoo playing the black pieces for a good start in the 2022 U.S. Championship.

He was briefly in time trouble needing to make a few moves with 3-4 mins left and barely reached extra time.

He was invited to talk about the game and all he basically said that chess speak for itself and the game said it all. He refused to comment on the game. Short and brief. He's angry. Hoping he continues to win and add more fuel to this fire of a controversy.
 


After his hot start Hans struggled to keep up and fell behind. He was near dead last as of yesterday but bounced back with a win today.

His interview was pure gold, took a semi-shot at Christian (whether on purpose or not). He has no shot of winning the tourney but he can climb up and finish near the top. Seriously rooting for him. He’s refreshingly blunt and funny.
 
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Someone needs to give Magnus some steroids and see how that impacts him
 
Someone needs to give Magnus some steroids and see how that impacts him
 
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