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Classic Games (Games)

Chess.com Bans 19-Year-Old Accused of Cheating, But No Evidence He Cheated Against Magnus Carlsen (theguardian.com) 84

Posted by EditorDavid from the checking-mates dept.
"19-year-old chess grandmaster Hans Niemann was banned by massive online chess platform Chess.com," reports Motherboard, "just a few days after being accused of cheating in real life against five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen."

Chess.com said in a statement that "We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com." Niemann admitted to cheating on Chess.com in the past, but claimed that the two times he did were involving trivial, non-over-the-board games, and that he was only a child as he was 12 and 16 when it happened. "I just wanted to get higher-rated so I could play stronger players, so I cheated in random games on Chess.com," he said [in an online interview with St. Louis Chess Club].... " I have never cheated in an over-the-board game" [meaning a game that takes place on a real-world chess board]. Chess.com released its own statement Thursday countering his claims, which said: "At this time, we have reached out to Hans Niemann to explain our decision to privately remove him from Chess.com and our events. We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com...."

So far, there has not been any concrete evidence that points to Niemann cheating.... There are still many people who have been publicly supporting Niemann as the underdog. Russian chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, told TASS, "Of course we can't say with certainty that Niemann didn't cheat, but Carlsen surprisingly played the opening so badly with white that he automatically got into a worse position."
Chess.com's statement says they've "invited Hans to provide an explanation and response with the hope of finding a resolution where Hans can again participate on Chess.com."

The Guardian points out that Niemann has now also been uninvited from Chess.com's Global Championship, a $1m event with online qualifiers and an eight-player final in Toronto. But they also explore whether Neimann was really cheating... The Californian teenager, who does not have a coach but whose rating has jumped 250 points in three years, had already beaten the world champion a month earlier in an online tournament in Miami, when he made headlines for a one-sentence victory interview where he said: "Chess speaks for itself," before walking off.... [In his match this week against Carlsen] the position out of the opening was almost level, a minimal 0.3 plus for Black, but the world champion seemed to try too hard, with sub-optimal choices at moves 22, 40 and 42. Niemann also made inaccuracies, so the game lacked the tell-tale signs of computer aid....

It would appear that the central issue is whether Carlsen believes his pre-game analysis of his intended surprise 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 g3 was leaked, either by a mole within his camp or by a computer hack. An alternative explanation of the "leak" could be quite innocent. The relevant pawn structure, with plausible transpositions into Carlsen v Niemann, had already occurred in a previous well-known Carlsen game against England's Michael Adams in 2006. Niemann said he asked himself what ideas Carlsen might produce to divert him from his planned Catalan with ... Bb4+ and decided to check 5 Nc3, a rare transposition to the Nimzo-Indian. There was also Niemann's own very recent game against Le Quang Liem at Miami, where 5 g3 (instead of 5 e3 d5 as played) d5 6 a3 could easily transpose into Carlsen v Niemann....

[I]t is easy to understand why the world champion was so upset. Carlsen's tournament score will be cancelled, but his games will be rated and the defeat by Niemann will cost him seven rating points, a large setback in the context of trying to get from 2865 to 2900. His dream of a record rating has just become more distant.
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Chess.com Bans 19-Year-Old Accused of Cheating, But No Evidence He Cheated Against Magnus Carlsen More

Chess.com Bans 19-Year-Old Accused of Cheating, But No Evidence He Cheated Against Magnus Carlsen

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  • Unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FlyingALittleTooHigh ( 9468689 ) on Saturday September 10, 2022 @11:41PM (#62871433)
    This is indeed a shame if he's as talented a player as he seems to be, and no evidence exists that he's cheated against Carlsen.

    • Re:Unfortunate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @12:15AM (#62871459)
      Yeah, agree. The world champion's intuition about the game is certainly credible, and he would have been justified in privately consulting about it. But casting suspicion in public and turning some kid into a pariah in his own community without a solid reason? Seems impulsive, and not the best way to have handled it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        From what I have seen Carlsen has made absolutely no accusations of cheating. He walked out but did not directly accuse him of anything. Chess.com on the other hand has both evidence and has presented it him that he cheated and hence that ban seems perfectly reasonable.

        • Carlsen did say that he couldn't say anything about the reason he quit because otherwise he would get into trouble. Doing this right after losing that game, is a pretty obvious hint even though he didn't say it literally.

        • What is the evidence from chess.com? Unless Neimann or chess.com presents it, then it's an allegation at this point.

      • Carlsen sprang one of his surprise openings and Neimann countered it easily and quickly. Carlsen was clearly upset by this, played badly and made a fatal mistake. Carlsen didn't make a public allegation, only a cryptic post that he knew something he couldn't talk about. Chess.org confronted Neimann with a dossier of suspicious online play (he was been suspended for this twice before) and suspended him. Carlsen walked out of the tournament. Neimann was subject to anti-cheating search and scans before his

        • It was the president of FIDE who made that comment (if I say something I'm in big trouble)

          Carlsen hasn't said anything.

    • By extrapolating his rating graph, he'll be 2900+ and world champion soon anyway, and all will be well.

    • In the TFA Chess.com apparently/allegedly told Neimman what or how he cheated and thus the permaban, but neither chess.com nor Neimann are expressing what those reasons are. I'd like to know personally. I play chess.com and I'd like to know/understand what warranted his ban. Otherwise, this is slander and unless it's provable that he did cheat, then he should seek restitution to restore his reputation. I'd do that if someone accused me of something I didn't do in such a public forum.

  • I looked above and at the Vice article and do not understand how he cheated. Did he analyze previous games of his opponents? That sounds completely fair. I would do that if I was a boxer or MMA fighter. Where exactly is a description of his process for cheating? I want to try it against a friend who is a great chess player :)

    • did he use some site to tell him the best play to make?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
        I can't see how that would work at that level of play. When you're playing at the top like those guys you need a bloody supercomputer to compete.

        I asked we don't see how you could cheat in any meaningful fashion at that level. It would be like trying to have the AI from Street fighter win Evo. It would just get stomped by any player skilled enough to make it into the top eight.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by lsllll ( 830002 )
          Maybe his accomplice chatted with a medium who was in communication with Bobby Fisher and got help that way.

        • I can't see how that would work at that level of play. When you're playing at the top like those guys you need a bloody supercomputer to compete.

          Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't these days a decent PC sufficient?

          Or even a phone?

        • Re:How did he cheat? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @05:29AM (#62871737)

          When you're playing at the top like those guys you need a bloody supercomputer to compete.

          Not true at all. Stockfish running on a Raspberry Pi could easily beat any grandmaster.

          The days when the best chess players could beat a computer are decades in the past.

        • Stockfish on stock hardware will easily dispatch a grandmaster.

        • Re:How did he cheat? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @09:12AM (#62871993) Journal

          I can't see how that would work at that level of play. When you're playing at the top like those guys you need a bloody supercomputer to compete.

          We have those in our pocket now...

          Magnus Carlsen has a rating of around 2860. Stockfish can reach into the 3500s within a few seconds of analysis now on a modern CPU.

          http://www.computerchess.org.u... [computerchess.org.uk]

          there's a table of a recent contest on a quad CPU machine. The difference in rating between Magnus Carlsen and Stockfish is a bit more, but not much more than between me (at my peak as a Minor player - the weakest category in a chess tournament) and Magnus Carlsen.

          A vaguely modern high end phone running stockfish will get ELO ratings well into the 3000s.

        • >I can't see how that would work at that level of play. When you're playing at the top like those guys you need a bloody supercomputer to compete. This isn't true. Even simple computers are better than grandmasters nowadays, there are stories of top players losing chess matches to chess apps on treadmills at hotel gyms. A cell phone with access to a basic engine on the cloud like is freely available an Lichess or Chess.com would provide more than enough assistance to sway a match at the highest level. O

    • Everyone who has analyzed the situation has concluded that he didn't cheat in the tournament.

      He did cheat when playing online, including in at least one tournament.. He did so by using a computer chess engine.

    • We don't know for sure, but as the article states they suspect that his prep was leaked. Meaning that Neimann knew ahead of time what Carlson strategy would be. With that said the game still had to be played, the fact that Carlson couldn't recognize that his prep was compromised and that his plan wasn't working still should have been possible.

      • That sounds like hogwash. Carlson had used this opening twice before, and TFA states that they both made mistakes, with Carlsen making one very early in the game that he struggled to recover from.

        So Carlsen's team floating the idea that his plan had somehow been leaked to Niemann just reeks of an excuse for him losing. Even your own comment about Carlsen not realizing that his opening gambit wasn't working seems to further prove that he simply seemed to be playing from a base of arrogance and it cost him.

    • There was some earlier story about buttons in shoes wired to a Raspberry PI hidden in your underpants as a chess cheating device. Here's a link to such a device... https://boingboing.net/2022/09... [boingboing.net]

    • The primary suspicion is somehow getting help from a computer, possibly from another person observing the event, plugging the position into an engine, and somehow sending Hans signals. Several high level GMs have suggested that they think its possible, even trivial, to pull this off and the only reason it doesn't happen more often is the fear of long term career consequences

  • Interesting Chess.com Move (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Saturday September 10, 2022 @11:55PM (#62871443)
    If he cheated before, why ban him just now? Seeing as there is no evidence he cheated now, just speculation, seems too harsh. Magnus Carlsen also just partnered with Chess.com, does that mean Magnus asked Chess.com to ban him? I am leaning towards yes.

    • Re:Interesting Chess.com Move (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11, 2022 @01:44AM (#62871555)

      The answer is obvious. Magnus got his tiny little feelings hurt when the kid countered his opening like it was basic theory. Chess.com needs his celebrity, so the kid had to go.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wisnoskij ( 1206448 )

      You cannot prove a negative. A history of lying and cheating is enough. He never would of been allowed into the match if his history of cheating was known beforehand.

      And remember. This is this guys multi millionaire career. If Chess.com cannot prove their allegations in a court of law, they just opened themselves up to large multi million dollar defamation settlements.

    • If he cheated before, why ban him just now?

      Presumably because he just admitted in an interview (5 days ago) to having cheated on chess.com, obliging the website to launch an immediate review of his past games.

    • Re:Interesting Chess.com Move (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @11:45AM (#62872193) Homepage Journal

      He admitted to cheating on chess.com. He got banned from chess.com. This whole comment section is mind boggling, where it's like no one even read the summary. It has nothing to do with the recent in-person chess match

      • It seems like you are misreading the order of events yourself. The ban occurred after this game with Magnus, when these over-the-board cheating accusations occured. If chess.com had a reason to ban him before this game, why did they wait until right after the game with Magnus, when Hans was not playing any online chess?
  • The only people on chess.com who aren't cheating are the people losing games.

    • stupid analogy - someone has to loose, even if both players are cheating.

      • Aren't a lot of games a stalemate/draw?

        • Very few online chess games end in a stalemate/draw. The vast majority of players don't cheat. And most games are played with relatively short time controls. More games are probably lost on time than are played to a draw.
      • Technically it could be correct. Say, 50% cheating and winning and the rest not cheating.
        • That couldn't happen because chess.com has a ranking system. Those who are cheating would move up the ranking system quickly and then end up matched with other cheaters while those playing honestly would get matched with the other "losers" so no, it's not possible.

  • Time for Faraday shielding and spectrum analyzers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @12:10AM (#62871455)

    With a bit of power and redundancy getting a low bandwidth signal into a Faraday cage is possible, but getting a high bandwidth RF signal out will be very hard. Conceivably ultranarrowband could still get something like morsecode out, but it shouldn't be too hard to pick that up with modern surveillance equipment. Any computing device capable of decent chess should show up with a simple metal detector, even inserted.

    So no need to have them be naked, just put them in a Faraday cage.

    • getting a high bandwidth RF signal out will be very hard.

      You only need to transmit about 10 bits of data per move.

      • let's see, a move is two coordinates, and a chessboard is a 8x8 grid, the x and y of which can be represented with 3 bits each. So, 12 bits.

        • You don't normally need to give a second coordinate. It is enough to say "Q-f4", for example. There are 6 different pieces. So you could do it with 9 bits.

          • You don't normally need to give a second coordinate. It is enough to say "Q-f4", for example. There are 6 different pieces. So you could do it with 9 bits.

            OTOH a move sometimes needs disambiguation:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • Yeah, I was thinking about that. I think it's rare enough that a move needs a disambiguator AND that a good player couldn't tell which of the moves is correct, that it wouldn't be necessary.

        • You don't really need both coords. Simply piece number and destination coords. So 4 bits for piece and 6 bits for destination is 10 bits.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cfalcon ( 779563 )

          Phantomfive points out that it's 9 bits if you have something similar to normal chess notation.
          I'll point out that if you specify a piece with 3 bits and a direction with 3 bits, that will be more than enough for a chess grandmaster to work with. For pawns you could specify the 3 bit for pawn and then the next 3 bits could specify which pawn- and for everything else but knights and queens, you could probably do with 5 bits total, not 6, as most pieces don't have many legal and useful moves at a time.
          So 5-6

          • Re:Time for Faraday shielding and spectrum analyze (Score:4, Interesting)

            by munch117 ( 214551 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @03:45AM (#62871663)

            Simpler than that: Enumerate the legal moves in the position according to a consistent, agreed-upon algorithm, and transmit the number of the move. Most positions will have no more than 64 legal moves, many positions will have no more than 32. So 5-6 bits is indeed enough.

            The only flaw is that you can't transmit an illegal move. Positions exist where the best move is to castle and hope that the opponent has forgotten that you've already moved your king and castling is illegal...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        This is a fun game. There's finding a minimal encoding, and finding the smallest encoding a human could use. I'm guessing that your 10-bit encoding is 4 bits to select the piece and 6 bits for the square?

        The simplest and most obvious encoding requires 12 bits, using three bits each for the rank and file of the start and end positions. I'm starting from the assumption that this is reasonable and any new scheme shouldn't be much more complicated than this, which requires just simple counting.

        9 bits was the

    • Hilariously, or not, the only chess player involved who has suggested this a a solution is... Hans Niemann.

    • They have spectrum analyzers at the tournament. They also have hired magicians to watch for any slight of hand. They also are required to go through metal detectors.

      • The general environment is a bit noisy, a signal which has to escape from inside the cage will be easier to detect.

        • Well, you can send light signals out of the cage without any problem. Things like hand signals, etc.

          And what you are really trying to stop is signals being sent to the player, not signals sent out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xonen ( 774419 )

      a Faraday cage

      That may have worked in the 20th century. But in 2022 a computer that plays chess (better than a human) could easily be so small, it'd literally fit into your shoe, ear or tooth without anyone able to discover short of x-ray equipment.

    • Re:Time for Faraday shielding and spectrum analyze (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gumshoe ( 191490 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @04:35AM (#62871715) Journal
      Cheating between grandmasters in an over-the-board game doesn't really need a system requiring electronics. Kasparov once said many years ago, that all he would need to get an edge is to know that there is a devastating move to find. Once you know that such a move exists, you can concentrate your time (chess at this level is really a game of time management) on the key move. The grandmaster can find the solution themselves from there. Communicating that type of information is very cheap and easy. It's just one bit of information - normal move vs critical move. It could be done very effectively by someone sat in the audience holding a water bottle. Hold it in the left hand normally, and then hold it in the right hand to indicate the critical move. It sounds ridiculous but this is something that has worried grandmasters for decades. In the 1978 World Championship, Korchnoi objected to tubs of yogurt being bought out for his opponent Karpov. It was eventually agreed that he could have the same flavoured yogurt bought out at the same time every match, thereby eliminating any information being transmitted by flavour or time. Once you realise the possibilities of signalling in this way, it's very easy to see how a player can be driven to distraction or paranoia; and I suppose in extreme cases, madness. "If it's not the tub of yogurt or the bottle of water, maybe it's the flicking of the lights, or the cough in the background or the sound of aeroplanes flying overhead..." The possibilities are almost endless. So while there's no evidence of it happening in Niemann vs Carlsen, cheating (for a limited definition of cheating) in live events is not as difficult as it first appears. My own opinion is that Carlsen is simply paranoid but given Niemann's admitted history, it's not completely unjustified.
  • if he is being watched by many people there is no way he could cheat, there are only right moves and wrong moves and the wrong ones are easily spotted, he cant take a move out of turn because that is easily spotted too, chess.com needs to reevaluate

  • then he may have discouraged a real talent. Cheaters don't just taint the public image of every competitor, they also tip the scales long after the individual act of cheating. Cheaters must be disqualified, in sport, in games, in business, in politics and their ill-gotten gains must be taken from them. No more "yes, i used doping, here's my book, make me rich".

  • Quite often its a euphamism for "I lost against someone I didn't expect to lose to". And its especially galling if its a kid.

    Not saying he didn't cheat, but you often see this sort of sour grapes in competition.

  • Surely the only reasonable solution to this would be for Neiman and Carlson to release an NFT of the game ?
    Because it would definitely make them millions.
    And because that's how every story reported on Slashdot seems to end these days.

  • It's like a casino. If you win "too much," that's considered evidence of cheating, they can ban you. Nevermind the whole premise of a casino is that people go there believing they can beat the odds.

  • Um (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @07:32AM (#62871837) Journal

    Niemann admitted to cheating on Chess.com in the past, but claimed that the two times he did were involving trivial, non-over-the-board games, and that he was only a child as he was 12 and 16 when it happened. "I just wanted to get higher-rated so I could play stronger players, so I cheated in random games on Chess.com," he said [in an online interview with St. Louis Chess Club].... " I have never cheated in an over-the-board game" [meaning a game that takes place on a real-world chess board].

    Well, you kind of torched your credibility when you did that, hmm?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Twinbee ( 767046 )
      Honestly, it kinda sucks that the matching algorithm on Chess.com won't allow low rated players to play high rated players, even if the higher rated player is happy to accept that. They always force you to play at a similar level.
      • The matching algorithm will allow this. But it would take a lower-rated player willing to wait for a higher-rated player *and* a higher-rated player wanting to wait for a lower-rated player. It won't work unless both have upper and lower bounds on ratings set that overlap and don't yield a match relatively quickly

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Twinbee ( 767046 )
          The min/max bounds are very restrictive, and most of the time, it sticks to within 100 points off your own grade. You can't say "I don't want a game unless it's with someone rated over 300 points higher than me", even if you're prepared to wait a long time.
          • The ratings range used to be free-form on the website. Now it's the same as the app. The highest lower-bound you can set is -25 but the upper-bound can be set to infinity. So one player could set -25 -> infinity and another could set -infinity -> +25. However, if those players are far apart in ratings, its likely that they won't match simply because an ideal matching algorithm would match them both with other players.

            However, you can get a game with somebody 300 points higher than you. If tho

  • So what happens is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Slashythenkilly ( 7027842 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @04:17PM (#62872633)
    He admitted to cheating previously so they are going to punish him, case closed. This is the same reason you dont talk to police or tell a tax authority you purchased something out of state. Dont give anyone a reason to investigate or punish you even if youre just trying to be honest. Enforcement bodies love low hanging fruit.

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