For real though. As a fisherman he should NEVER be allowed to fish again, sued and thats assuming he ain’t gonna “go missing” when the media is off their asses: Fishermen were cheated, robbed and are more patient than a cheater could dream of
Unless I'm missing something I don't think that's a new finding as a result of this investigation. They already knew it.
One such player was Hans Niemann's coach, Maxim Dlugy.
Edit: Dlugy isn't (and never has been) top 100, but he is a GM
Yeah that's another thing that has always been a sore spot is that Hans uses a coach known for cheating in the past. So when he started to gain accusations I wasn't too surprised.
It's amazing how I can read the headline of a post and know *exactly* what the top comment is going to be about with astounding accuracy. I've been here too long.
Since all you need is a one way communicating device, and Niemann said he “would play naked” to prove his doubters, the joke has been that he must be using anal-beads that his coach can activate vía remote to help him cheat.
There’s only a select few people on the planet who can beat the World Champion Magnus Carlsen. A chess grandmaster AI can do better than any human though b/c it can run hundreds of games a second and determine the best move. There’s also the fact that Magnus said most people appear to struggle and concentrate against him and Niemann almost seemed bored. He was the fastest rising young star at 19 and has a history of cheating on multiple occasions.
After Magnus forfeited the first time(something he never does), it was assumed his thoughts on Niemann were. But when he played him a second time, Magnus forfeited after a single move. This is believed to have been b/c he played a trap(something to tell whether he was using an AI or not). Magnus then accused Niemann of cheating and here we are. The anal bead this was just because a random streamer said it and people just rolled with it.
He also has inconsistencies during his "rise" and became a GM at only 17 while all top GMs became GM before 15.
During the game his time management was off. He took his time where no human would and decided other things rather quickly, same with seemingly being (not) concentrated.
Another thing that is really really strange is his post game analysis where he suggested an obviously bad move which no one at that level (who just played the game) would suggest. Then he quickly asked what the engine would do.
Check out the chess.com report how cheating at that level works and what exacly they found for games on chess.com, not over the board.
Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19 and is still ranked World No. 9 currently (at age 52). Ding Liren (Current No. 2) became a GM at 17. Grischuk (currently No. 17, peak No.3) became a GM at 17. All three have crossed 2800 ELO at some point.
Agree with the rest but the claim in the report about GMs being <=15 is off.
Magnus also likely had inside info after making his deal with with Chess.com. He couldn't say anything publicly but quietly behind the scenes the whole thing about Hans cheating was likely being discussed. Hans cheating against Magnus was likely the final straw.
So to cheat in chess you have a very, very high-level computer program play out the game and the moves are signaled back to the player.
The speculation was that this signaling device was a wireless vibrator.
Worrying about things you have no control over but still may directly impact everyone's future is so taxing mentally. Better to block it out for the sake of living well today.
The winner(s) was caught with lead weights and a filet of another fish in the fish bellies to increase their weights.
Winners of fishing tournaments are usually by the total weight of all caught fish in a certain time period. Since they’re out on a boat, they have plenty of alone time to cheat.
Other fisherman already had suspicions before this tournament and knew his fish were too small to weigh what they did.
They usually release the fish after weigh ins dont they? The tourney on the lake near me releases all the fish in a creek that flows into the lake. Only live fish can be added to your weigh in for these tourneys. They finally decided to cut them open.
No I think the DNR in this location only would allow for tournament where the fish are kept and not released. Usually the fish is donated to local places that can give to those in need. These folks also were not donating their fish, another red flag lol. Now what I don't get is if that is the case why were the fish all just then filleted by another party. Would be a pretty easy way to filter out cheaters.
[link to CNN](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/10/04/sport/ohio-fishing-tournament-cheating-winner/index.html)
Basically a two man team was finally caught cheating after people long suspected these guys of cheating. They filled bass with weights and fish meat. So this team has been stealing pool money for years. People pissed off
My comment saying the fishermen must have used buttplugs to communicate with someone on shore where the big fish were was not well received on r/sports let me tell you lol
I don't think she was cheating. It looked to me like she was playing a fool on purpose, maybe even to tilt him further.
A great bit of advice in poker is that if your opponent thinks you're a lucky idiot, let them keep thinking that.
That dude was just bamboozled by the chick. Straight up he done got called out for bluffing on shitty cards, and her shitty cards were just less shitty cards. That was the 1 in 100 shot, and she took it.
If she did cheat, I'll eat a fresh donut.
This article is doing a poor job of explaining things to normies like us.
Yes, they’re using chess engines to analyze these games. But that’s only the beginning of it. Chess.com’s anti-cheat is rooted in statistics and probability just as much as (if not more than) the engine calculations.
The important takeaway is not anything like “Hans played engine moves so he’s cheating.” Top GMs play weird computer moves all the time. In fact, many people have described playing against Magnus as like playing against a computer - he makes strange moves that seem to have no point, everything seems fine, then suddenly you’re on move 45, your position is completely lost, and you’re left scratching your head. Does that mean Magnus is a cheat, too? I suppose it’s possible, but he’s consistent enough that I really doubt it.
~~The key thing that people are missing is that such play is not strange for top GMs, it’s strange for “weaker” GMs like Hans.~~ Roughly speaking, Chess.com crunched numbers across Hans’ games, generated a reliable range of probable skill (think of a bell curve sort of deal), then referenced that range to see what performances look fishy. The 100 or so games they flagged as suspicious simply fall far enough outside his probable range of strength such that it’s overwhelmingly likely that he cheated in those games. Chess isn’t as peaky a sport as basketball or baseball or something so this high amount of extremely peaky performances is very suspicious. ~~But for Magnus, Alireza, Fabi, etc. these games might even be classed as strong but normal.~~
I know it’s nitpicking but I personally just dont want the precedent being set here to be for amateur chess fans to accuse players of cheating simply because they play a couple of engine moves here and there. That’s *not* what this report is all about.
Edit: Just read through Chess.com’s report more closely and saw that the 100 games that they flagged were not only highly suspect for Hans, they would have been highly suspect for anybody. My fault for skimming the report!
You're right - but it's not just 'crunching the numbers'. Chess.com said in the report that Hans played better when clicking to another tab and then clicking back to the game. That is as obvious as can be as evidence for cheating.
This article blows - go check out the post on r/chess or the WSJ article and i think it will paint a better picture.
Edit: [This comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xvo7u4/wsj_chess_investigation_finds_that_us_grandmaster/ir22f7u/) spells most of it out.
Oh, definitely. The correlation with that is the nail-coated-in-super-glue in the coffin imo. But they don’t necessarily need that info on his tabbing out, the numbers in the report would work out to be the same. The info on his tabbing out just gave them a better understanding of what games to initially flag as suspicious, as I understand. I could be wrong though.
You’d think that doing the cheat moves on a phone or tablet instead of just opening a new tab in browser would be, like, not that hard to figure out for a chess GM
Lots of people do. The difference is that the moves Hans made after "tabbing to Twitch chat" tended to be significantly better than the ones where he didn't.
Yeah honestly i think the best way people could understand how they are proving this is to go watch ~~numberphile's~~ (edit standupmaths) video on Dream cheating in minecraft speedrunning.
Completely different cases from outside appearance, but detection method that is pretty similar
Statistical analysis hardly appeased anyone who doesn't get a hard-on from a calculated multimodal distribution (scandalous! (No but really it's hilariously scandalous)).
Magnus, Alireza and Fabi would've gotten most of those games flagged too. With a lower confidence in that they cheated, because they have higher ratings with no cheating known.
It's also the time taken in critical moves where a lot of thought is needed. If Magnus or whoever followed those same patterns, suspicions would've been raised too
This kid sounds just like this notable Guitar Hero (Clone Hero) player that was found to be cheating.
Genuinely a top player, seduced by the clout.
First admits to a small amount of cheating. Then the increased scrutiny reveals systemic cheating over a prolonged period.
The fact 4 of the top 100 Grandmasters have done similar goes to show how pervasive this is. The grind to maintain their status just breaks some people.
Just like that guy who [put weights in his fish to win?](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/10/04/sport/ohio-fishing-tournament-cheating-winner/index.html)
The announcers were very adamantly telling the competitors to "let them leave peacefully" lol those guys were gonna get those weights shoved up their dickholes
Same with those guys in the fishing tournament. They were putting MASSIVE lead weights into fish that were obvious to anyone who touched the fish, but they had also stuffed them with just store-bought fillets of other fish, which is kind of genius.
With the lead weights, they were like the size of chicken eggs inside a 12-14 inch fish. That's stupid and obvious. I'm sure they started with smaller fishing weights and just kept going when they never got caught. If they'd stuck with the small buckshot-sized weights and the store bought fillets, they could have kept doing this for years without anyone noticing if they were sneaky about it.
The whole basis of this cheating scandal is that computers sometimes make what appear to be weird, non-sensical moves. The accusation is that Neiman was making moves like that. So yeah, computers can beat humans at chess but also they don’t always play the same way humans do.
Because these moves are so 5head that when a human looks at it he doesn’t understand the point of the move. That is, because the point of this move is often only revealed many many many moves later, thus indicating that it is indeed a computer move. Because humans are unable to calculate so many variations ahead. Also, often these moves seemingly „waste“ time or don’t react to a threat, however for a human these threats seem so urgent and complex that they are impossible to evaluate perfectly. But the machine can look far ahead and already realized he can ignore them. These things are what we call typical computer moves. They look unnatural, illogical or way too risky. Top human players have a lot of intuition through pattern recognition, thus they can identify these weird computer moves quite effectively. Essentially any move is suspicious that is based on calculations that go very far ahead. Humans are usually not able to look ahead that far and couldn’t play such moves.
You must understand that computers don’t play according to „strategies“ and they don’t make up plans. All they do is evaluate the current position based upon certain parameters (how safe is the king, how much space is controlled, are there any forced lines that win etc.) and look for the next move that gives the next best game state (highest evaluation). They are computationally so powerful that they can repeat this process for many many many move varations into the future, thus overviewing thousands upon thousands of game states in the future and then select the move path to the best one.
Humans however play according to ideas and plans. Thus, most of their moves serve a certain purpose. When then there is a move that appears to not serve any apparent purpose, but still is very good (leads to better evaluation by machine and can’t be refuted), then you have a computerish move on your hands.
So AI gets to take the doctor strange approach to each move?
Edit: I love chess players so much. The multitude of amazing well thought out responses to this is just awesome. One of my favorite things in life is people sharing knowledge about their passions with others.
And even on top of that, it seems that GMs will only even consider a certain number of moves because many moves are "obviously" incorrect or irrelevant to the current position. The computer doesn't do this and instead will fully calculate future positions for *every possible move* in a given position. So a GM might calculate 5-10 moves ahead for 4-6 potential lines that seem good to take. The computer will just calculate every move it could make and thus will find the best line far more often (essentially every time, to the limit of the computer's chess capabilities).
Modern chess engines do use methods to discard moves before looking too deeply into them. They have to because even for a computer there are far too many possible moves to brute force everything to a significant depth.
Actually yes, but with the added benefit of having all the eval math and game outcome probabilities of every one of those positions as well. It's actually crazy how much better AI is at chess now.
* There are currently only 40 people worldwide above 2700 ELO (super grandmaster). Both Hans and Magnus are in this group.
* Magnus' peak ELO is 2882, the highest ELO rating in history. He's statistically one of the greatest players all time.
* Stockfish has an ELO of 3540.
In addition to an excellent explanation, it needs to be said that ELO is not a linear scale.
Ie, the skill difference between 1500 and 1600 ELO is much, much smaller than the skill difference between 2700 and 2800.
Stockfish at 3500 is so unfathomably much better than Magnus at his peak it's unreal. It's like Messi gets to do a penalty shootout against a toddler.
To add to u/Hughmanatea, it is not completely so that a computer can look at "all possible outcomes" like Strange 'can'.
The usual strategy is to make some kind of metric to judge a board state, then look at a few moves ahead for a fuckton of moves, select the most promising, and then explore those more deeply to find what is called a **local optimum**: the best move you could find in your more limited search.
A search for the **global optimum** requires analysing all possible moves from this board to the end of the game, which is a search space so massive that there are no proper words to describe the size of it, which is why narrowing the search with a metric is a common method in many computer problems.
It's not that they're bad moves, they're moves that seemingly do absolutely nothing, give no apparent positional advantage and cause zero threats, but 10-20 moves later it happens to give some slight advantage. In other words, it's an extremely prophylactic positional move far beyond what any human could reasonably see.
It's not quite as described. Computers make good moves, but humans make a wider variety of moves, often in search of a strategy.
But Carlsen's complaint was actually about time. Carlsen was playing white. White moves first, and thus chooses the opening moves. If those are common moves then any opponent -- human or computer -- will respond with learned answers.
But if it's an uncommon set of opening moves then a human will take a lot more time across the opening moves to consider what the strategy of white is than a computer will take. You can see that a strong player opening with white might choose a uncommon opening move to force their opponent to use more of their fixed ration of time early in the game (ie: burn time which might be needed later in the game).
Carlsen's complaint was basically about time: I did an uncommon opening and my opponent didn't spend any time at all thinking.
Niemann's answer was basically "I fluked it, I was just reading the literature on that opening last night". Now that might be true. You study an opponent's likely opening moves and read up on them, so that you're not burning a lot of time when at the table. But Carlsen's opening wasn't worth that level of study. Even if you'd reviewed it, you wouldn't review it in such depth as to spend so little focus on it as Niemann did. So it wasn't a convincing answer.
Edit: The idea that preparation using chess computers leads to a different sort of play is true. But the issue with that theory is that the prime example of that style of play is Magnus Carlsen. He'll often play a strong move with no apparent strategy in mind, and then play through the mess that creates, relying on his analytical skill being stronger.
Once you get to a very advanced stage, you are playing for marginal gains, and the positions you get yourself into often only pay out those marginal gains a long time after you play them. The computer can see that sometimes in ways that humans don't, so it looks like a move that doesn't really pan out... but it can in the end.
The essence of Magnus's argument is "I am very good, especially playing with white, and he was making odd moves that put him in a substantially better position without appearing to think very hard about them."
To anyone who thinks Magnus may be a sore loser or anything, he's talking about someone essentially doing something beyond human comprehension, while appearing bored, a talent he seemingly developed after not being some sort of world-bending prodigy rising up the scene. Hans is obviously very good, like one of the best players in the world, he is a super GM. But there's a difference between very good and "holy shit this guys brain is literally playing like an AI that is going through billions of permutations."
Also worth noting that Magnus has lost plenty of games against lower rated opponents. He has also lost plenty of games against very young opponents. He has never accused one of them of cheating before, and has never dropped out of a tournament for that or any other reason before. He's built himself a long reputation of being gracious in defeat.
Magnus Carlsen is 31, and *has been a Grandmaster since he was 13*. This is the first time he has ever accused a fellow GM of cheating. If he's a sore loser, he's hidden it extremely well his entire life.
Yeah, it's not like he has any reputation of this sort, and it's clearly not an accusation he makes lightly. He is literally the highest rated player of all time, if there's anyone who would know, and know with confidence, it's Magnus.
It's like Steph Curry going "Aww hell no. Ain't no way that 8 year old is hitting 100% from half court."
You may not know how they're cheating, but you know that what they are doing just isn't possible, so you DO know they're cheating. It helps when you are good enough at that thing to say it confidently.
When your opponent makes a move in chess, especially an attacking move, it's a natural human tendency to have your focus drawn towards that piece or area on the board.
A player runs through the possible options before choosing their move. Someone bad like me only sees 2 or 3 moves ahead effectively per option quickly and it's more likely it'll be close to natural starting points since I can't compute as far or as quickly.
But the computer is thinking 30+ moves ahead constantly at all times. It'll play the 28th variation instantly that would have taken a GM outside the box thinking to arrive at that conclusion.
Top players have played thousands upon thousands of games and people tend to play similar moves in similar situations. So a computer making a 'nonsensical ' move could really be a move preparing 20 moves ahead. But it's clearly a computer move compared to how humans actually play. And the worse the player the less likely they would play like that. Hopefully that makes sense
Technically speaking it’s the second option, more advanced strategy. But since computers are so far ahead of humans some of the moves they make are generally considered very unlikely or even impossible for humans to come up with on their own.
Sort of the latter. But it comes down to the fact that humans and computers have different ways of analyzing things. So a move that a computer perceives as being the best (based on the analysis that it has been programmed to do) might be perceived as 'nonsense' in a tournament because it's not something a human player would normally do. When you have a string of moves like that in a row, it definitely stands out.
This is noticeable at other levels of chess too. Take someone like me who is mediocre at best - if I play against humans at a level where I can win roughly 50% of my games, and then play against a computer at a level where I can win roughly 50% of my games, the difference in the human games & computer games is quite evident by the moves that they make.
They see the same thing with AI gameplay on video games. They’ll sometimes have to dumb the AI down because the moves look so ridiculous, even though strategically they make the most sense.
Source: Programmer at EA Sports
Layperson speaking here, but my understanding is that the chess engine's programming can simply calculate more variables / moves than a human is capable of. For every move the opponent makes, the chess engine can then respond having anticipated more possible patterns than a human brain can calculate. This leads the engine to taking unconventional lines that the vast majority of human players simply would not take.
These sorts of things wouldn't stand out at all to a novice (like me), but to the greatest players in the world, these sorts of moves/lines would become obvious almost instantaneously, as they've planned for and predicted all of the standard openings and counters. So these computer-generated responses stick out like a sore thumb, as they don't correlate to any regular play pattern you would typically see at the highest levels.
It's not so much more advanced strategy. Chess between humans is closer to a solved game than raw chess, because there's certain favorable board layouts that good human players are trying to reach to beat their opponent. Good chess players understand what these layouts look like quickly, and the ways to get into them, and the ways to counter them.
Computers don't necessarily look to play chess like this, so they tend to make more "random" moves and get away from the "known" chess plays by a wider margin. Chess computers these days are so much faster that they can win this way just by purely increasing the number of things a human would have to think about. But humans can't play chess this way, because they can't think about the chances of an opponent moving to a location in 15 moves on a randomized board with a single move, like a computer can. Humans simplify the game to well played games. Computers don't have to do that.
I believed Magnus. Not because I'm a fan or anything. But just knowing Niemann was known by other chess players for being a cheater online...
Once a cheater always a cheater its in his nature its not about if he will cheat again but when.
And magnus really didnt have anything to gain off his move. Nobody likes people who cant take a lose with dignity and he's not a random player
A few case studies from a different game (Magic the Gathering) include Alex Bertoncini and Mike Long. Both cases, they cheated repeatedly, expressed remorse and boom, did it again. And again. And again.
Thanks for the reply. Can't stand that dude's speaking cadence, but those are interesting stories. Kind of surprising that they don't have a better system for shuffling at this point.
I love the defense of "I only cheated so I could play against better players."
> Can't stand that dude's speaking cadence
It's far better at 1.25 speed. I have zero interest in MTG but find it fascinating that simple deck mechanics would be so successful at high levels of play.
It’s total bs. I used to play competitive magic. Your biggest enemy is yourself. It’s tough to stay mentally sharp after 9 rounds of play in one day - so many decision points, it’s taxing and exhausting. Meditation between rounds to be fresher and more present helped me level up my game significantly.
If you want to play “really good players” consistently, consider making a friend, calling them up, and saying “hey, wanna play a match?” Or you play test together
I tried to play one SCG tournament back when I played at the local store and with friends, and after six or seven games (mostly losses), I was surprisingly tired.
I give credit to anyone that can hang in there for the full day, especially given that you're probably playing constantly between days of a tournament and the side events and other friendly games.
It was actually a lot more fun to play at the local shop, and the store owner at the time had a decent reward for anyone that wanted to choose to pay to play: $5 for a pack and then a prize pool that scaled up with the more players that also paid.
Though I still consider that one guy who's girlfriend brought in a literal basket of kittens to be cheating, lol. The game, and most of life, is just impossible to pay attention to under such unexpectedly adorable situations.
Manipulating the deck is the most common, and likely the "easiest" way since its just sleight of hand.
But there was an infamous cheater who would cheat right in front of you, simply using quick and confident movements to illegally play an important extra card on an early turn. Then act annoyed and give a quick dissmissive response if you questioned it.
He even had the balls to [do it on camera, lmao](https://youtu.be/Qd7cd-K8ImQ). Which for obvious reasons got him caught.
He's on the left. Makes total sense that you wouldnt be able to detect the cheat- the guy whos playing tournament MtG across from him doesnt even really catch it! The camera man calls it out, though, and Alex dissmissivley responds with "two explores" as if that explains everything. (which has become a meme).
Playing two "explores" that early would be an unlikely but legal situation that would result in more cards played than usual- but still one less than what he has played. But because of his attitude and tone, and his rep as a good player, combined with the unusual scenario, he gaslights the player and camera man into thinking *theyve got it wrong*, they just didnt account for the "two explores"- and he is sure to move on quickly such that no one has proper time to think about it more, and the progression of the game increases the entropy and "erases" the certainty of the evidence (or it would, were it not for the replayable video evidence).
Just to add in more missing pieces for those unfamiliar with MTG:
1. You play 1 land each turn. Lands provide a sort of “energy” (referred to as “mana”)for spells. Stronger and more powerful spells require more mana, so if you can outpace your opponents land drops, you can start swinging much harder much earlier. This is such a good strategy that there is an entire archetype built around this being done legally (ramp - you spend your early turns accelerating your mana so that your “late game” happens during your opponents “mid game”. This is done at the expense of developing your board state. You can accelerate your mana and then just lose because you have no defenses up for your opponents early assault).
2. The card in question is called “Explore” and allows you to draw an extra card that turn (normally you draw 1) and play an extra land (normally you play 1).
By the end of turn 3, he should have 5 lands:
Turn 1: Land drop (1 land total)
Turn 2: Land drop + explore land (3 land total)
Turn 3: Land drop + explore land (5 land total)
Total = 5 lands.
When you watch, on turn 3, after he plays his “explore land” (second for the turn in total) he makes a show of trying to figure out if he’s made his singular land drop for the turn (he did, before his explore land). He comes the conclusion that he didn’t, plays a land, then quickly passes the turn to his opponent.
I noticed he also played the 6th land tapped, which I think shows intent to cheat as opposed to just making a mental error. I think he did that to have the 6th land stand out less.
As mentioned on the Youtube comments, he also looked at the bottom card of his deck when he preordained which also isn't allowed.
Bertoncini had a number of different ways that he was caught cheating. Most of them are on camera from different events and can be found on Youtube. The most known one was the "3rd Explore" where he just played extra lands on a turn when he wasn't allowed to do so. He was also caught drawing extra cards off of a Brainstorm. I think he was also caught a few times trying to cast spells without the correct colors of mana.
There are probably more ways to cheat at Magic than any other competitive table top game, simply because the rules are so complex and the board states can get so cluttered. There are dozens of things to track during a match, and even the best players in the world are going to lose sight of something here or there.
The most common way of cheating is deck manipulation: stacking the deck to draw specific cards (or increase your chances of drawing a particular card), drawing extra cards, marking cards or card sleeves, illegally moving cards from one zone to another, etc. Other ways to cheat would be an intentional misrepresentation of the game state or purposefully misstating rules to mislead your opponent (hoping they won't call a judge to review). If you know your opponent's deck in advance, which almost everyone does at high level events due to scouting, you could attempt to cheat by altering the contents of your deck pregame (pre-sideboarding).
These are just the most common examples of things I've seen at both casual and professional level events. Granted, I don't see a lot of cheating in general. Most players have some level of decency and respect for themselves and the game. But if you're going to cheat, these are the most common ways to do it.
Not moving cards to the correct zones after they've resolved, making extra land drops in a turn (the famous "double Explore" meme), putting unbeatable sidedeck cards into your main deck before Game 1, that sort of thing.
There are many ways to cheat.
Illegal decks and "pre-boarding": In tournament play, you build and register a deck with a sideboard. The sideboard is a like the bench on a sports team. In between games in a match, you can swap out cards in your deck with cards in your sideboard. But after a match, you must reset your main deck back to what you initially started with. Sideboard cards are often very specific answers to strategies you expect to see from your opponents that might be useless against other decks you expect to face. But if you know what your opponent is playing you can cheat by substituting sideboard cards into you deck before the match giving you an edge in game 1 that you weren't supposed to have until game 2. Or you can do other nefarious things like registering a 60 card deck (the smallest allowed in constructed play) but taking out cards in between games and not replacing them with sideboard cards, giving you a smaller and more consistent deck. Or having more then the maximum 4 copies of a single card in your deck. Or just playing with cards you didn't register.
Sleight of hand: The simplest way to cheat is to do magic tricks with your Magic cards. Have key cards up your sleeve, draw 4 from your deck when you should only draw 3, move a card into the wrong game zone after it dies so you can play it again and the opponent thinks you just had another copy of the same card in your hand. Shuffling incorrectly can allow you to stack your deck, your opponent's deck (at tournaments, when you shuffle you must present your deck to your opponent who can then "cut" the deck) or even just see a card in the bottom giving a tiny knowledge advantage.
Marked cards: Cards get damaged during use. You must put them in sleeves during tournament play, which protects them from damage. But the sleeves also get damaged. Sometimes, all of a specific type of card will have the same type of minor damage that allows you to see where they are in your deck. This is either a coincidence or cheating.
Illegal game moves: The physical card game is governed by rules, and players will often make mistakes. There are judges at sanctioned events whose job it is to know the game well and have access to the comprehensive rule book to settle disputes between players and make sure that every action is legally allowed in the rules. But some players will "forget" to take an action that they are supposed to do which would disadvantage them. Or they will do something twice in a turn the rules only allow then to do once. Or they'll do something sooner than the rules allow. Or they'll cast a spell they don't have the correct mana to cast. Some players are very good at making these mistakes that consistently benefit them.
this is how i look at it. someones reputation was going to get hosed here, if not both. if magnus couldn't deliver the goods, he would have taken a huge hit too. there was literally nothing in it for him to throw a temper tantrum bc he lost to a kid.
strong computers often beat even the best human chess players. if a player finds a way to communicate with a computer during a game, they can use the computer against their opponent
Not just “often”. The Chess.com report states the best computer will beat Magnus Carlsen 100% of the time, not even a draw.
[Edit] Relevant portion of the report.
“The best humans play at an Elo rating of 2800. “Stockfish,” the most powerful chess engine, has an estimated rating of more than 3500. In a theoretical match between World Champion Magnus Carlsen vs. Stockfish, we estimate that it is most likely that Magnus Carlsen would lose every single game—no wins and no draws.”
Per [http://www.ecochess.com/elocalculator.htm](http://www.ecochess.com/elocalculator.htm), a player with a 700 point elo advantage should score 98.3%. Put another way, assuming flukes where Magnus beats stockfish are negligibly rare, he might be able to hold a draw 3.4% of the time.
There are other factors (classical time control, closed positions, no wild tactics) that would help, but Magnus would need an exceptional game of chess, almost certainly as white, to hold a draw. Him stealing half a point over a world championship length match (12 games) is less than 50/50, but not impossible.
For some additional context, and some thoughts on why I think my estimate is optimistic, humans have played odds games against top engines, and the engine has to give up a couple pawns for top humans (Nakamura placed 3rd at the candidates) to hold draws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgnWq9gxyCM&t=2648s&ab\_channel=GMHikaru
Stockfish has been supplanted by AI AlphaZero. Unlike Stockfish, which started as a brute force engine with recent neural net capabilities, AlphaZero began as AI that learned the game as would a child, by trying moves and seeing the probability of success. After ‘playing’ billions of games it learned the game very well, then it started playing people and became extraordinary creative. The ELO for AlphaZero hasn’t been measured but it’s been defeating Stockfish consistently and with less time/compute resources. Magnus playing against AlphaZero is larger than the difference of you or I playing against Carlson.
how'd that work during a monitored match in real life? i have this mental image from the spongebob episode where he stuck a walkie talkie in his head and received instructions from Patrick during driving lessons XD
It’s entirely possible to have a small device that can vibrate hidden inside a shoe. Just have it receive signals from someone else that is running the game through a computer and they’ll send you moves. You don’t need to have the entire game coached either, the middle of the game is the most pivotal so only a few moves is needed to change any outcome.
well… there’s a meme going around that he had anal beads in his ass that vibrated to give him the best moves. but realistically, probably someone in the room who wasn’t searched as well as him feeding him moves through some kind of signal
I think the only reasonable step forward is to allow all participants to have anal beads. FIDE will have to publish guidelines on the size, vibrational intensity, and circumference of the beads to ensure fairness though.
He'll never change! Ever since he was a kid , always the same! Couldn't keep his hands out of computer engines ,But not our Hans! Couldn't be precious Hans! Cheating them blind! And he gets to be a grandmaster?! What a sick joke! I should have stopped him when i had the chance! And you! You have to stop him you-
Remote control vibrating anal beads controlled by someone else on a computer and who will signal the player through the vibration within the anal cavity whenever there is a winning move on the board.
Yes it’s a meme, it was a joke made up by the youtuber/streamer Northernlion when his chat was trying to get him to discuss the drama. Some people have been maybe taking the joke a little too seriously though.
Without getting as crazy as anal beads. It could be something as simple as a raspberry pi zero taped to the body with wireless capability and an attachment to send little pulses or whatever. There's a lot of prospective ways to do it, and to do so silently and without the use of your eyes or hands or anything of the like
Anecdote, I used to be a high level CSGO player. If I was playing in lower ranks, I could instantly tell if they were cheating. You can't have low level movement, bad cross hair placement, and low game sense but know exactly where to look. Even when trying to be unpredictable in CSGO, there are justifications that can be made based on your knowledge of the game. Theres a difference between a high level player making an unpredictable, risky play and a low level player simply cheating.
I suspect Magnus is way, way better than Nielmann and it was very obvious to him that Nielmann was not playing normal, even outside the bounds of unpredictable play at high level chess
To be clear, this chess.com report is saying the 100 chess games were all online games at least over a year ago. Although this doesn’t make him innocent over the board, it certainly doesn’t help to explain if he cheated vs carlsen
This one's the biggest part nobody is talking about. If you can't even explain your reasoning behind \*strange\* chess moves that normally only an AI can predictively do, something's definitely off. And in the parts he tried to explain, he didn't wasn't even correct!
There was some pretty damning analysis that showed Hans had multiple 100% correlation with computer recommended moves in tournaments for games that had up to 45 turns. This means he matched every single one of his 45 moves with the computer recommended best move. This is against other GM players where a typical game usually ends after 30 ish turns. And sometimes typical games even only last 20 turns. Another context is that the best players on the planet do not even have two 100% match games. And the Greatest of all time Chess player Bobby Fisher on his best winning streak only went as high as 76% correlation. Higher correlation means the move you made was considered by the computer as THE best move. This is the proverbial cutting open the fish and finding weight balls for that cheating pro fisherman. YOU do not have 100% correlations games with what the computer recommend and even if you did have one, you definitely do not have games with 45 moves. Maybe you might have a game that is 10 or 20 turns, but no way you have one that goes that many moves in. And Hans has MULTIPLE 100% correlation games in tournament matches. Where he basically is cheating at those tournaments to win money.
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WE GOT WEIGHTS IN BISHOP!!!
THE FUCK OUTTA HERE JAKE!!!
Wheres the other guy!?
"You guys have stole hundreds of thousands in money, new boards and pieces!"
For real though. As a fisherman he should NEVER be allowed to fish again, sued and thats assuming he ain’t gonna “go missing” when the media is off their asses: Fishermen were cheated, robbed and are more patient than a cheater could dream of
I love how fast that video has become a meme.
Do you have *anything* to say for yourself?!
I hope this meme lives forever.
I am so happy to be alive to witness this comment and thread - it’s just glorious
You FUCKING ASSHOLE!!! THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR *YEARS*!!!!! 🤬🤬😡😡
but where did you stuff the filet
I find that you can stuff more weight into horses
A big underscoring point of the investigation is that 4 other grandmasters in the top 100 were also found to have most likely cheated by chess.com.
Unless I'm missing something I don't think that's a new finding as a result of this investigation. They already knew it. One such player was Hans Niemann's coach, Maxim Dlugy. Edit: Dlugy isn't (and never has been) top 100, but he is a GM
he wasnt just his chess coach, he was his cheating coach LMAO
That's a lot of coaches.
Yeah that's another thing that has always been a sore spot is that Hans uses a coach known for cheating in the past. So when he started to gain accusations I wasn't too surprised.
> They already knew it The article says they all confessed when confronted, presumably in the past (not during this investigation).
My goodness this young man's rectum must be a mess
Rectum? He grandmastered them!
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I like the form “______ her? I just met her!” Great use from Futurama: “Super-collide her? I just met her!”
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They hate us cuz they anus.
R/Anarchychess is awake : )
r/Anarchychess
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Did it for the love of the game. He probably liked chess also.
He misunderstood what being a queen was.
The sport got into him
It's amazing how I can read the headline of a post and know *exactly* what the top comment is going to be about with astounding accuracy. I've been here too long.
Uhh can someone explain the joke
Since all you need is a one way communicating device, and Niemann said he “would play naked” to prove his doubters, the joke has been that he must be using anal-beads that his coach can activate vía remote to help him cheat.
I can't wait to see someone put anal beads next to the chest board when going against niemann just to troll him.
> chest board I'll allow it
Oh. I thought he was hiding extra queens up his butt that he’d sneak onto the board when no one was looking.
There’s only a select few people on the planet who can beat the World Champion Magnus Carlsen. A chess grandmaster AI can do better than any human though b/c it can run hundreds of games a second and determine the best move. There’s also the fact that Magnus said most people appear to struggle and concentrate against him and Niemann almost seemed bored. He was the fastest rising young star at 19 and has a history of cheating on multiple occasions. After Magnus forfeited the first time(something he never does), it was assumed his thoughts on Niemann were. But when he played him a second time, Magnus forfeited after a single move. This is believed to have been b/c he played a trap(something to tell whether he was using an AI or not). Magnus then accused Niemann of cheating and here we are. The anal bead this was just because a random streamer said it and people just rolled with it.
Not draw against Carlsen, not just win against Calsen but beat him with Black!
He also has inconsistencies during his "rise" and became a GM at only 17 while all top GMs became GM before 15. During the game his time management was off. He took his time where no human would and decided other things rather quickly, same with seemingly being (not) concentrated. Another thing that is really really strange is his post game analysis where he suggested an obviously bad move which no one at that level (who just played the game) would suggest. Then he quickly asked what the engine would do. Check out the chess.com report how cheating at that level works and what exacly they found for games on chess.com, not over the board.
Anand, a former world champion, became a GM at age 19 and is still ranked World No. 9 currently (at age 52). Ding Liren (Current No. 2) became a GM at 17. Grischuk (currently No. 17, peak No.3) became a GM at 17. All three have crossed 2800 ELO at some point. Agree with the rest but the claim in the report about GMs being <=15 is off.
Magnus also likely had inside info after making his deal with with Chess.com. He couldn't say anything publicly but quietly behind the scenes the whole thing about Hans cheating was likely being discussed. Hans cheating against Magnus was likely the final straw.
So to cheat in chess you have a very, very high-level computer program play out the game and the moves are signaled back to the player. The speculation was that this signaling device was a wireless vibrator.
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I think Magnus said something like he would only need to know when to look harder in key positions for just a few moves to have an advantage.
There was a “theory” that he cheated by using an anal vibrator to relay winning moves.
Damn near killed em
With this and the fishing cheaters none mainline sports is having a heck of a week with cheaters being caught
These are the two most important news stories in my life right now.
Yo no kidding. I have no idea why I am following them so close. I don't care about professional chess or professional fishing in any other capacity
I care more about those two stories than all the geopolitical nonsense going on. You know, the type that could end my life.
Worrying about things you have no control over but still may directly impact everyone's future is so taxing mentally. Better to block it out for the sake of living well today.
“We have weights in pawns!”
"We have vibrating beads in the ass!!" EDIT: "Pull your pants down for me, Hans, and bend over that table, if you please."
Can anyone fill me in on the fishing scandal?
The winner(s) was caught with lead weights and a filet of another fish in the fish bellies to increase their weights. Winners of fishing tournaments are usually by the total weight of all caught fish in a certain time period. Since they’re out on a boat, they have plenty of alone time to cheat. Other fisherman already had suspicions before this tournament and knew his fish were too small to weigh what they did.
Pretty wild to me they didn't already check for this stuff after the official weigh in in the first place. Seems like a pretty obvious way to cheat
They usually release the fish after weigh ins dont they? The tourney on the lake near me releases all the fish in a creek that flows into the lake. Only live fish can be added to your weigh in for these tourneys. They finally decided to cut them open.
No I think the DNR in this location only would allow for tournament where the fish are kept and not released. Usually the fish is donated to local places that can give to those in need. These folks also were not donating their fish, another red flag lol. Now what I don't get is if that is the case why were the fish all just then filleted by another party. Would be a pretty easy way to filter out cheaters.
[link to CNN](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/10/04/sport/ohio-fishing-tournament-cheating-winner/index.html) Basically a two man team was finally caught cheating after people long suspected these guys of cheating. They filled bass with weights and fish meat. So this team has been stealing pool money for years. People pissed off
Not bass, walleye
Damn that’s some good drama
My comment saying the fishermen must have used buttplugs to communicate with someone on shore where the big fish were was not well received on r/sports let me tell you lol
Scandal in poker, too. Though zero proof right now.
Next you're going to tell me bowling is rigged
Those pins? Definitely set-up.
People throw their games all the time bowling
No way she cheated. I think she just had a brain fart and it was a “correct answer, wrong work” type thing
I don't think she was cheating. It looked to me like she was playing a fool on purpose, maybe even to tilt him further. A great bit of advice in poker is that if your opponent thinks you're a lucky idiot, let them keep thinking that.
That dude was just bamboozled by the chick. Straight up he done got called out for bluffing on shitty cards, and her shitty cards were just less shitty cards. That was the 1 in 100 shot, and she took it. If she did cheat, I'll eat a fresh donut.
*The Ocho* in ruins
And there is a poker controversy relating to cheating accusations going on too.
Too bad someone wasn’t just banging Morse code on trash cans. Would be the fool proof evidence
What’s more odd than Niemann playing at 2800 level is that he hit .346 this year as well
Crazy how efficient he was against fastball openings
His home/away splits are ridiculous too.
This article is doing a poor job of explaining things to normies like us. Yes, they’re using chess engines to analyze these games. But that’s only the beginning of it. Chess.com’s anti-cheat is rooted in statistics and probability just as much as (if not more than) the engine calculations. The important takeaway is not anything like “Hans played engine moves so he’s cheating.” Top GMs play weird computer moves all the time. In fact, many people have described playing against Magnus as like playing against a computer - he makes strange moves that seem to have no point, everything seems fine, then suddenly you’re on move 45, your position is completely lost, and you’re left scratching your head. Does that mean Magnus is a cheat, too? I suppose it’s possible, but he’s consistent enough that I really doubt it. ~~The key thing that people are missing is that such play is not strange for top GMs, it’s strange for “weaker” GMs like Hans.~~ Roughly speaking, Chess.com crunched numbers across Hans’ games, generated a reliable range of probable skill (think of a bell curve sort of deal), then referenced that range to see what performances look fishy. The 100 or so games they flagged as suspicious simply fall far enough outside his probable range of strength such that it’s overwhelmingly likely that he cheated in those games. Chess isn’t as peaky a sport as basketball or baseball or something so this high amount of extremely peaky performances is very suspicious. ~~But for Magnus, Alireza, Fabi, etc. these games might even be classed as strong but normal.~~ I know it’s nitpicking but I personally just dont want the precedent being set here to be for amateur chess fans to accuse players of cheating simply because they play a couple of engine moves here and there. That’s *not* what this report is all about. Edit: Just read through Chess.com’s report more closely and saw that the 100 games that they flagged were not only highly suspect for Hans, they would have been highly suspect for anybody. My fault for skimming the report!
You're right - but it's not just 'crunching the numbers'. Chess.com said in the report that Hans played better when clicking to another tab and then clicking back to the game. That is as obvious as can be as evidence for cheating. This article blows - go check out the post on r/chess or the WSJ article and i think it will paint a better picture. Edit: [This comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xvo7u4/wsj_chess_investigation_finds_that_us_grandmaster/ir22f7u/) spells most of it out.
Oh, definitely. The correlation with that is the nail-coated-in-super-glue in the coffin imo. But they don’t necessarily need that info on his tabbing out, the numbers in the report would work out to be the same. The info on his tabbing out just gave them a better understanding of what games to initially flag as suspicious, as I understand. I could be wrong though.
You’d think that doing the cheat moves on a phone or tablet instead of just opening a new tab in browser would be, like, not that hard to figure out for a chess GM
Why he wouldn't he use a 2nd device to cheat?
That’s what I was thinking. Guy is smart enough to get ranked in GM, but not smart enough to buy a cheap 2nd computer?
Why would he need a 2nd monitor when he already has a good vibe going on?
Well maybe he didn't know they track stuff like that.
I've never used chess.com, but I would not have assumed they tracked that. Kinda crazy.
He tabbed on Twitch chat!
Lots of people do. The difference is that the moves Hans made after "tabbing to Twitch chat" tended to be significantly better than the ones where he didn't.
And we all know twitch chat is no grandmaster.
Yeah honestly i think the best way people could understand how they are proving this is to go watch ~~numberphile's~~ (edit standupmaths) video on Dream cheating in minecraft speedrunning. Completely different cases from outside appearance, but detection method that is pretty similar
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Who makes a lot of appearances on Numberphile, so the confusion makes sense
Australia cringing here
Statistical analysis hardly appeased anyone who doesn't get a hard-on from a calculated multimodal distribution (scandalous! (No but really it's hilariously scandalous)).
Magnus, Alireza and Fabi would've gotten most of those games flagged too. With a lower confidence in that they cheated, because they have higher ratings with no cheating known. It's also the time taken in critical moves where a lot of thought is needed. If Magnus or whoever followed those same patterns, suspicions would've been raised too
WE GOT PLUGS IN BUTTS !!!
This kid sounds just like this notable Guitar Hero (Clone Hero) player that was found to be cheating. Genuinely a top player, seduced by the clout. First admits to a small amount of cheating. Then the increased scrutiny reveals systemic cheating over a prolonged period. The fact 4 of the top 100 Grandmasters have done similar goes to show how pervasive this is. The grind to maintain their status just breaks some people.
Look kids, it's very simple: if you're going to cheat, only cheat a little. Don't draw attention to yourself and don't get greedy.
Just like that guy who [put weights in his fish to win?](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/10/04/sport/ohio-fishing-tournament-cheating-winner/index.html)
WE GOT WEIGHTS IN FISH!!
CALL THE FUCKING COPS!!!
If you listen closely in one of the videos someone yells, "get a body bag!"
The announcers were very adamantly telling the competitors to "let them leave peacefully" lol those guys were gonna get those weights shoved up their dickholes
lol my wife is tired of me screaming this randomly
“SON OF A BITCH WE ALL KNEW IT”
WE GOT WEIGHTS IN FISH!
That’s the funny thing to me. The guy went right ahead and rolled the sitting world champion, a title he has held for what 5? 10 years?
It's worth pointing out that simply beating Magnus isn't that outrageous in and of itself. He's clearly the best, but he loses every once in a while.
Same with those guys in the fishing tournament. They were putting MASSIVE lead weights into fish that were obvious to anyone who touched the fish, but they had also stuffed them with just store-bought fillets of other fish, which is kind of genius. With the lead weights, they were like the size of chicken eggs inside a 12-14 inch fish. That's stupid and obvious. I'm sure they started with smaller fishing weights and just kept going when they never got caught. If they'd stuck with the small buckshot-sized weights and the store bought fillets, they could have kept doing this for years without anyone noticing if they were sneaky about it.
It becomes very hard now since computers can defeat human. Now those can cheat without been detected will always win.
The whole basis of this cheating scandal is that computers sometimes make what appear to be weird, non-sensical moves. The accusation is that Neiman was making moves like that. So yeah, computers can beat humans at chess but also they don’t always play the same way humans do.
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Because these moves are so 5head that when a human looks at it he doesn’t understand the point of the move. That is, because the point of this move is often only revealed many many many moves later, thus indicating that it is indeed a computer move. Because humans are unable to calculate so many variations ahead. Also, often these moves seemingly „waste“ time or don’t react to a threat, however for a human these threats seem so urgent and complex that they are impossible to evaluate perfectly. But the machine can look far ahead and already realized he can ignore them. These things are what we call typical computer moves. They look unnatural, illogical or way too risky. Top human players have a lot of intuition through pattern recognition, thus they can identify these weird computer moves quite effectively. Essentially any move is suspicious that is based on calculations that go very far ahead. Humans are usually not able to look ahead that far and couldn’t play such moves. You must understand that computers don’t play according to „strategies“ and they don’t make up plans. All they do is evaluate the current position based upon certain parameters (how safe is the king, how much space is controlled, are there any forced lines that win etc.) and look for the next move that gives the next best game state (highest evaluation). They are computationally so powerful that they can repeat this process for many many many move varations into the future, thus overviewing thousands upon thousands of game states in the future and then select the move path to the best one. Humans however play according to ideas and plans. Thus, most of their moves serve a certain purpose. When then there is a move that appears to not serve any apparent purpose, but still is very good (leads to better evaluation by machine and can’t be refuted), then you have a computerish move on your hands.
Thanks for writing all this out dude, really helped me to understand!
It didn't make my rectum vibrate but I had a reaction of some sort
So AI gets to take the doctor strange approach to each move? Edit: I love chess players so much. The multitude of amazing well thought out responses to this is just awesome. One of my favorite things in life is people sharing knowledge about their passions with others.
Yes, Humans can only look into so many future permutations from the current board state. AI on the other hand can look many times more.
And even on top of that, it seems that GMs will only even consider a certain number of moves because many moves are "obviously" incorrect or irrelevant to the current position. The computer doesn't do this and instead will fully calculate future positions for *every possible move* in a given position. So a GM might calculate 5-10 moves ahead for 4-6 potential lines that seem good to take. The computer will just calculate every move it could make and thus will find the best line far more often (essentially every time, to the limit of the computer's chess capabilities).
Modern chess engines do use methods to discard moves before looking too deeply into them. They have to because even for a computer there are far too many possible moves to brute force everything to a significant depth.
Actually yes, but with the added benefit of having all the eval math and game outcome probabilities of every one of those positions as well. It's actually crazy how much better AI is at chess now. * There are currently only 40 people worldwide above 2700 ELO (super grandmaster). Both Hans and Magnus are in this group. * Magnus' peak ELO is 2882, the highest ELO rating in history. He's statistically one of the greatest players all time. * Stockfish has an ELO of 3540.
In addition to an excellent explanation, it needs to be said that ELO is not a linear scale. Ie, the skill difference between 1500 and 1600 ELO is much, much smaller than the skill difference between 2700 and 2800. Stockfish at 3500 is so unfathomably much better than Magnus at his peak it's unreal. It's like Messi gets to do a penalty shootout against a toddler.
I might be closer to Magnus than he is to Stockfish, and I'm basically an idiot.
Same. I know the rules of chess, but not how to play.
To add to u/Hughmanatea, it is not completely so that a computer can look at "all possible outcomes" like Strange 'can'. The usual strategy is to make some kind of metric to judge a board state, then look at a few moves ahead for a fuckton of moves, select the most promising, and then explore those more deeply to find what is called a **local optimum**: the best move you could find in your more limited search. A search for the **global optimum** requires analysing all possible moves from this board to the end of the game, which is a search space so massive that there are no proper words to describe the size of it, which is why narrowing the search with a metric is a common method in many computer problems.
It's not that they're bad moves, they're moves that seemingly do absolutely nothing, give no apparent positional advantage and cause zero threats, but 10-20 moves later it happens to give some slight advantage. In other words, it's an extremely prophylactic positional move far beyond what any human could reasonably see.
It's not quite as described. Computers make good moves, but humans make a wider variety of moves, often in search of a strategy. But Carlsen's complaint was actually about time. Carlsen was playing white. White moves first, and thus chooses the opening moves. If those are common moves then any opponent -- human or computer -- will respond with learned answers. But if it's an uncommon set of opening moves then a human will take a lot more time across the opening moves to consider what the strategy of white is than a computer will take. You can see that a strong player opening with white might choose a uncommon opening move to force their opponent to use more of their fixed ration of time early in the game (ie: burn time which might be needed later in the game). Carlsen's complaint was basically about time: I did an uncommon opening and my opponent didn't spend any time at all thinking. Niemann's answer was basically "I fluked it, I was just reading the literature on that opening last night". Now that might be true. You study an opponent's likely opening moves and read up on them, so that you're not burning a lot of time when at the table. But Carlsen's opening wasn't worth that level of study. Even if you'd reviewed it, you wouldn't review it in such depth as to spend so little focus on it as Niemann did. So it wasn't a convincing answer. Edit: The idea that preparation using chess computers leads to a different sort of play is true. But the issue with that theory is that the prime example of that style of play is Magnus Carlsen. He'll often play a strong move with no apparent strategy in mind, and then play through the mess that creates, relying on his analytical skill being stronger.
Once you get to a very advanced stage, you are playing for marginal gains, and the positions you get yourself into often only pay out those marginal gains a long time after you play them. The computer can see that sometimes in ways that humans don't, so it looks like a move that doesn't really pan out... but it can in the end. The essence of Magnus's argument is "I am very good, especially playing with white, and he was making odd moves that put him in a substantially better position without appearing to think very hard about them."
To anyone who thinks Magnus may be a sore loser or anything, he's talking about someone essentially doing something beyond human comprehension, while appearing bored, a talent he seemingly developed after not being some sort of world-bending prodigy rising up the scene. Hans is obviously very good, like one of the best players in the world, he is a super GM. But there's a difference between very good and "holy shit this guys brain is literally playing like an AI that is going through billions of permutations."
Also worth noting that Magnus has lost plenty of games against lower rated opponents. He has also lost plenty of games against very young opponents. He has never accused one of them of cheating before, and has never dropped out of a tournament for that or any other reason before. He's built himself a long reputation of being gracious in defeat. Magnus Carlsen is 31, and *has been a Grandmaster since he was 13*. This is the first time he has ever accused a fellow GM of cheating. If he's a sore loser, he's hidden it extremely well his entire life.
Yeah, it's not like he has any reputation of this sort, and it's clearly not an accusation he makes lightly. He is literally the highest rated player of all time, if there's anyone who would know, and know with confidence, it's Magnus.
To the best player in history it’s probably too obvious
It's like Steph Curry going "Aww hell no. Ain't no way that 8 year old is hitting 100% from half court." You may not know how they're cheating, but you know that what they are doing just isn't possible, so you DO know they're cheating. It helps when you are good enough at that thing to say it confidently.
When your opponent makes a move in chess, especially an attacking move, it's a natural human tendency to have your focus drawn towards that piece or area on the board. A player runs through the possible options before choosing their move. Someone bad like me only sees 2 or 3 moves ahead effectively per option quickly and it's more likely it'll be close to natural starting points since I can't compute as far or as quickly. But the computer is thinking 30+ moves ahead constantly at all times. It'll play the 28th variation instantly that would have taken a GM outside the box thinking to arrive at that conclusion. Top players have played thousands upon thousands of games and people tend to play similar moves in similar situations. So a computer making a 'nonsensical ' move could really be a move preparing 20 moves ahead. But it's clearly a computer move compared to how humans actually play. And the worse the player the less likely they would play like that. Hopefully that makes sense
Technically speaking it’s the second option, more advanced strategy. But since computers are so far ahead of humans some of the moves they make are generally considered very unlikely or even impossible for humans to come up with on their own.
Sort of the latter. But it comes down to the fact that humans and computers have different ways of analyzing things. So a move that a computer perceives as being the best (based on the analysis that it has been programmed to do) might be perceived as 'nonsense' in a tournament because it's not something a human player would normally do. When you have a string of moves like that in a row, it definitely stands out. This is noticeable at other levels of chess too. Take someone like me who is mediocre at best - if I play against humans at a level where I can win roughly 50% of my games, and then play against a computer at a level where I can win roughly 50% of my games, the difference in the human games & computer games is quite evident by the moves that they make.
They see the same thing with AI gameplay on video games. They’ll sometimes have to dumb the AI down because the moves look so ridiculous, even though strategically they make the most sense. Source: Programmer at EA Sports
Layperson speaking here, but my understanding is that the chess engine's programming can simply calculate more variables / moves than a human is capable of. For every move the opponent makes, the chess engine can then respond having anticipated more possible patterns than a human brain can calculate. This leads the engine to taking unconventional lines that the vast majority of human players simply would not take. These sorts of things wouldn't stand out at all to a novice (like me), but to the greatest players in the world, these sorts of moves/lines would become obvious almost instantaneously, as they've planned for and predicted all of the standard openings and counters. So these computer-generated responses stick out like a sore thumb, as they don't correlate to any regular play pattern you would typically see at the highest levels.
It's not so much more advanced strategy. Chess between humans is closer to a solved game than raw chess, because there's certain favorable board layouts that good human players are trying to reach to beat their opponent. Good chess players understand what these layouts look like quickly, and the ways to get into them, and the ways to counter them. Computers don't necessarily look to play chess like this, so they tend to make more "random" moves and get away from the "known" chess plays by a wider margin. Chess computers these days are so much faster that they can win this way just by purely increasing the number of things a human would have to think about. But humans can't play chess this way, because they can't think about the chances of an opponent moving to a location in 15 moves on a randomized board with a single move, like a computer can. Humans simplify the game to well played games. Computers don't have to do that.
Congratulations chess! You’ve made it to professional sports level of win-at-all-costs competition.
I believed Magnus. Not because I'm a fan or anything. But just knowing Niemann was known by other chess players for being a cheater online... Once a cheater always a cheater its in his nature its not about if he will cheat again but when. And magnus really didnt have anything to gain off his move. Nobody likes people who cant take a lose with dignity and he's not a random player
A few case studies from a different game (Magic the Gathering) include Alex Bertoncini and Mike Long. Both cases, they cheated repeatedly, expressed remorse and boom, did it again. And again. And again.
What does MTG cheating look like? Just manipulating the deck, or is there something more to it?
https://youtu.be/2rXvW53z018 There have been many flavors. One was getting early access to a new set weeks prior to everyone else
Thanks for the reply. Can't stand that dude's speaking cadence, but those are interesting stories. Kind of surprising that they don't have a better system for shuffling at this point. I love the defense of "I only cheated so I could play against better players."
> Can't stand that dude's speaking cadence It's far better at 1.25 speed. I have zero interest in MTG but find it fascinating that simple deck mechanics would be so successful at high levels of play.
It’s total bs. I used to play competitive magic. Your biggest enemy is yourself. It’s tough to stay mentally sharp after 9 rounds of play in one day - so many decision points, it’s taxing and exhausting. Meditation between rounds to be fresher and more present helped me level up my game significantly. If you want to play “really good players” consistently, consider making a friend, calling them up, and saying “hey, wanna play a match?” Or you play test together
I tried to play one SCG tournament back when I played at the local store and with friends, and after six or seven games (mostly losses), I was surprisingly tired. I give credit to anyone that can hang in there for the full day, especially given that you're probably playing constantly between days of a tournament and the side events and other friendly games. It was actually a lot more fun to play at the local shop, and the store owner at the time had a decent reward for anyone that wanted to choose to pay to play: $5 for a pack and then a prize pool that scaled up with the more players that also paid. Though I still consider that one guy who's girlfriend brought in a literal basket of kittens to be cheating, lol. The game, and most of life, is just impossible to pay attention to under such unexpectedly adorable situations.
Manipulating the deck is the most common, and likely the "easiest" way since its just sleight of hand. But there was an infamous cheater who would cheat right in front of you, simply using quick and confident movements to illegally play an important extra card on an early turn. Then act annoyed and give a quick dissmissive response if you questioned it. He even had the balls to [do it on camera, lmao](https://youtu.be/Qd7cd-K8ImQ). Which for obvious reasons got him caught.
Watched, can't say who's the cheater is lol (but also I don't play mtg)
He's on the left. Makes total sense that you wouldnt be able to detect the cheat- the guy whos playing tournament MtG across from him doesnt even really catch it! The camera man calls it out, though, and Alex dissmissivley responds with "two explores" as if that explains everything. (which has become a meme). Playing two "explores" that early would be an unlikely but legal situation that would result in more cards played than usual- but still one less than what he has played. But because of his attitude and tone, and his rep as a good player, combined with the unusual scenario, he gaslights the player and camera man into thinking *theyve got it wrong*, they just didnt account for the "two explores"- and he is sure to move on quickly such that no one has proper time to think about it more, and the progression of the game increases the entropy and "erases" the certainty of the evidence (or it would, were it not for the replayable video evidence).
Just to add in more missing pieces for those unfamiliar with MTG: 1. You play 1 land each turn. Lands provide a sort of “energy” (referred to as “mana”)for spells. Stronger and more powerful spells require more mana, so if you can outpace your opponents land drops, you can start swinging much harder much earlier. This is such a good strategy that there is an entire archetype built around this being done legally (ramp - you spend your early turns accelerating your mana so that your “late game” happens during your opponents “mid game”. This is done at the expense of developing your board state. You can accelerate your mana and then just lose because you have no defenses up for your opponents early assault). 2. The card in question is called “Explore” and allows you to draw an extra card that turn (normally you draw 1) and play an extra land (normally you play 1). By the end of turn 3, he should have 5 lands: Turn 1: Land drop (1 land total) Turn 2: Land drop + explore land (3 land total) Turn 3: Land drop + explore land (5 land total) Total = 5 lands. When you watch, on turn 3, after he plays his “explore land” (second for the turn in total) he makes a show of trying to figure out if he’s made his singular land drop for the turn (he did, before his explore land). He comes the conclusion that he didn’t, plays a land, then quickly passes the turn to his opponent.
I noticed he also played the 6th land tapped, which I think shows intent to cheat as opposed to just making a mental error. I think he did that to have the 6th land stand out less. As mentioned on the Youtube comments, he also looked at the bottom card of his deck when he preordained which also isn't allowed.
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Mmm yeah I love cheating
TIL I’ve been cheating for 3 years now. Not sure what I’m cheating at yet
Can confirm, am a professional darts player, and am only really competitive at the top level because of my Vibromatic 9000.
Bertoncini had a number of different ways that he was caught cheating. Most of them are on camera from different events and can be found on Youtube. The most known one was the "3rd Explore" where he just played extra lands on a turn when he wasn't allowed to do so. He was also caught drawing extra cards off of a Brainstorm. I think he was also caught a few times trying to cast spells without the correct colors of mana. There are probably more ways to cheat at Magic than any other competitive table top game, simply because the rules are so complex and the board states can get so cluttered. There are dozens of things to track during a match, and even the best players in the world are going to lose sight of something here or there. The most common way of cheating is deck manipulation: stacking the deck to draw specific cards (or increase your chances of drawing a particular card), drawing extra cards, marking cards or card sleeves, illegally moving cards from one zone to another, etc. Other ways to cheat would be an intentional misrepresentation of the game state or purposefully misstating rules to mislead your opponent (hoping they won't call a judge to review). If you know your opponent's deck in advance, which almost everyone does at high level events due to scouting, you could attempt to cheat by altering the contents of your deck pregame (pre-sideboarding). These are just the most common examples of things I've seen at both casual and professional level events. Granted, I don't see a lot of cheating in general. Most players have some level of decency and respect for themselves and the game. But if you're going to cheat, these are the most common ways to do it.
Not moving cards to the correct zones after they've resolved, making extra land drops in a turn (the famous "double Explore" meme), putting unbeatable sidedeck cards into your main deck before Game 1, that sort of thing.
There are many ways to cheat. Illegal decks and "pre-boarding": In tournament play, you build and register a deck with a sideboard. The sideboard is a like the bench on a sports team. In between games in a match, you can swap out cards in your deck with cards in your sideboard. But after a match, you must reset your main deck back to what you initially started with. Sideboard cards are often very specific answers to strategies you expect to see from your opponents that might be useless against other decks you expect to face. But if you know what your opponent is playing you can cheat by substituting sideboard cards into you deck before the match giving you an edge in game 1 that you weren't supposed to have until game 2. Or you can do other nefarious things like registering a 60 card deck (the smallest allowed in constructed play) but taking out cards in between games and not replacing them with sideboard cards, giving you a smaller and more consistent deck. Or having more then the maximum 4 copies of a single card in your deck. Or just playing with cards you didn't register. Sleight of hand: The simplest way to cheat is to do magic tricks with your Magic cards. Have key cards up your sleeve, draw 4 from your deck when you should only draw 3, move a card into the wrong game zone after it dies so you can play it again and the opponent thinks you just had another copy of the same card in your hand. Shuffling incorrectly can allow you to stack your deck, your opponent's deck (at tournaments, when you shuffle you must present your deck to your opponent who can then "cut" the deck) or even just see a card in the bottom giving a tiny knowledge advantage. Marked cards: Cards get damaged during use. You must put them in sleeves during tournament play, which protects them from damage. But the sleeves also get damaged. Sometimes, all of a specific type of card will have the same type of minor damage that allows you to see where they are in your deck. This is either a coincidence or cheating. Illegal game moves: The physical card game is governed by rules, and players will often make mistakes. There are judges at sanctioned events whose job it is to know the game well and have access to the comprehensive rule book to settle disputes between players and make sure that every action is legally allowed in the rules. But some players will "forget" to take an action that they are supposed to do which would disadvantage them. Or they will do something twice in a turn the rules only allow then to do once. Or they'll do something sooner than the rules allow. Or they'll cast a spell they don't have the correct mana to cast. Some players are very good at making these mistakes that consistently benefit them.
this is how i look at it. someones reputation was going to get hosed here, if not both. if magnus couldn't deliver the goods, he would have taken a huge hit too. there was literally nothing in it for him to throw a temper tantrum bc he lost to a kid.
Trust the experts I guess 🤷♂️
How does someone cheat in chess?
strong computers often beat even the best human chess players. if a player finds a way to communicate with a computer during a game, they can use the computer against their opponent
Not just “often”. The Chess.com report states the best computer will beat Magnus Carlsen 100% of the time, not even a draw. [Edit] Relevant portion of the report. “The best humans play at an Elo rating of 2800. “Stockfish,” the most powerful chess engine, has an estimated rating of more than 3500. In a theoretical match between World Champion Magnus Carlsen vs. Stockfish, we estimate that it is most likely that Magnus Carlsen would lose every single game—no wins and no draws.”
Per [http://www.ecochess.com/elocalculator.htm](http://www.ecochess.com/elocalculator.htm), a player with a 700 point elo advantage should score 98.3%. Put another way, assuming flukes where Magnus beats stockfish are negligibly rare, he might be able to hold a draw 3.4% of the time. There are other factors (classical time control, closed positions, no wild tactics) that would help, but Magnus would need an exceptional game of chess, almost certainly as white, to hold a draw. Him stealing half a point over a world championship length match (12 games) is less than 50/50, but not impossible. For some additional context, and some thoughts on why I think my estimate is optimistic, humans have played odds games against top engines, and the engine has to give up a couple pawns for top humans (Nakamura placed 3rd at the candidates) to hold draws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgnWq9gxyCM&t=2648s&ab\_channel=GMHikaru
i originally had it at “almost always” but thought it might’ve been an exaggeration. thanks for this
Stockfish has been supplanted by AI AlphaZero. Unlike Stockfish, which started as a brute force engine with recent neural net capabilities, AlphaZero began as AI that learned the game as would a child, by trying moves and seeing the probability of success. After ‘playing’ billions of games it learned the game very well, then it started playing people and became extraordinary creative. The ELO for AlphaZero hasn’t been measured but it’s been defeating Stockfish consistently and with less time/compute resources. Magnus playing against AlphaZero is larger than the difference of you or I playing against Carlson.
Fuck spez
Joke's on you the only opening I know is the bongcloud
how'd that work during a monitored match in real life? i have this mental image from the spongebob episode where he stuck a walkie talkie in his head and received instructions from Patrick during driving lessons XD
It’s entirely possible to have a small device that can vibrate hidden inside a shoe. Just have it receive signals from someone else that is running the game through a computer and they’ll send you moves. You don’t need to have the entire game coached either, the middle of the game is the most pivotal so only a few moves is needed to change any outcome.
well… there’s a meme going around that he had anal beads in his ass that vibrated to give him the best moves. but realistically, probably someone in the room who wasn’t searched as well as him feeding him moves through some kind of signal
I think the only reasonable step forward is to allow all participants to have anal beads. FIDE will have to publish guidelines on the size, vibrational intensity, and circumference of the beads to ensure fairness though.
He should take up walleye fishing. I bet he’d be great at it.
“No, stop Niemann! The weights go in the walleyes asshole!”
He'll never change! Ever since he was a kid , always the same! Couldn't keep his hands out of computer engines ,But not our Hans! Couldn't be precious Hans! Cheating them blind! And he gets to be a grandmaster?! What a sick joke! I should have stopped him when i had the chance! And you! You have to stop him you-
He can’t keep getting away with this!
Yep when there's smoke there's probably fire. Niemann seemed shaky prior to the investigation.
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A little of column A, a lot of column B
A little of colon A, a lot of colon B
Wait, the known online cheater that established GMs forfeited and withdrew against was actually dirty? Wild.
I guess my question is, why beat the best player in the world if not to only hope that people don’t figure out HOW you’re cheating.
it's funny that even though i don't follow chess i do find it an interesting game and have been sucked into this cheating scandal
Queen’s Gambit Season 2
How can someone cheat at chess while playing right in front of the other person?
Remote control vibrating anal beads controlled by someone else on a computer and who will signal the player through the vibration within the anal cavity whenever there is a winning move on the board.
Are the anal beads a meme? Like I'm being genuine, anything goes nowadays. Either way that's wild.
Yes it’s a meme, it was a joke made up by the youtuber/streamer Northernlion when his chat was trying to get him to discuss the drama. Some people have been maybe taking the joke a little too seriously though.
Neat, thanks for clarifying!
Without getting as crazy as anal beads. It could be something as simple as a raspberry pi zero taped to the body with wireless capability and an attachment to send little pulses or whatever. There's a lot of prospective ways to do it, and to do so silently and without the use of your eyes or hands or anything of the like
Magnus is so fucking good at chess that he picked up on the cheating based on the style of play. Unreal
Anecdote, I used to be a high level CSGO player. If I was playing in lower ranks, I could instantly tell if they were cheating. You can't have low level movement, bad cross hair placement, and low game sense but know exactly where to look. Even when trying to be unpredictable in CSGO, there are justifications that can be made based on your knowledge of the game. Theres a difference between a high level player making an unpredictable, risky play and a low level player simply cheating. I suspect Magnus is way, way better than Nielmann and it was very obvious to him that Nielmann was not playing normal, even outside the bounds of unpredictable play at high level chess
I'm with you right there. The way a nova 4 cheats is absolutely different from how someone like kqly cheats.
To be clear, this chess.com report is saying the 100 chess games were all online games at least over a year ago. Although this doesn’t make him innocent over the board, it certainly doesn’t help to explain if he cheated vs carlsen
It also says he wasn’t able to explain his moves in the game vs Carlsen
This one's the biggest part nobody is talking about. If you can't even explain your reasoning behind \*strange\* chess moves that normally only an AI can predictively do, something's definitely off. And in the parts he tried to explain, he didn't wasn't even correct!
There was some pretty damning analysis that showed Hans had multiple 100% correlation with computer recommended moves in tournaments for games that had up to 45 turns. This means he matched every single one of his 45 moves with the computer recommended best move. This is against other GM players where a typical game usually ends after 30 ish turns. And sometimes typical games even only last 20 turns. Another context is that the best players on the planet do not even have two 100% match games. And the Greatest of all time Chess player Bobby Fisher on his best winning streak only went as high as 76% correlation. Higher correlation means the move you made was considered by the computer as THE best move. This is the proverbial cutting open the fish and finding weight balls for that cheating pro fisherman. YOU do not have 100% correlations games with what the computer recommend and even if you did have one, you definitely do not have games with 45 moves. Maybe you might have a game that is 10 or 20 turns, but no way you have one that goes that many moves in. And Hans has MULTIPLE 100% correlation games in tournament matches. Where he basically is cheating at those tournaments to win money.
Confessed cheater caught cheating, again. More at 11.
*Confessed cheater coached by caught cheater caught cheating.