I am disappointed with Magnus. He is misusing the weight of his reputation even if cheating is a big deal in chess.
The first mistake was still choosing to play when he had reservations once Hans was invited. The second mistake was quitting the tournament and messing up the standings once he lost. The third mistake was making an insinuation through a tweet. The fourth mistake was resigning in two moves his next game with Hans.
Even though Hans is suspicious and untrustworthy, Magnus is taking on himself the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. If he is concerned about cheating being an issue, proactively bring up the issue, don't do it re-actively.
Yeah, the tone I'm getting from reading this basically boils down to "I was uncomfortable with how he played so I quit". Isn't that part of the metagaming in chess? Poker has always been about unnerving your opponent through stoicism or deception. I don't see why chess can't have the same layer of subtlety, and if it really concerns him then he should be able to wear a visor to block everything but the game board. Otherwise, just take your loss and stand your ground.
I think the statement is a little bit more nuanced than that:
"His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do."
This isn't just "I got weird vibes" or something, this is the professional analysis of someone who has spent a lifetime analysing particular board states, the overall flow of the game, and the psychology of his opponents. He may have his hands tied in terms of what exactly he can say at this time, but the telegraph here is that he suspects cheating because of specific, observable factors in how the prior game(s) went down.
And those factors may ultimately be too subtle to be judged by anyone other than a jury of other top-tier professional chess players, but ultimately that doesn't matter, if it's enough to trigger a more thorough investigation then concrete evidence will emerge one way or the other and show Carlsen to be right or wrong on his hunch.
If he didn't want to play against him, he shouldn't have already done it weeks ago and then proceed to agree to a rematch, which he doesn't cancel until the last minute. I find it very hard to believe that Magnus only found out about Hans' history after the first move... unless he had someone assisting him in realtime.
Withdrawing attendance is also an option, which Carlsen himself says is a possibility he acknowledged.
If he wants to follow through on this, we better see some damning evidence. If this entire hubbub was for nothing, the chess community as a whole is going to have egg on their face.
>Poker has always been about unnerving your opponent through stoicism or deception
As much as TV would make you think so that's mostly a myth. It was probably more so the case in the past but now it's at most a very minor part of the game, and most (typically all) of your edge comes from better card playing.
A huge river bluff is viewed in the lens of 'I've represented a range which includes strong hands, and I make money if I get a fold X% of the time while increasing the call chance by Y% when I do have a good hand in this spot' and not 'I'm going to unnerve him by throwing money to make a bad decision'.
Basketball, hockey, and football players are expected to perform under the roar of tens of thousands of fans AND those that hate them.
Tennis players and Chess players are expected to be granted absolute silence.
Is that an inconsistency? I don't think so. It's part of the expectation of the sport. Sport is in general a weird type of impure competition. Sponsorships, TV contracts, etc, all contribute to mixed priorities.
So no, I don't think it's appropriate to equate Poker and Chess in this regard. Their best practices can be evaluated on their own measures.
I want more of this metagaming in chess. That's one of the things I find interesting about Hans. His interviews suggest he's taking a sort of meta game approach. He suggested once a move of his against Alireza was a bluff because Alireza doesn't like attacking chess.
This is extremely common in high level chess. Every chess player will study their opponents history and recent play patterns and practice against that.
Hans claimed he studied against Magnus' opening because Magnus had played it a few months ago. It turns out Magnus has never used that opening in a recorded game. The dialog has now changed to "well by move 20 the board state became identical to a previous Magnus game" but Hans didn't say he spotted the similarities at move 20, he said he studied that specific opening.
So what? What does that matter? 20 moves of prep is not unusual. Also opening/midgame/endgame is not defined by # of moves. This was still very much in the opening, and it was still very much "known theory" as in games have been played in that same line.
The fact that Magnus fully understand all the implications of such a statement and still went forward with this speaks to how sure he is of his intuition. He will forever tarnish his reputation if ultimately it's proven that he was simply flat out wrong. He is basically saying that Hans is playing impossibly well and that he does not exhibit the same behavioral patterns as any other player. And that he also has access to some other incriminating info that he can't yet share.
Magnus basically cannot be proven wrong - but time will tell. If Hans continues to perform well in OTB tournaments, and he's not caught cheating, eventually I think the suspicion will die down.
The issue is that will he get that chance at all?
Also, Hans has won some great games in short time controls.
If he can't provide the evidence, he should stay quiet or tell people to stop bothering Niemann until he is able to. I mean, his intuition is obviously very good, but in the end a serious league can't go by the intuition of the best player and secret info.
In what sense is he trying to be judge, jury, and executioner? It seems to me that he is resigning games and not trying to get those results changed. Do you mean the fact that he is arguably using his position in the chess world to influence organizing bodies to change their rules? That might be the case, but I don’t think that’s bad or wrong in principle.
> I am disappointed with Magnus. He is misusing the weight of his reputation even if cheating is a big deal in chess.
I think the unspoken truth but also the thing both chess.com and Magnus are hinting at is that Niemann has cheated a lot more than he lets on, perhaps his entire stream was built on cheating, who knows. But chess.com can't just start sharing information like that, and they are walking a fine line just with their public statement where they affirmatively assert that Niemann is underplaying the reality of his cheating. Magnus probably has insider information from chess.com but is bound by NDA and this is also why he's now challenging Niemann to give him permission to speak on the matter.
>- MAGNUS has NOT seen chesscom cheat detection algorithms
>- MAGNUS was NOT given or told a list of “cheaters”
>- and he is and has completely acted 100% on his own knowledge (not sure where he got it!) and desires to this time
>I will also address a comment made to this post about Ben’s (Perp Chess) podcast and say that, yes, some top players (not Magnus!) have been invited at times, under NDA, to see what we do… and by extension, they also saw some reports of confessed cheaters (there were many more cheaters - but we only share those who confessed in writing, and only privately under the NDA). Magnus and the team from C24 are not on that list.
Yeah, I think Magnus is making a mistake conflating two things. It is totally fine to think that Nieman should have been punished more for online cheating, but combining it with his accusation of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup come off as sour grapes. Watching the Crypto Cup there was obviously no love lost between the two of them but they played each other, it's not until Magnus losses to Hans (which based on their rating had about a 5% chance of happening) that this refusal to play happens.
They are pretty accurate, though of course when you are dealing with the person at the very top it's going to be hard to say how accurate it is. I think broadly though most experts agree that Hans beating Magnus was an unlikely but possible ting to happen. For comparison a 1400 rated player, which is someone who plays and studies a decent amount of chess but isn't devoted, would have a 0.0000014% chance of beating Magnus.
I think as the skill differential becomes greater you have a better chance of identifying where the "master" screwed up allowing the neophyte to win. But it sounds like Hans and Carlsen are too close in skill (at least in this game) to identify a flaw in Carlsen's play that was able to be exploited.
And perhaps Hans went in expecting to lose and played loose and free and surprised himself with a win.
I doubt they are very predictive in those rating bands. Based on a quick Google, since 2011, Magnus has lost a total of 20 games as white, mostly against much higher rated opponents than Hans. It had been almost 2 years since he lost as white, against Levon.
The first mistake was still choosing to play when he had reservations once Hans was invited. The second mistake was quitting the tournament and messing up the standings once he lost. The third mistake was making an insinuation through a tweet. The fourth mistake was resigning in two moves his next game with Hans.
Even though Hans is suspicious and untrustworthy, Magnus is taking on himself the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. If he is concerned about cheating being an issue, proactively bring up the issue, don't do it re-actively.