When Robert Fischer achieved an unprecedented scores in the pretenders matches prior to winning the champion title, I believe that the biggest factor was not the quality of the play of Fischer, but the way he mentally unbalanced and broke his opponents, who absolutely did not give a performance they were capable of.
The unnerving, unbalancing effect Fischer had in the 1971 Candidate's tournament was absolutely due to his play. He put up immense resistance against lines prepared by teams of Soviet GMs (example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-90cPf61M), which was the sort of thing that broke their nerve. He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board; if there were any outside-chess forces at play, it was the pressure from Soviet higher-ups embarrassed to lose to a lone American. Also, I don't recall that his opponents played worse than they would have been expected to against an opponent so much stronger than them — maybe after their fifth loss in a six game match, they'd become demoralized.
> He was not intimidating or manipulating his opponents outside of the board
They absolutely were blundering much more than they did vs other opponents, showing a far lower quality off play than usual. Also I believe you didn't read much about his championship match. Remember how the games were moved to a different room, and why?
Arjun blundered against Magnus far more than usual last weekend. That's what stronger players tend to do to you.
I thought you were talking about the Candidate's tournament. As for the championship match, it's not generally believed that Spassky severely underperformed anyway. He won several games and put up good fights in the draws and losses.
>I believe you didn't read much about his championship match
I am quite familiar with the surrounding circumstances, including the pre-match negotiations. I do not see how any of this "mentally unbalanced" or "broke" Spassky, unlike (arguably) Larsen and Taimonov. Furthermore, he's generally been commended for his behavior as a consummate professional and a "gentleman" in the circumstances.
I wonder if you are as familiar with chess (the game, professional play, and its history) as you lead on to be, posting all over this thread.
Well, I only visited the chess school for maybe 6 or 7 years in my childhood, and my peak lichess rapid rating was slightly below 2600, so I believe I'm definitely not the best expert on these matters.
In this case it seems most of the unusual behavior occurred after the match, where (I've seen claimed) Niemann gave obviously wrong reasons why he had played so well on such an uncommon line, and was also not able to explain why he made particular choices he did playing it.
Not only did he fail to explain his reasoning in any satisfactory way, but the suggestions he gave as responses to alternative lines from his opponent were outright losing which showed that he had a poor grasp of the position. This is extremely suspicious behaviour from a player who had just defeated the world champion while using the black pieces.
The consensus among the top GMs was that Hans’s postgame analysis was way below the level you would expect from a player of his rating, never mind a player near Carlsen’s rating (which is much higher)!
No it can't and it is damning evidence. When you wipe the world champion off the board as black (which he did), you need to be able to show you understand how the game progressed in a post-game analysis. Neimann's understanding of his own remarkable performance was seriously deficient.
Being unable to explain your own work is how a lot of academic cheating is confirmed. It doesn't matter if they don't know who you copied from, if you can't understand your own work right after you supposedly made it, they will fail you.
It's like when you get the correct answer on a math test, but then when the math teacher asks you to show your work you bumble around and can't reproduce the thought process required to arrive at the correct answer.
No, it’s more like someone come to see you after a four hours exam while you are tired and want to go home and ask you how you did the very tricky and somewhat open question 4 while suggesting different approaches and asking for your opinion.
The quality of players post-game interview varies widely. Some clearly don’t put much thoughts into them because they would rather go home. Niemann is in good company here. That was nothing particularly exceptional.
If you aced question 4, and most of the rest of the test also, yes, it would be easy to explain. Especially right after it happened, even if you're tired. If an answer is obviously correct to you, you should be able to explain how.
And if you don't want to and just would like to go home, fair enough, but then you really shouldn't give an explanation which is wrong!
It's a pattern with Niemann too, he's infamous for saying only "The chess speaks for itself" after beating Carlsen with black once before.
I think the parallel with academic cheating is accurate.
> If you aced question 4, and most of the rest of the test also, yes, it would be easy to explain. Especially right after it happened, even if you're tired. If an answer is obviously correct to you, you should be able to explain how.
You clearly have never been through a four hours math exam with open questions.
There is no obviously correct answer. There is the way you tackled the problem and the myriad of other ways you could have done which might be more or less obvious, easy or correct.
It’s the same with chess. There is the line you played, the line your opponent played, the other lines you could have played which you did or didn’t consider, same with your opponent. Some of them you considered seriously, other you didn’t. Plus all the things you missed but didn’t matter because your opponent didn’t go there.
Also, you seem to believe chess players are doing post-game interviews because they want to. It’s not the case. It’s a mandatory part of participating in the tournament. Most of them would decline them if they could.
And yes Niemann is infamous for hating post-game interviews and always giving poor answers which is why I’m surprised people actually base their argument on this.
I have, in fact, sat through many, many all days math exams. Not with open ended questions exactly as that wasn't the fashion in math at the time, but in other topics, sure. And yes, I was prepared to explain what I answered and why.
It's an exaggeration to say everyone hates post game discussion. Magnus used to dislike it somewhat, possibly - it was hilarious how Norwegian newspapers tried to turn him into a celebrity in those days because hey! Chess superstar! And it all fell flat because he was so unbelievably boring at the time, lol. He got more social confidence as he got older (and the media got better too, getting people who actually had a clue about chess to talk to him).
But these days, the young GMs are on twitch for heaven's sake. From a social and media standpoint, Niemann is perfectly competent, a lot more so than Magnus was at his age. It's explaining his play he avoids. So yes, it's suspicious. I'm equally surprised at why you would think people would just overlook this.
We can be reasonably sure that Fischer has not been cheating above and beyond unusual conduct. There hasn't been a way to meaningfully cheat. In our times however there are computers which can materially help, and there are technologies allowing someone to receive it, use of which is very difficult to detect without an unacceptably invasive search
