Who is “Maurinho”?
A soccer manager who infered that there were shenanigans in a game he managed without actually saying it during an interview. (It was about the refs being bad, so not exactly the same)
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The more I think about this (and listen to opinions from other GMs as well as no actual evidence coming up), the more inclined to believe that Magnus (despite being the best player in chess), is a sore loser. Magnus’ one tweet is doing more damage to Hans than anything Hikaru or ChessBrahs is doing right now. A not so coherent post-game analysis is not evidence of cheating…you’re a 19 year old who was just basically of cheating by the World Champion, and add to that social awkwardness/anxiety issues.
Too bad there are too many people simping for someone who they don’t even know personally. “Magnus has never quit in his life. There MUST be a reason he quit the tournament.”
Assuming no actual evidence comes up to prove Hans cheated, I wonder if FIDE can conduct ethics investigations into some of these people. Maybe Magnus is looking to form his own federation (this and him withdrawing from the WC match)?
So sad.
I recommend watching Han’s interview today:
Elephant in the room @8:37.
The interview spoke for itself.
Sounds mostly like internet drama.
No actual accusations. Just twitter, twitch, chess.com stuff.
Agree that the game itself didn’t look at all like cheating (from what little I know).
Makes me mostly wonder who does/has/will cheat at over-the-board chess.
Seems bigger than just internet drama when it involves the best player in the world, and every chess player worth their salt has been chiming in with an opinion, from Nepo to Nakamura to Kasparov.
It will probably change how players are screened for cheating forever. chess.com doubled down today saying Niemann will stay banned, while Ben Finegold and others say Carlsen owe everyone an explanation.
What’s confusing is the timing of the statement. Magnus Carlsen and chess.com are now partners. Did Magnus push chess dot com to further analyze Hans’ games?
Hans could definitely be lying about the level of cheating (which would diminish the credibility of his post-game interview), but I could envision a scenario where this whole thing does not look good for all sides involved. If Magnus went into his game against Hans suspecting he’s a rampant cheater, I don’t think abruptly qutting a Double Round Robin without any explanation is the way to go about it.
Interesting. At this point, I think Chess.com owes everyone an explanation? I see their vague tweet (always a vague tweet!), which sounds a lot like a major accusation.
“If I speak, I am in big trouble. Big, big trouble" is such a twittery thing to say.
I agree that Carlsen’s behavior does not seem very grown-up. I’m not sure what the grown-up thing to do is, assuming he is sure, but has not proof. Besides suck-it-up. I guess he could have quietly asked chess.com to review his games, and then waited for them to find evidence and ban him. Which is also corrupt, but less upsetting.
A few explanations come to mind:
- Chess.com decided that actually they should have never unbanned Hans.
- Carlsen asked chess.com to review Hans’ games and they found more cheating.
- Chess.com independently reviewed more Hans’ games after this became a #1 news item.
- We have the timeline backwards, and maybe Carlsen heard a rumor from chess.com that Hans was cheating.
At this point, I think (3) and (4) are most likely, though maybe that’s because I want them to be good guys.
Just checking in – am I in a tournament? Watcher in the woods challenged me and we are playing a game, but other than that I’m not seeing any activity…
We’re currently in the middle of one, but provide me your chess dot com username and I’ll make sure to include you in the next one. Not sure if the next one will be a tiered or big tourney (it’s up to @IPD).
actuaryman
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Just saw this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chess-cheating-magnus-carlsen-hans-niemann-11663617396?mod=hp_lead_pos13
I’m beginning to think folks who are really, and I mean really, really good at Chess just might not be the most stable individuals in the world. Just a hunch.
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After 1. d4, 1. Nf6, White plays the brilliant 2. c4!! to win the game.
Are we seeing the next Bobby Fischer?
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I played a fun OTB game today and really liked my move as white in this position-
My move
I played Bd5
It wasn’t the top engine move but it surprised my opponent and taking with the pawn or the knight are both losing. If he does nothing we are still relatively equal. He took with the knight and I won fairly easily.
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text
The Question Behind the Magnus Carlsen-Hans Niemann Drama: How to Cheat at Chess?
A cheating scandal has upended chess—and cast a new spotlight on how a player might possibly cheat without being detected
By Joshua Robinson and Andrew Beaton
Sept. 21, 2022 8:00 am ET
World champion Magnus Carlsen has set the chess world on fire in recent weeks while barely saying a word. First, he abruptly quit a prestigious tournament in St. Louis after a defeat in early September. Then this week, he resigned from a game after making just one move.
What both staggering incidents have in common was Carlsen’s opponent, a 19-year-old American grandmaster named Hans Moke Niemann.
Carlsen hasn’t said explicitly what he’s thinking. But the chess community set out to decode his message and came to the conclusion that Carlsen thinks Niemann is a cheater.
Niemann, who beat Carlsen in their first meeting and was credited with a victory over him on Monday, has forcefully denied any allegation that he has cheated during any in-person game. He did, however, admit this month that he had received illegal assistance in online play on two previous occasions, chalking them up as youthful indiscretions. Chess.com, which has suspended Niemann, indicated in a statement the breadth of his cheating was greater than that.
Underpinning the entire fracas is a much more fundamental question: How would a player cheat at chess—and get away with it?
The answer is in everyone’s pocket. Over the past 20 years, chess technology has become so advanced—and so portable—that anyone with a smartphone is capable of pulling up websites with software powerful enough to grind down Magnus Carlsen. These chess engines, as they are known, have such awesome powers of calculation that they can analyze moves deep into the game’s future in mere seconds.
“Any chess program running on a cellphone could communicate better moves than even the world champion plays,” American grandmaster Maurice Ashley says.
Magnus Carlsen has set the chess world on fire in recent weeks while barely saying a word. Photo: arun sankar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
From there, it’s a matter of getting the chess engine’s guidance to the player.
The irony is that once chess engines became so sophisticated, chess cheating turned into a decidedly low-tech endeavor. The illicit schemes initially concocted by some of the finest tactical minds in the world have mostly involved trips to the bathroom to secretly look at a phone.
In 2006, for instance, Veselin Topalov’s team accused Vladimir Kramnik of taking a suspect number of bathroom breaks during the World Championship match. Though the allegation wasn’t proven, organizers responded by forcing the players to share a bathroom.
The strangest part is that this wasn’t the only Toiletgate in high-level chess. More recently, Latvian Grandmaster Igors Rausis, who has also represented Bangladesh and the Czech Republic, was suspended by the game’s world governing body in 2019 after he was caught using a smartphone in the washroom.
Bathroom intermezzos became less of an issue when the pandemic pushed many high-level tournaments online, but cheating didn’t. In fact, it exploded. And so did the infrastructure to catch it. Chess.com reported in November 2020 that it had closed 18,000 accounts in 30 days for fair play violations, more than in any single month in the site’s existence before that point. The shuttered accounts included average pawn-pushers and grandmasters alike, the site said.
Screenshot from a stream of the online chess match between Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann at the Julius Baer Generation Cup on Sept. 19.
But what represents an existential crisis for the game today is the mere notion that it remains plausible to cheat at the highest levels during in-person events without detection. It just takes an accomplice, a chess engine, and a bit of spycraft.
“All you need is a sophisticated enough communication device to be able to pull off such a brazen act,” Ashley says.
There are all sorts of gizmos someone could attempt to sneak on their person, from nearly invisible earpieces to a tiny device that vibrates or buzzes in a way that is only felt by the person wearing it. It could even be hidden in someone’s shoe. With an apparatus like that, it would simply require a third party following the game in real-time with an engine to deliver a signal.
Unless officials catch a player in the act—or in the bathroom—it’s extremely complicated to say definitively whether a grandmaster cheated in a specific over-the-board game. At that level, players don’t need to be fed every move. Contests tend to be won and lost in subtle middle-game combinations that gently tilt the balance.
In practice, this means that a cheater might only need assistance in a couple of key moments—a quick buzz to indicate that the optimal tactic is, say, a knight move rather than nudging another pawn. Simply being told which piece to play is enough for a grandmaster’s mind to understand why a computer deems the move to be correct.
In a way, it isn’t so different from the scandal that upended baseball when the Houston Astros stole opposing pitchers’ signs and relayed it to their batters by banging trash cans in the dugout. In another way, it’s completely different: even knowing the pitch type, the Astros had to execute and hit a ball at 95 miles per hour. They still could have struck out. But when you know the move in chess, the only physical skill is picking up a piece. And all of a sudden, it becomes a duel of human vs. computer.
After Carlsen lost to Niemann and withdrew from the tournament in St. Louis having played only three rounds, event organizers ramped up security, even though they said that they hadn’t found anything untoward. Players were wanded with a metal detector and the broadcast of the games was delayed by 15 minutes—a countermeasure that aims to deter outside help because anybody watching remotely would be behind the action.
A screen grab from a video posted by the St. Louis Chess Club of Hans Niemann.
Chess insiders have suggested that more stringent methods, such as longer tape delays and more thorough screenings, may be necessary. Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi appeared to be joking when he raised the possibility of “playing naked in a locked room.” But the mere idea suggested how extraordinary the rules might have to become to eliminate even a whiff of funny business.
Unbothered by the allegations, Niemann took his St. Louis victory over Carlsen as a sign of his own rapid progress. Though he was the lowest rated player in the field, that was his second win in the tournament’s first three games.
“It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me,” he said at the time. “I feel bad for him.”
Niemann then proceeded to lose or draw his final six games.
Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com and Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
Appeared in the September 22, 2022, print edition as ‘Behind a Chess Scandal: How Would a Player Cheat And Get Away With It?’.
That’s interesting. Taking with the knight looks bad cause I don’t like how your queen and bishop are on the same diagonal threatening mate.
Yep he took with knight, then I went Nxe6 and he did f6 to stop mate. Traded a bunch of pieces after that getting down to rook, bishop and knight each, but with me up one pawn and easily winning a second weak one. From there he played it out, but up two pawns is game over
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Can you clarify if you found new evidence of Hans cheating AFTER he admitted to you guys back in 2020?
That is the right question! But I cannot comment yet…