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Chess Cheating Saga Ends: Hans Niemann Will Be Allowed Back on Chess Website (404media.co) 33

Chess.com and Hans Niemann have reached a settlement in which Niemann has agreed to drop a $100 million lawsuit against Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen, and will be allowed to return to compete, the company announced Monday. From a report: This puts an end to the legal aspect of a cheating scandal that captivated the chess world for nearly a year. As part of the settlement, chess world champion Carlsen said "there is no determinative evidence that Niemann cheated in his game against me at the Sinquefield Cup. I am willing to play Niemann in future events, should we be paired together."
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Chess Cheating Saga Ends: Hans Niemann Will Be Allowed Back on Chess Website

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  • Hikaru posted a response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      Hikaru posted a response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Even Hikaru doesn't seem to want to touch this with a 10-foot pole, because while he gave an overview of the situation he barely gave any of his own thoughts on the matter. It is surprising that Chess.com conceded this much after winning their first round of the court battle. The appeals process must not have been going well. I wouldn't be surprised if Chess.com simply wanted to stop paying lawyers. Their analysis was pretty convincing that Niemann has heavily cheated online, but it's also clear by now that

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Even Hikaru doesn't seem to want to touch this with a 10-foot pole, because while he gave an overview of the situation he barely gave any of his own thoughts on the matter. It is surprising that Chess.com conceded this much after winning their first round of the court battle. The appeals process must not have been going well. I wouldn't be surprised if Chess.com simply wanted to stop paying lawyers. Their analysis was pretty convincing that Niemann has heavily cheated online, but it's also clear by now that

      • Re:Hikaru (Score:4, Insightful)

        by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Monday August 28, 2023 @05:47PM (#63804520)

        Hikaru posted a response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        Even Hikaru doesn't seem to want to touch this with a 10-foot pole, because while he gave an overview of the situation he barely gave any of his own thoughts on the matter. It is surprising that Chess.com conceded this much after winning their first round of the court battle. The appeals process must not have been going well. I wouldn't be surprised if Chess.com simply wanted to stop paying lawyers. Their analysis was pretty convincing that Niemann has heavily cheated online, but it's also clear by now that there was no definitive proof he has cheated in person.

        It's a shame a known cheater is being allowed back on Chess.com, but as a sub-1200 rated player myself it has no effect on me.

        For his online games the evidence (much base on move selection itself) sounded quite strong. If he also cheated in-person there probably would have been some fairly convincing evidence there as well.

        I think the whole controversy ended up a bit of a draw. Clearly Niemann obviously cheated online a lot more than he admitted (not to mention made some dubious claims about his cycling prowess [outsideonline.com]) so his credibility is pretty much shot.

        But the in-person cheating evidence never really emerged.

        One thing I am curious about is his post-controversy ratings [fide.com].

        To me, there's two big pieces of evidence in favour of Hans not cheating in-person there:
        1) I'd expect cheating to be a lot easier the slower the game is (one often mentioned possibility is simply a "slow down, this is an important move" signal). But his rapid and blitz ratings are largely in sync with this classical ratings.
        2) After the controversy it would be extremely hard for him to cheat, yet he seems to largely maintained his ratings.

        • Lies, Cheats, and Steals.

          (Steals because he was caught cheating in online money events)

          All Three.
        • Hans only needs to cheat here and there every once in a while without raising suspicion. Other chess cheaters were caught because they did it every single opportunity. Like that guy who took too many toilet breaks.
          • Hans only needs to cheat here and there every once in a while without raising suspicion. Other chess cheaters were caught because they did it every single opportunity. Like that guy who took too many toilet breaks.

            Then what's the mechanism? If he's maintained his in-person level of play post-controversy (I don't understand the ratings well enough to know if that really is the case) then he's either kept cheating despite extreme scrutiny (seems very unlikely) or his previous rating wasn't the result of cheating (which suggests he may not have been cheating in-person).

            And remember, that mechanism needs to work just as well with rapid and blitz.

            Fundamentally, the idea that he only cheated on-line is consistent with in-p

        • For his online games the evidence (much base on move selection itself) sounded quite strong

          He confessed to cheating in online games, so that's not surprising.

          • For his online games the evidence (much base on move selection itself) sounded quite strong

            He confessed to cheating in online games, so that's not surprising.

            When they first caught him they found something like two several years apart, so he said "those were the only couple times I ever cheated and I promise never to do it again".

            After Magnus's accusation they re-ran their cheat detection tools on all his games. I don't think they found cheating after the first time he was caught, but they found a lot more cheating in the period leading up to when they first caught him (including in money games).

            To my knowledge, Magnus is still denying this additional cheating.

            • After Magnus's accusation they re-ran their cheat detection tools on all his games. I don't think they found cheating after the first time he was caught, but they found a lot more cheating in the period leading up to when they first caught him (including in money games).

              Cheat detection keeps improving, so re-running the games makes a lot of sense, and is more likely to detect any cheating. Chess.com has a team whose only responsibility is cheat detection. There's an interview on their YouTube channel in which the department head talks about the ongoing "arms race" between cheaters and detecting them.

            • When they first caught him they found something like two several years apart, so he said "those were the only couple times I ever cheated and I promise never to do it again".

              Two periods of time. The second one was on stream. The evidence from chess.com that he cheated outside those periods wasn't very convincing.

      • It's a shame a known cheater is being allowed back on Chess.com, but as a sub-1200 rated player myself it has no effect on me.

        That's how I feel about cheating online, too. If you're cheating, you better have a much higher rating than I do, otherwise you're doing two things wrong.

      • Yay for slashdot one again losing my comment while trying to log me in...

        Hikaru doesn't want to touch it probably because he massively fucked up in his initial coverage by accusing niemann of cheating offline based on adult bad data.

        He used some software to show that a huge percentage of niemann's moves were top engine moves.

        Not realizing that his games were analyzed way more than any other players', by using every possible engine with every possible setting, including obsolete engines and really shallow pr

    • A good outcome (legals are non-productive). Since this outcome AI is in full swing. This means you can ask AI to predict what your likely opponent is most likely to respond in openings and what moves slow him/her down the most - or even induce poor moves.. Before a clue-full trainer/coach worked this out, and a lucky guess made people jumpy. The best outcome, is it will be harder than ever to anticipate openings at top levels. The bad is, AI may make forcing a draw harder. The good is AI still makes plenty
  • Hans Niemann will be required to keep his cheating device "inserted" during all games. /sarcasm
  • What are the cheat codes for chess?

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