As you note that’s not new news.
Perhaps it isn’t new news, but I hadn’t seen anything about it here.
Any correlation between this transaction and chess.com moving immediately to ban Niemann when Magnus withdrew is probably not purely coincidental.
FIDE to investigate the Carlsen - Niemann controversy:
So FIDE has decided to rev this back up, in a way that could only possibly target Niemann. This is dirty.
Their new commission will be limited to two things:
- Investigating Carlsen’s accusation.
- Investigating Niemann’s defense, including anything he said in his defense.
No possibility of investigating anyone else for cheating, or in any way applying the same standards to all players.
I agree with the following quote from the article:
… While the oxygen of publicity is something that can be enjoyed momentarily or in the short term, it’s the long-term impact that worries me. Having the credibility of the game dragged into the gutter and paraded for all to see is in my view potentially damaging. …
Chess was different in the pre-computer era when I came up. The truth wasn’t in the silicon; it was for us to find out. Positional principles were religious beliefs, not quite the statistical observations they are today. Today I don’t think I’d have taken such an interest in competitive chess, because it’s a sport now, not research. I’ve wondered how chess would do when became a contest to see who can be closest to the computer moves. (Not exactly of course, that’s what Ken Regan tests move by move, but his ROI scores have significant random-like deviation vs. game results.) This is a further step into that reality.
We know Niemann cheated in some online games, and nobody else has been investigated. FIDE will entrench the insulation of all the other players and find a way to publish the chess.com stuff that Rentsch and Magnus don’t want to be blamed for publishing. If Niemann doesn’t agree to it, I suppose he’ll be blamed for obstructing FIDE’s investigation.
I remember when Lance Armstrong (representing that other USCF) was winning his 7 Tour de France bicycle races, and then I remember 10 or 15 years later when the international authorities checked only his second samples and discovered he had been doping. Yeah, but back in the day it was assumed they all were doping. That was my sense at the time; it was an easier time and nobody would want to suffer that much climbing mountains on a bike without some chemical amendments. But they didn’t test anyone else’s samples when they went after Armstrong. I wish Lance had made this point more strongly, not that it would have done much good with the press unified against him. Hans Niemann looks to be getting the Lance Armstrong treatment by FIDE, but the whole episode pulls the sport down.
Competitive chess is now a sport where the body doesn’t matter, only the mind or essentially unobservable substitutes. In any other sport it’s accepted that players will try to cheat, and there are doping controls that are somewhat effective. But the necessary security for chess is way too onerous; it all just isn’t worth it. Magnus wants anti-cheating security to be “taken seriously” thus insulting all the efforts so far, and the first step is to acknowledge reality and not try to maintain the fantasy. I’m becoming more interested in computer vs. computer matches. The chess is better and so is the honesty.
So now the chess.com stuff, that Magnus said he couldn’t say without Hans’ permission, was leaked by Magnus’ business associate chess.com. It says Hans was cheating with a method, “toggling”, that is totally inapplicable to OTB chess. Hans already admitted, in that big interview at the Sinquefield, to cheating in online chess to get access to higher rated opponents and tournaments. But it definitely looks like the resulting improvement is real.
WSJ also reported that Hans was the fastest improving player in the history of rating records over a span of multiple years. That doesn’t mean Hans is cheating OTB. It means he’s the real deal, and “the rest of the world” doesn’t want another Fischer from the USA. It means Magnus is desperate to stop him.
Hans is no more cheating OTB than anyone else is. I don’t know how much that is, but Hans no more than others. None of them were caught in OTB cheating.
Magnus knows who he can’t handle confidently. He probably didn’t worry much about Firouzja which is why he agreed-in-advance after the Nepo match to play him in the unlikely event Firouzja, who had not yet qualified for a Candidates’ tournament, won the following one. Magnus is not sure he can beat Nepo in a WC match again after having a near-death experience in the last one, so he steps away from that. And he’s really got no confidence of being able to beat Hans after a bit more improvement, so he tries to destroy him.
You think the current rules regarding electronic devices, etc. are up-to-date with todays technology?
I don’t think you can anticipate what the cheaters will try next, the rules against cheating (like most rules) should be generic enough that they can apply to new situations as they arise, including advances in technology.
Let’s say a player has a cochlear implant that would allow someone to receive signals from outside the playing hall. Are you going to try to address that in the rules?
What about a bionic eye that can both send and receive signals?
Now, let’s suppose they figure out how to send signals to a specific brain without any kind of implant.
Neither of these are as silly as they might sound. How are you going to address them?
It seems to me that the chess.com statement was sufficient to justify reinstating their online ban and removing him from that event. The only thing I paid attention to was Ken Regan’s assessment of those games.
It is totally insufficient as evidence of OTB cheating, however. There is still no evidence there.
I remember Spassky used to have a very dispassionate pose at the chessboard, there was one photo of him during the first Fischer match that looked like he was waiting for an overdue train.
GM Kenneth Rogoff says Carlsen’s integrity is unquestionable, so he has a bright idea. Have Niemann play an OTB match with Carlsen. If Niemann wins, he isn’t declared World Champion but he gets to continue in professional chess. If he loses, he’s banished.
He doesn’t seem to realize that they did play fast chess in Miami before the Sinquefield, and Niemann won the first game, then Carlsen “upped his game” and turned it on to win their mini-match.
This sounds like a lose-lose proposition for Niemann, why would he agree to it, and what’s Carlsen’s downside in participating?
So much to ponder here.
If chess.com’s anti-cheating algorithms are reliable and accurate, Niemann cheated a lot more often than “twice” – and many of the games were played for prize money. Which means that he not only cheated regularly, but he lied about it as well. Which makes me not want to trust anything he says. So I’m leaning toward him being the kind of person who will cheat whenever he thinks he can get away with it – i.e., he’s a cheater.
On the other hand, I don’t at all like the way Carlsen handled this, and if chess.com has been bought by a Carlsen-associated company, it would be difficult for them to remain unbiased in this dispute, and you have to take their claims with a good-sized grain of salt. I have never questioned Carlsen’s integrity, but his sportsmanship leaves something to be desired, and I generally frown on the practice of making grave accusations when you don’t have clear evidence of wrongdoing. “A lower-rated player beat me” is not good evidence. It happens all the time. I have been on both sides of that scenario many times (with much greater rating disparities than Carlsen-Niemann).
This whole thing has lowered my overall estimation of both players.
As I understand it, chess.com acquired the Magnus Group, not the other way around, but that still could raise some questions of their objectivity.
Yes that is the announced direction of the transaction.
Here’s GM Max Dlugy’s take on this:
I would like to see Ken Regan run the games from the tournament Dlugy was removed from through his analytics model. Chess.com no longer has any credibility in my mind for things even peripherally related to Magnus and Hans. Ken Regan is the gold standard here.
Dlugy is quite correct to point to the money, and he is also correct to point out the extreme difficulty in cheating in an event with security of a top OTB round robin and the absence of any evidence that cheating did occur there.
Tim Krabbé has a humorous take on the controversy:
Here is a follow-up interview Dlugy gave to the German magazine, Der Spiegel.