Chess Drama/Cheating Scandal

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Luigi
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Chess Drama/Cheating Scandal

Postby Luigi » Wed Sep 21, 2022 11:00 pm

Its about time the Grand Chessboard had a chess thread, right? :mrgreen:

Magnus Carlsen has been the best chess player in the world since 2010. He recently played in the Sinquefield cup when this happened:



After this, Magnus announced on social media he was resigning from the tournament, and included a cryptic message that he would get it trouble if he spoke the truth:



After this there was widespread speculation that Magnus thought Hans was cheating. It was of course unusual for the worlds best player to be destroyed by a 19 year old using the black pieces. Rumors began to be spread and Elon Musk theorized Hans may be cheating using a vibrating sex toy. After this Chess.com banned Hans from online play, citing two incidents from the past where he was caught cheating online. The anti-cheating board of the tournament said they had no evidence Hans was cheating. Hans gave an interview defending himself, saying his performance was due to the good luck of having reviewed the exact line that morning. This would be extremely lucky if so as its a very uncommon lines and Magnus has either never played it before or hasnt in years. To address his past cheating he said he did it once when he was 12 years old and once when he was 16 years old, and has never done it over the board(in real life).



Hikaru mentioned this is strange because if he knew the line so well he should have blitzed out the first 20 moves, yet after 20 moves it has Hans who was behind on time. Analysis by the stockfish engine shows that all of Hans' moves were top 3 engine recommendations, which is improbably for a human to do but not impossible.



Nobody was sure who to believe, but in the absence of hard evidence against Hans, people shifted towards giving him the benefit of the doubt. However the drama raged on.



Things were just getting started though, as Magnus and Hans were both already scheduled to be in the Julius Baer Generations Cup, and Magnus had ties to the sponsor so was unlikely to pull out. Then this happened:



This was Magnus doubling down, and shows he felt strong enough in his conviction to let losses drastically reduce his rating. While many noted that cheating by some kind of radio device was unlikely because they are all scanned and there is a 15 min broadcast delay, an alternate theory is that Magnus had a rat in his camp who had leaked his preparations to Hans. This would perfectly explain why Magnus played an obscure line, he likely suspected a leak when previously playing against Hans, and set a trap this time by picking a line very unlikely to have been reviewed to see if Hans would crush him and claim it was just prep, and thats exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, Hans went on to have a not-so-strong performance in the rest of the Sinquefiend cup and Magnus has been dominating the Generations Cup besides the resignation. Today Magnus finally broke his silence somewhat on the issue in an interview:



He refuses to accuse Hans openly of cheating, as for a grand master chess is their career, and calling them a cheater amounts to defamation and will end up in court. Hikaru has already stated someone has threatened him with legal action and Im sure Magnus has been too. However, he did make a very intentional statement saying, Hans is playing so well, his coach Maxim Dlugy must be doing a very good job. Not only does this seem to support the leaked prep theory, as Carlsen seemingly thinks Dlugy is the contact of the rat, but also Dlugy turns out to be a shady character with a history of cheating. A reddit thread from 5 years ago shows he was banned from Chess.com and had to make a new account. While Chess.com didnt come out openly explaining the ban as for cheating, perhaps for the same legal reasons, the account banned and never reinstated. Another poster from the thread notes that in an interview he gave a few years before that, Dlugy comments on how easy it would be for an elite player like him to cheat, only needing to consult a computer a few key times and otherwise just play naturally:

"If I had this gadget I would be killing people left and right, and nobody would know. This is the real danger, because if a 2600 player has this thing, he knows exactly how to behave, he knows exactly when to think, and he doesn’t to use it more than four times during a game. That’s plenty to destroy anyone. At the critical junction you switch it on and find out which way do I go: oh, this little nuance I didn’t see, okay, fine, boom, goodbye! That’s it. At that point you may think for a long time, although you know the move."

Dlugy never made any public statement about his ban.
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Luigi
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Postby Luigi » Wed Sep 21, 2022 11:25 pm

Chess's version of the Kobra Kai Dojo:

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Masato
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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 22, 2022 6:52 pm

This is a cool story!!

You wouldn't happen to have any timestamps on where in those vids are some key relevant parts? They are very long, not sure if worth sitting through them all for some bits of the drama

Crazy sub-cultures everywhere, eh? :D

I like the kid's Godzilla shirt

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Postby Edge Guerrero » Fri Sep 23, 2022 1:01 am

-How Never crossed my mind cheating in chess. My error was that all chess players took pride in winning fair!
- I rent this space for advertising

Don't be selfish, preserve this world for the next generations.

I'll never long for what might have been
Regret won't waste my life again
I won't look back I'll fight to remain

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Luigi
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Postby Luigi » Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:37 pm

Masato wrote:This is a cool story!!

You wouldn't happen to have any timestamps on where in those vids are some key relevant parts? They are very long, not sure if worth sitting through them all for some bits of the drama

Crazy sub-cultures everywhere, eh? :D

I like the kid's Godzilla shirt

For the match break down vids if you are not a fan of chess you can just skip to the end for the result, for the drama/gossip videos you can get the picture with a few minutes of each, and I think that just leaves Nieman's interview, which basically you just have to know he defended himself if you are not into the specific details of his justification.
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Luigi
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Postby Luigi » Tue Sep 27, 2022 6:25 am

BREAKING:

Magnus has now openly claimed Hans is cheating in an official statement:



About the google doc Hikaru is mentioning, here is a full explanation:



Cliff notes: Most experienced Super GMs will have only 1-3 perfect games, Hans achieved 5 so far despite only being 19, yet oddly enough as time goes on his scores are less perfect yet still in the realm of Prime Bobby Fischer. Its almost as if his cheating was simple at first but he refined his craft to a partial cheating that looks just real enough to maybe believe.
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Masato
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Postby Masato » Fri Sep 30, 2022 11:11 pm

Found this:



Picking at this story slowly, but really enjoying it. Thanks Luigi!

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Postby Masato » Fri Sep 30, 2022 11:33 pm

^^ according to that vid, Chess.com bought Magnus's company 'PLAY MAGNUS' for $$82 million

Since this scandal, online attention to the chess world has skyrocketed.

Coincidence?
Could all this be a crafted publicity stunt?

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Luigi
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Postby Luigi » Thu Oct 06, 2022 2:44 am



Hans is now playing in the 2022 US Championship.
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Luigi
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Postby Luigi » Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:02 am

Neiman's coach who was banned from Chess.com releases his own statement:



Cliff notes: He says his cheating was that he was playing online while at his chess academy and allowed his students to suggest moves to him assuming it was harmless because there rating was 1000 points below his own, but one of the students was using an engine. He says there was then a time he was removed from a touney based on the old ban not knowing he had been absolved by the owner of chess.com. Then there was a third time he was banned and he said he offered to admit wrongdoing if they promised to never make that public, reasoning that rumors would be more damaging than whatever his penalty. He then says chess.com violated this by making all of this public without his consent. He also brings attention to minor instances of Magnus and Hikaru cheating that nobody holds against them. Magnus was streaming online and one of his friends who is also a GM suggested him a move, which is cheating. Hikaru a few years ago was in the candidates tournament, the most important tournament in chess, and touched a piece to move it, then realized it was a bad move and tried to play it off like he was adjusting the piece. The arbiter called him on it and he had to move the piece. The game was against Aronian and he lost.
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