Chess Drama

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Not sure if anyone has been paying attention to this, but it's pretty interesting.

Magnus Carlsen is the world chess champion and has been for the better part of a decade. There is absolutely no doubt he is the best chess player in the world right now.

At the Sinquefield Cup, hosted in St. Louis, back in August of 2022, he resigned after playing Hans Niemann.

Hans Niemann has admitted to cheating online in the past. He's 19 years old, and has had a pretty meteoric rise in his rating from ~2400 3 years ago to ~2700 as of today. This quickly of an ascension is somewhat atypical, I think, and according to some grandmasters there are whispers that he's cheating over the board (in a manner that has not been detected).

Leaving aside all the manners this is possible, it is likely possible for players to cheat over the board.

After resigning from the Sinquefield Cup, Magnus resigned after playing one move in a game against Hans in their next match. I forget the tournament, but it was online, and Magnus went on to win the tournament.

Hans has denied cheating and hasn't been caught red handed, an event which will likely never happen.

Magnus yesterday put out a tweet explaning his position.

In essence, to protect himself from libality, he doesn't call Hans a cheater, but says its suspicious. Magnus' actions speak more clearly here and Magnus obviously thinks Hans is cheating, hence resigning from Sinquefield and against Hans after 1 move.

The interesting part is all these guys are rated somewhere between 2400 and 28XX. Yet the difference in that arena is massive.

Time to use the mlb analogy. 2400 rated guys are like the Pirates and 28XX guys are like the Dodgers. The obvious failure in this analogy is that, of course, MLB teams have 26 guys on a roster while chess players are singular entities. The odds of winning a single game don't have wild fluctuations depending on whom the starting pitcher is.

However, there are still going to be critical parts in any game, both chess and baseball, and the theory is that if a chess player can use an engine for these critical moments (maybe 4-5 in a game, which is about 5-10% of the moves), that player could beat any other player alive. It would be akin to an offense not only knowing what pitch a pitcher was going to throw, but actually dictating what pitch/location a pitcher was going to throw upwards of 10x a game. Of course, this would have a massive impact.

At the same time, having hard evidence against a guy is going to be nary impossible to prove.

Curious what others think, I don't see a right/wrong answer at this point. But, I do think the entire situation is really interesting.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Forgot to add, 'cheating' in general, is using chess engine/computer moves. Chess engines are rated somewhere around 38XX which is so far better than even the best chess players in the world that engines can routinely beat the top human players even if the engines face large handicaps (like starting the game without multiple pieces like a rook or rook and knight or starting mid game in a considerably worse position). Engines ability to calculate is considerably better than humans and engines can look at any position of any game at any time and give the best moves to play. This is widely accepted.

If a strong player knows the engine moves, even a couple times a game, they would become immeasurably better.

[Popeye_Card]

I guess I don't understand how - ethically - studying/learning chess engine moves and employing them differs from chess players for years studying up on the masters' moves? Is it that the master in this case is a computer?

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

It's not that learning the engine's moves/openings (which are largely known already) is unethical. It's somehow getting the engine moves during the game that would be 'cheating'. Same as players in a game aren't allowed to ask their buddy what move to play, they also can't ask an engine, or have their buddy ask an engine and relay that information to them.

One of the biggest complaints about chess nowadays, a movement that started by none other than Bobby Fischer iirc, is that once the computers got better than humans, strong players were able to memorize openings and play them out however many moves, which leads to parity, which leads to draws, which leads to boring chess.

[Popeye_Card]

OK, so this is a case where they suspect someone is relaying the engine move to Hans during the match, and not that he's memorizing engine moves for different situations and employing them?

I can certainly see how the first is cheating. The second, I struggle with more.

[Arthur Dent]

I think the second is how elite chess is normally played. Tons of memorization of best moves in given positions. But there are far too many possible positions to memorize or pre-calculate, so the match gets interesting once it goes off book.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

OK, so this is a case where they suspect someone is relaying the engine move to Hans during the match, and not that he's memorizing engine moves for different situations and employing them?

I can certainly see how the first is cheating. The second, I struggle with more.

Correct.

Wish I had more time to talk about this because it's fascinating.

But, I think you can assume these top level players know the theory and best moves behind all of the openings. IDK how many openings there are, at least dozens. And of those dozens, there are dozens of variations. How far down the rabbit hole they go on any number of them is anybody's guess. But, their knowledge of openings is vast, as you'd expect. It doesn't matter all that much though, they're not rated this highly because they've memorized the most openings. They're just better at the endgames and midgames than everyone else. Otherwise, chess leaderboards would be filled with people with photgraphic memories that have seen every possible opening.

When they're talking about cheating, they're not talking in the sense of 'Oh, that guy memorized more moves than I did, so he's cheating.' It's more along the lines of 'How the world did he find that move 30 moves into the game.'

[Popeye_Card]

I'm basing most of my knowledge of elite chess off of the Queen's Gambit, so I am assuming everyone just does a bunch of drugs and visualizes the whole match on the ceiling of their bedroom.

[Socnorb11]

I've followed this a little bit. It's a really intriguing story.

Is it possible that this kid is just a prodigy from out of nowhere?

[GeddyWrox]

I saw a headline about this a couple weeks ago from the RFT. The method for relaying the moves was suggested to be:

[SHOW]

ANAL BEADS

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/pl ... t-38449269