Chess.com on Niemann ban

I don't recall Caruana saying he thinks Niemann is cheating (edited my post below, found timestamps)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SUhtEe26vA&ab_channel=GMHikaru

@28:31 (quote started at 28:57)

"I have no reason to assume that Hans was cheating OTB in the past 2 years, but I would also take Regan's analysis with a large grain of salt . . . because I know of a high profile [event] where with absolute certainty I can say that someone was cheating . . . and was exonerated based on Regan's analysis."

and @ 44:00

He says he doubts Regan would be able to detect the chess.com cheating that Hans has admitted to. A bit before this he confuses what Regan has said about Hans with an exoneration. Failure to make such distinctions is typical of someone who has, well, done nothing but play chess let's say.

So yeah, Pfren's criticism is good (and has been made by many people).

And it seems to me Caruana doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't like Regan's method because it didn't accuse someone that Caruana thought was cheating.

I too have no reason to assume Niemann has been cheating in the last two years. It is rather the most likely conclusion. Likewise, I have no reason to assume he was cheating in 2019-2020: this is a quite confident conclusion from the results. And I have no reason to assume he was cheating on chess.com: this is rather a firm consequence of his and chess.com's statements.

Note believing Niemann has cheated OTB is not the same as believing he has cheated in the last two years. I suspect eventually people will be saying that Niemann probably cheating in 2019-2020, 2020-2022, but maybe the 2.5/3 against 2800-rated opposition in the first 3 rounds of Sinquefield was just a result of Niemann being the best player ever.

...

Haha ok, no reason to assume... it's just what any reasonable person would, err... conclude.

The point is Caruana doesn't trust Regan's method because it didn't catch someone he suspected. Ok, well, Regan doesn't claim his method will catch everyone you suspect so... it's not a good reason. Pfren's reason (well, it's been said by many others too) is much better.

Best article yet IMHO

https://zwischenzug.substack.com/p/did-hans-niemann-cheat

It looks like it just repeats everything that has already been said here. Lots of suspicion, lots of red flags, lots of unanswered questions, lots of evidence. But no smoking gun yet. 

No one can prove anyone cheated in a single game given the only approved methods for catching cheaters cannot be applied to a single game.  The fact that the approved model is conservative is intentional because if your model gives any false positives its worthless.  This means people can avoid cheat detection via stats alone if they are not blatant at high levels. The only good measures to be taken are security measures at individual events. That being said if chess.com bans him they have statistically relevant data that says he's been cheating on chess.com but form my understanding thousands of titled players have made chess.coms naught list.   Considering Fide uses that guys model I'm thinking they wont find anything relevant however I have heard chess.com cheat detection is more advanced and would be interested to know what happens if his recent OTB games pass through that system. The super gms don't care for the conservative nature of the models but the smart ones understand why it has to be that way. 

Not thousands, I don't think. Currently a single digit number per month in stats I have seen. There are presently over 20,000 titled chess players (WCM to GM) and all of them get a free diamond membership for life, so you will find most of them on the platform.

Overall, based on active players on the site, I found they were about half as likely to get banned for cheating as players in general. Interesting both that it is quite similar and that it is rather less (a cynical person might point out they have more to lose: I would like to think they are generally more interested in playing chess well and less interested in meaningless fake results, with occasional exceptions).

Given the title of this forum, here's a link to huge news about the extensive chess.com analysis of Niemann's cheating.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chess-niemann-cheating-magnus-carlsen-b2195616.html

Cheating in games with prize money on the line should be a permanent ban. It's really a shame chess.com allows these repeat offenders to come back and do it again... and again... and again...

While I can get behind someone wanting to permanently ban players from Chess for cheating, I disagree on the idea that prize money should make such a difference to the situation. If it's a ban for cheating being implemented, whether or not prize money was on the line shouldn't impact the penalty in my opinion. 

When money is involved it's fraud. Fraud is illegal. It could send him to jail... a permanent ban is nothing.

Carlsen should be punished by his accusations without proofs. Period.

The rest is only a bunch of elite players afraid of loosing games against low ranked ones

Carlsen didn't state anything which can't be supported with evidence.

You can download the chess.com report as a pdf from here:

https://www.chess.com/blog/CHESScom/hans-niemann-report