Chess.com on Niemann ban

Except he's never done that before. Carlsen has lost to young and rude people his whole career and never quit in the middle of a tournament.

I haven't even clicked it, but I assume it compares him to current or past top 10 players who have had similar rises. So of course, this does not prove he's cheating.

Which is why he isn't already banned by FIDE, and why most reasonable people (including me) are still waiting for more information before making their final judgement.

This is technically incorrect. The reason he hasn't already been banned by FIDE is that they haven't yet undertaken an investigation and come to the conclusions that would lead to that action. The lack of instant actions certainly does not imply a lack of evidence.

Well Mr Elroch, it's going to take more than "he did better in the first half of a tournament" for FIDE to ban him.

Caruana scored 5/7 in the first half of the 2022 candidates and 1.5/7 in the 2nd half. (Ding had the reverse, a bad first half and a good first half).

Pretty suspicious don't you think?

Yes, I know they delayed the transmission, but the point is players have good and bad halves regardless. If he drank water in the first half and juice in the 2nd, we wouldn't be suspecting his drink. The overwhelming consensus seems to be, other than the opening, his game against Carlsen is not the least bit suspicious, and this game happened before the delayed transmission.

In general I dislike Niemann's personality, and trust Carlsen's experience, but it's hard for me to have strong suspicions of Niemann with the evidence I've seen so far.

Even in isolation an 83% result in 3 games against players around 2800 is extremely unusual for players who don't have a power supply. I challenge you to find another example (not just rhetorical - I would be very interested if someone could see how hard this is).

But it is not in isolation. It is in the context of a history of cheating AND 19 tournaments with a very clear pattern of bimodal variation. Bimodal statistics are a great way to identify intermittent cheats but here there is also the huge advantage of a known factor that explains the disparity.

I heard the Niemann data was cherry picked or otherwise misrepresented, but still, if it's an uncommon amount of variation (if other 2600s don't have these results) then that would be interesting.

Yes he has a history of cheating online, but online cheating is immensely easier.

AFAIK Niemann is playing in the US Championship which starts this week, so that will be interesting.

The following is a quote (a copy and paste quote) from an article by The Washington Post that came out just several days ago:

"This provoked Carlsen to a rare histrionic: In a rematch with Niemann last week, he resigned after just one move and stalked away from the board — a gasp-inducing gesture of protest that earned a reprimand from the international chess governing body. But it also achieved Carlsen’s main goal, which was to subject Niemann’s playing patterns to close examination. The scrutiny forced Niemann to acknowledge he used computer assistance in online matches at chess.com when he was 12 and 16, for which he was banned."

The second paragraph after the one quoted above states (in copy and paste quote):

"Carlsen appears to have seized the banner on behalf of a group of grandmasters who believe that machine intelligence is outstripping those who play purely with their heads — and that it’s not being captured by current analytics or tournament organizers. Grandmaster Srinath Narayanan of India tweeted, “We all knew cheating was a serious problem. We all knew it was rampant. We all kept quiet, not knowing exactly how to go about it. Magnus spoke about it and in a way that the world had no option but to take notice.”"

Fabiano Caruana: I would take Regan’s analysis with a large grain of salt

Some approach statistical analysis with an a priori probability of zero in which case they will never be convinced.

Does this sound familiar?

Someone who has studied statistics: "The statistics show that .... "

Someone who's never studied statistics: "Well you can prove anything with statistics, can't you?"

And a 500 rated player may take your advice with a large grain of salt.

The last math class Caruana took he had challenging problems like write 3/5 as a decimal. No one should care what he thinks about Regan's methods.

Ok, thanks for the information.

As for the US Championships, I don't really care how well he does one way or the other, as long as it gives us more information

I suppose for the sake of the title, and for OTB in general, I hope his performance is beyond suspicion... but the other side of me would welcome something more dramatic...

You don't have to be a math genius (not even moderately smart) to understand that a clever cheater with decent playing skills would never need to copycat all the moves Regan is scrutinizing in his half-useless analyses, but just 2 or 3 of them at the critical points of the game. And a really strong player could even cheat without replicating a single engine move.

That's a much better criticism than Caruana's.

In fact not only was this criticism good, but Caruana's was stupid.

I mean, people always knew that Niemann cheated on Chessdotcom and even admitted it. However, proving whether or not he cheated OTB is the real question.

Cheating undetectably OTB is theoretically possible. The problem is that the detectives have somehow managed to detect Niemann's undetectable OTB cheating. Or something like that.

Assumptions follow opinions fed by sympathies or antipaties peppered with half-truths and half-knowledge. I'm out.

Caruana has a perfect right to not be impressed by Regan's methods if he has independently come to the conclusion, helped by world class understanding of chess, that Niemann is cheating. As far as I know, Regan has not taken anything off the board into consideration. This is suboptimal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nEFaRdwZY

case closed