Do you think Hans Is cheating?

Thank you. I'm no expert but that looks like they are just going through the motions. It looks to me like they are just trying to detect metal and/or receiving devices. I would imagine that leaves a lot of other ways information could be transmitted. 

If they restrict spectators, delay the broadcast (up to 15 or 30 minutes I forgot which?), and scan frequencies, maybe you could get a move or two but it'd be awfully difficult. After a certain point it's easier to actually be 2700 than defeat all the anti-cheating measures

I also read in the news that Ken Regan (of some cheat detection fame in the chess community) has said the games look normal.

And no one has been dumb enough to actually accuse him except Hikaru (lol).

So... it's just a very odd situation.

So said in his interview "I'd like to thank the anti cheating team" lol

That sounds like a shot at Hans, but So also talked about losing sleep. I think the extra security helped him relax and play his best.

I don't think this makes Chess.com look bad at all. Entitled people are just annoyed they're not having their demands of an explanation met.

I totally buy the idea that Hans is a theory monster. He just has an insane talent at memorizing theory, and he is able to take that theory to the endgame.  And Carslen just managed to accidentally play into something Hans knew. 

This whole thing is the GM version playing a 400 who studied a trap, and you accidentally fall into the trap and get mated.  And then whining that your opponent is 400, so they must have cheated.   Especially since the 400 level player can't explain the trap, s/he just knows it.

Niemann playing on chess.com may have been the reason for many of his fans to join the site and pay for their membership. Now that their idol has been kicked out, will they get their money back?

Taylor Swift may have been the reason for many paparazzi to pay for tickets to follow her into a venue with their cameras.  When she leaves the venue early, will they get their tickets refunded?

Do the terms of service state that if your favourite streamer gets banned you get your money back or have they obliged Hans to promote the site to his fans? If no, I'm not sure why the site should be held accountable here.

I am not a lawyer, but when they didn't get what they paid for, I'd assume they can sue for a refund.

what kind of justice is this, where guilt is determined by the amount of the bets? don't you know the presumption of innocence in the states?

They are welcome to try.  If we play that game, a person can join a chess site with expectations to be a GM one day.

If that doesn't happen, could he/she get a refund as well? 

Presumption of innocence does not apply.  If this ever goes to court it is tried as a civil case.

Niemann is not on trial for murder here.  He's been banned from a private company's website with listed Terms of Service that he has already admitted violating multiple times.  He could try to claim some kind of fraud, or breach of contract if he were to have one with the site.

Anyone can sue for anything.  Can they win?  That's the question.  The lawsuit will get thrown out of court if you try to hold the venue responsible for hypothetical Taylor Swift's actions.  It's not their problem and they have no direct control over her.  

There is obviously no legal obligation but a moral obligation.

I have never paid for my membership. As an IM, I got it for free. The reason is obviously that the site owners expect me to attract other members. They didn't oblige me to do that, but I feel morally obliged to not disappoint them. Now Niemann is a thousand times more entertaining than me. There is no question that he does attract paying members, no matter whether he is obliged or not.

Hans will probably leave the 2700 club during the Singfield Cup. His performance has strangely dropped off a lot since the streaming delay. Just because Hans Niemann got emotional in the interview is no reason to believe him more. It rather underlines the opposite side. He performs like a 2600-rated player and this is confirmed by very many strong players. His game against Alireza Firouzja was riddled with serious blunders, which were only not punished because he was believed to be cheating. Likewise the game with Leinier Dominguez Perez. Leinier Dominguez Perez, however, did not choose the correct endgame, but he was still completely on the winning side for most of the game. And does anyone remember his disastrous game against Wesley So? Practically, Hans would have lost all the games since the streaming delay. Nikita Vitiugov, Ian Nepomniatchi's second, and Daniel Naroditsky have said that the anti-cheating measures in these tournaments are ridiculous and too easily circumvented. Devices placed under human tissue (mouth etc.), for example, cannot be detected with a metal detector. Garry Kasparov has said that a strong player only needs to know when the critical moment is for him to win the game or at least not lose it. Therefore, it certainly wouldn't be that complicated to cheat. We also know that Hans Niemann lied in the interview, as measured by the statement from chess.com. I hate to pick a side here, but I agree with the the suspicions. And yes, the game was not well-played by Magnus Carlsen, as even Anatoly Karpov pointed out, but the endgame and the converting process was very questionably accurate by Hans Niemann. And as I said, you don't need an engine, just maybe one or two strong players who follow the game and check certain logical moves on the board with an engine. You can also build in hypothetical logical errors. So to say that Hans Niemann can't have cheated just because he made mistakes is silly. And are we forgetting how long it took him to play his  so called "preperation"? Almost an hour... He may also have simply stopped cheating because others became suspicious. Then to say you never cheated is possible, of course, because you can't check anything in retrospect. Blaming everything on Magnus Carlsen for being a "bad loser" is just as stupid because he has lost thousands of games, against even weaker opponents, and he has never left a tournament before. He's most likely just waiting for the event to be over to respond because there is probably something like a confidentiality agreement for participants, so they can't really talk about anything that happens in the tournament outside of the tournament interviews. And so far, no one can really explain what happened in the interview after Hans Niemann's and Alireza Firouzja's game except, of course, all those who doubt Hans Niemann's performance. There is no luck in these high level events.

That has nothing to do with it. I think it's lovely that you didn't understand the message of his comment and still criticize him. What he actually wanted to say was that it is much less likely that Hans Niemann would make such a rapid ascent, almost without help, than that he would cheat. Especially when you consider that Hans Niemann has cheated before and that he has hardly improved at all for years. Those who do not understand the debate or do not pay the necessary attention to their interlocutors should not participate. Also comical that you insist on evidence when it is clear that there can be no such evidence. One can only observe that Hans Niemann has performed much worse since the streaming delay and obviously has no idea about the games in the interviews. I have listed all the other interesting details above in my previous comment.

The games could also look like a multicoloured rainbow, because it makes absolutely no difference. Of course, online it is easier to cheat directly with an engine, but in a longer time control OTB it is certainly necessary to choose a different approach, especially when a possible debate could result from it. If strong players had helped him, then you wouldn't know it. A FIDE master could check different logical ideas and then tell him. Alternatively, a signal would be enough to tell him when he has to calculate, i.e. when the critical moment is.

There is no proof Hans cheated in the OTB tournament. 

If there was any, they would have kicked him out of the tournament already, rather than let him carry on playing, and FIDE would already be in the process of banning him. 

While all the things you claim could be possible, that does not mean he's using them and cheating.

There is no proof, so you can't just infer he cheated because the manchild threw a tantrum. 

If we don't need any proof, what's to say Magnus Carlsen did not cheat during his title defenses? I mean, he's been defending the title for 10 years, right? It's "obvious" he cheated atr some point.

And because we dont need any proof, it must be true.

Also let's not forget hans was 2688 - almost a 2700 player. He was not 2601 after having a good result that move him from the high 2500 into the 2600s.

I have no interest in Hans, don't even know if he's a streamer or not or what he does with his life, but all this accusations of cheating OTB without proof are hilarious. As I said, Carlsen himself could be an OTB cheater for all we know.

I think the only thing that speaks in favour of Hans Niemann is his emotional interview, which no one seems to have considered objectively. He may simply have stopped cheating because his games are significantly worse since the streaming delay, so that he can say that he has never cheated OTB. But I think that precisely because Hans Niemann has become emotional, it makes him much less authentic. He was aware of how much weight this could carry and instead of objectively responding to his critics, he brushed everything off in a woolly manner. He also hardly addressed the most critical points. Magnus Carlsen has a lot of experience with drama. I think he knows what he's doing.