Stop the witch hunt for Hans Niemann!

So your premise is that it is surprising that an undercurrent of long held observations and suspicions breaks loose now?  When should it happen?  When he wins the tournament?  When he wins the Grand Prix?  When he wins the WCC?

Carlsen's sometimes-petulance is unsurprising, and largely irrelevant.  If the tournament had progressed with Niemann taking the lead and winning, the result would have been the same by the end of it.

An internet search of ten seconds confirms my memory.
Carlsen was in such bad humour when it was all over that he left the winners’ podium early during the medal ceremony. He looked thoroughly disgusted through the showering confetti and cheers. While some may view Carlsen as being sore loser, Karjakin was a gracious winner. “I understand Carlsen (and his reaction),” he told NRK. “I would also have been very angry.”

https://www.newsinenglish.no/2016/12/30/carlsen-loses-his-blitz-chess-title/

There are many others.

Being a poor loser is typical Magnus.

Chess.com's latest ban is unlikely to be due to innuendo, and more likely to be due to deeper scrutiny of his results in the past two years. 

What most people don't understand is that cheat detection is not simply based on playing the strongest moves.  It's about a statistical matchup with engine play.  That gets harder to detect at high levels, and even harder if the engine use is occasional.  But mathematically, it's still rock solid once you have enough sample data.

He was angry at himself...

You are right, as far as we know there is absolutely no proof Hans did anything wrong in this tournament. But he has in the past. Two times we know about and we can only speculate how many times we don't know about. The point is he now has a pattern. It is certainly within anyone's right to be suspicious. He alone has granted everyone that right. 

Of course Magnus quitting is inappropriate. But as far as I know it's not against the rules. It's very possible Hans won fair and square. So it's interesting that so much attention and so many accusations have been made towards him. That just shows how much people will use someone's past to make future predictions. 

 Of course it is. It's been years since Hans cheated at chess.com, and he's played for quite a bit and he's not been dropped out of any tournament, nor has he been found out cheating at OTB, not has there been an outcry at every single match he's played. 

 Obivously some people would react negatively towards him because of his past cheating at chess.com, but you have to ask yourself, why this now? Right after he beat Magnus? Why not in the previous game? Why not during all the matches in the previous tournament? Or the tournament before that? Or in every match he played within the last 365 days? Or why stop there, what about every match he played within the last 2 years? 

 Why had chess.com not dropped him before? Why would chess.com invite him to join this upcoming chess.com tournament? Why withdraw the invitation NOW instead of, let's say, 2 matches before he played Carlsen? 

 Why all the forums posts about Hans right now? I dont recall a spam of threads and GMs talking on streams about Hans non-stop all these years to accuse him of cheating after EVERY SINGLE GAME HE'S PLAYED.

 This is all happening because he defeated Magnus, and Magnus decided to throw a hissy fit and accuse him of cheating. If he had lost to Magnus no one would have said a thing and would have carried on as usual.

Sounds like you answered all your own questions. 

But "as usual" would not have been "nobody saying a thing".  People in those circles were always talking about it.  You are only privy to it now because it came to light now.

This ticking time bomb was always destined to blow up the first time Niemann's results were noteworthy enough.  If it wasn't here, it would have been the next big tournament.

What's your opinion on this:?

That phrase "... with the hope of finding a resolution where Hans can again participate on Chess.com." sounds like they're angling for a settlement to stave off a possible expensive lawsuit.  That means they're not negotiating from a position of strength because they don't have enough evidence.  Otherwise, why settle with a cheater if you have enough proof that will stand up in court? Hikaru is also backpedalling in his latest video.  He's probably scared of a lawsuit as well.

It confirms that Chess.com's action is about his online cheating, not the OTB tournament. 

Your perspective seems biased.

Hikaru clarified that he never directly accused Niemann of cheating OTB...which is true.  I don't like his behavior on stream, but his innuendo is all implication.  You gather that this new video might be because of fear of a lawsuit...hardly likely at all.  Rather, he is probably worried that a bunch of the munchkins that watch him will turn against him and affect his streaming revenue.

Chess.com similarly seems to be bending over backwards to appear fair in order to appease that same bunch of munchkins.  This is the problem with catering so heavily to one demographic...then you need them and they exert undue influence on decisions...the problem compounds when the chosen demographic is children, because childish influences are what they exert.

This isn't some Netflix tween movie where the hero learns his lesson and goes on to triumph over all.  It's reality, where adults who have lived longer know the truth...cheaters rarely change, and even more rarely when they are given second and third chances without any significant penalties ever being applied.  

The next time your friend gets kicked out of the their bowling league for wearing the wrong shoes, go in with them and try to argue "innocent until proven guilty" or "right to free speech" and see how far you get .

This (that is, the chess.com banning) would not have happened if chess.com simply stopped giving second chances.  Ban and done, no coming back.  They cannot prevent someone from making a new account if they are smart enough to get a new IP, etc.  But in the case of a titled player, that would obviously be the end of the line for them playing under their real name with their title.   

Many titled players are minors, and yep, that sucks for them, because cheating is an immature decision...but playing professional chess for prize funds forces the issue:  play with the adults, win the same prizes as adults, act like an adult, and receive the same consequences as an adult.  Can't have your cake and eat it, too.

I interpreted it more as: chess.com might be willing to let Hans play on chess.com again, if he were to, perhaps, take anti-cheating measures first (like having two live cameras to that show his computer screen, and the physical setup around him, while he plays ... or something along those lines).

As for the question about why would chess.com want to invite Hans back? Because his now-popular name can draw in more income for chess.com, of course. (Bigger names means more members joining to watch ...)

People who do not have the training and experience of an attorney  frequently make inaccurate statements concerning the subject. I can say with certainty that chess.com does not fear being involved in a cause of action for damages as a result of finding a GM in violation of their terms of service.They just bought The Magnus Group for $82 million dollars.Even Hans has publicly acknowledged they have the best cheat detection software in existence.

Because chess.com is rubbish at dealing with cheaters. They allow them back in if they promise to not cheat again (lol). Just look at this thread from a few weeks ago, and it's not even from a titled player strong player:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-com-community/im-back-with-an-apology-71661015

 So what's all the point in all that state of the art (or so they claim) anticheat, if they are going to let them back in so that they can carry on cheating? None.

chess.com's software is good enough to get a lot of GM's who are caught admit it and seek a second chance. Perfection is not the standard. People who are accused have the ability to challenge the decision and seek to have it overturned. But Hans who apparently should know a lot about cheating  has acknowledged the software's worth.

Glad that Danny has provided a statement, however it raises more questions than it answers.

Was the alleged online cheating done when he was 16 years old, or more recently?

Why was this not detected and acted upon earlier and why did it happen so soon after Magnus withdrew from the tournament?

Did Magnus or any one of his representatives request that Hans be re-reviewed for cheating?

If not, what was it that prompted chess.com to review his games for possible cheating?

What is the evidence that Hans cheated more than he has admitted to?

The plot thickens...

It is statistically sound.  If no human player in the world can consistently beat 80% matchup, then a player that is hitting 90% is cheating.  They just are.  The exact same way that if you watch someone run a 100-yard dash in 7 seconds, you know something is not kosher.  It's not even about the quality of play.  If one human being was able to to play naturally at a 3500 rating level, they could *still* be caught "cheating" using statistical analysis if their matchup rate was too high.  It's about making the same moves as the engine, too often to be human.  In the 100 yard dash example, if someone were clocked at running the 100 yard dash in exactly 17.71 seconds every single time they ran and lost, you would still know something was not right.  It's not possible for a human being to be that consistent, even if it's consistently bad.

The statistics are sound, and that's just a straight T3/T4 matchup.  You can go beyond this, and chess.com has.  We will never know the exact parameters, because knowing them would allow people to write online cheating bots that will beat the cheat detection...but it's easy enough to know some of what they must do:

- They will have added checks to catch "occasional" usage of an engine for critical moves over time.  How?  You can match how often a player correctly evaluates moves when faced specifically with a move that calls for only one continuation. 

- They will have added checks to catch players that only blunder-check, not looking at moves and using them at all, just being informed whether their move choice reduces the current evaluation.   How?  Human beings have statistical range of blunders.  A player who may not always play the best move, but just never blunders, ever...is cheating.  Even if they do blunder on occasion, if their blunder rate is several standards of deviation less than the best human examples, then they are cheating.

People will bring up arguments about some exceptional human being born with a natural XYZ ability that is just leaps and bounds past everyone else.  Nope.  Doesn't happen past a certain point.  Ever.  You can get small incremental improvement.  And that margin of error is why chess.com lets people go too often as you and some others have mentioned.  So, if a cheater is smart enough to stay within the realm of remote possibility, they slip by...until they get confident and go too far at some point.  Like...perhaps someone who has gotten away with cheating at a GM level for a couple years in smaller events might decide they can cheat in a big money tournament and toss in a defeat of the guy that called them an idiot for good measure.

The cheat detection has to be run against the entire load of chess games, every day.  It is all but certain that chess.com will be doing this by a first pass to collect potential cheaters, and only then running a much deeper analysis on the resulting list, which is probably piled up in a database table of PGNs.  But if there's a reason to pull a particular player's games out of queue and manually run them through the process...like, say, the Chief Chess Officer is worried that they gave 2 chances to someone who might be cheating in a big name tournament...?

That's just a platitude .  It's true that you cannot, say, solve chess using statistics, because there only has to be one forcing line in ~10^120 possible games (not positions, for those about to kibitz).  For humanity, it's not the same.  There are "only" 8 billion people on the planet, and their abilities and behaviors fall into measurable ranges.  If a human being is too far out of range statistically to be accounted for, then their results are not actually human.  It's measurable and accurate.

Enjoy the video gaming.

I'm changing my mind. I think there's enough arguments to accuse him. He cheated many times in the past. He got crazy chessbase % scores per games even higher than Sebastian Feller (former cheater). He lied about multiple things in his interview https://youtu.be/OK9ZkoSQNFs 

Doesn't show the skill or thoughts as a 2600/2700 would 

I change my mind