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This Perpetual Chess interview with CEO Erik Allebest is actually kinda juicy

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DanielGuel

This is actually a good interview with lots of interesting anecdotes about cheating in chess. Even a Netflix documentary about the cheating scandal coming soon? 👀

Also a specific question - 56:00 Erik mentions Sam Sevian as a possible interview on the cheating documentary, mentioning the King decapitation story was "swept under the rug." Is there more to that story than what we know? Erik seems to be inferring that there is more to that story. 

justbefair

It is a good interview but it's kind of long.

I made it through about 20 minutes...

Maybe this will help people find parts of interest:

3,236 views Feb 6, 2024

Recorded on January 31, 2024 Featuring guest co-host FM Nate Solon With talk of online cheating recently dominating chess conversations, Chess.com CEO and co-founder Erik Allebest joined me (and guest co-host FM Nate Solon) to discuss the issue at length. While Erik acknowledges that chess cheating is an existential threat to the game, the research of his Chess.com team suggests that people overestimate the frequency of online cheating occurrences.

Erik also discussed Chess.com’s current and forthcoming anti-cheat measures, their policy regarding not naming suspected cheaters, and Erik’s thoughts on some recent headline-grabbing comments by GM Fabiano Caruana.

We also covered a lot of topics unrelated to online cheating, including The Magnus-Hikaru match that fell through last year, the closures of Chess24 and the Pro Chess League, Chess.com’s relationship with FIDE, and Erik’s reflections on the Niemann-Carlsen story. As Erik discussed, there will still be a lot more information coming out about that story in a forthcoming Netflix documentary. I appreciate Erik’s willingness to speak so openly about so many issues and think that you will learn a lot from the conversation.

0:00- Be sure to check out Chessable’s new courses including GM Srinath Narayanan’s brand new course on the Classical Sicilian, and if you use this link to sign up for Chessable Pro, and/or make a Chessable purchase, it will help support Perpetual Chess. https://www.chessable.com/pro/?utm_so. 0:01- Here are the links to subscribe to guest co-host FM Nate Solon’s blog and to check out his new learning cohort, The Chess Gym: https://thechessgym.com/ https://zwischenzug.substack.com/ 0:03- Erik Allebest joins the podcast! We begin by discussing chess cheating. Mentioned: Erik’s first interview with Ilya Levitov  • An interview with Erik Allebest, CEO ... (There is a part 2 to that interview that was released after this podcast was recorded) NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/cr. 13:30- What does Erik think of GM Fabiano Caruana’s recent suggestions of widespread cheating during Titled Tuesday? Mentioned; Nate’s post called Beating Hikaru https://zwischenzug.substack.com/p/be. 27:00- More on cheating, including whether they have considered having players play from centralized locations and other issues. 31:00- What goes into their policy of not naming cheaters? Might that policy be changed? 40:00- Has Chess.com had discussions with FIDE about sharing info about players who have been banned from their site? 42:00- Would Chess.com consider being involved in a new chess governing body? Mentioned: Episode 364 with GM Patrick Wolff 49:00- What happened with the match between Magnus and Hikaru that fell through last year? Mentioned: The State of Chess.com 2023:  • State of Chess.com 2023 | Danny Gets ... 55:00- What will be the subject of a forthcoming Netflix chess documentary? Mentioned: GM Sam Sevian 57:00- What did the CHess.com team learn from the Niemann-Carlsen controversy? 1:01:00- Why was the Pro Chess League shut down? What about Chess24? 1:11:00- Was selling of a partial stake of Chess.com to the private equity firm General Atlantic related to the Play Magnus acquisition? Mentioned: Isai Scheinberg, General Atlantic Announces Investment in Chess.com: https://www.generalatlantic.com/media. 1:20:00- Closing thoughts- what is Erik excited for in the coming year? Thanks to Erik for joining us, and to FM Nate Solon for co-hosting! If you would like to help support Perpetual Chess, you can do so here:   / perpetualchess