Key Takeaways and Discussion of Chess.com's Report About GM Hans Niemann.Where does this Leave Us?

#bluewirevideo

We discuss the data Nate laid out in his Monday post, Did Hans Nieman Cheat
Or use this link for the same discount:

42:00- We answer some listener questions related to the scandal.
Mentioned: David Smerdon’s thoughts on the report here:
Episode 271 with GM Hans Niemann

1:13:00- Thanks to Nate for joining me and sharing his insights. Here are links to keep up with him:
Twitter
Substack Blog
Evaluate Like a GM Website

If you would like to help support Perpetual Chess, you can do so here.

[perpetualchesspodcast]

CORRECTION- There were a couple of times I misspoke in this pod in distinguishing between online and OTB cheating.I want to clarify that I was not disputing whether Hans cheated online, and any time I mentioned questions about whether Hans cheated it was only in relation to whether he cheated OTB. My apologies- Ben

[TCS]

Cheating is rampant in online chess. Cheating occurred frequently in OTB chess, even before the computer and cell phone age. Back in the 70's I saw players consult with stronger players outside the playing room to get advice on their game. So Cheating is nothing new. All online money tournaments should require multiple camera angles on the players monitored by the tournament director. I'm playing one now that requires this. That may not totally eliminate cheating, but makes it more difficult. One good thing to emerge from this is all OTB tournaments will be forced to take cheating more seriously and implement additional measures to try and prevent cheating. That is a good thing.

[rahawala]

The most interesting part of the discussion I thought was at 55:00, since almost every GM has said that you need very little intel to successfully cheat at the highest levels (even just a signal that it's a game-determinative critical position, or that you're significantly ahead in the eval, would suffice). I *think* Ben and Nate acknowledged that basically data models can't reliably detect the most probable approaches to OTB cheating so you essentially need to catch someone in the act. Which makes it problematic to be using these models to exonerate Hans (I agree with Fabi and others on this). And because the security measures have not historically been stringent, we are left to hope that a prolific online cheater who only stopped after he was caught has not ever attempted to cheat OTB. The solution is not to assume he's been cheating OTB, but frankly I think it would be more than appropriate to be format-agnostic and ban non-trivial online cheaters from OTB events for at least some period of time (from an ethical or deterrence-theory perspective, it's very weird to be drawing these online vs. OTB distinctions).

[vlnow]

The real controversy isnt Hans, its that many titled and GM have been cheating online for a while.

[WhatsTherapy]

The most levelheaded dialogue around this whole situation, thanks

[robertellis]

Let's assume I am an evil genius and have an undetectable means of receiving assistance during OTB chess. From what I saw, the regan model won't say I am cheating until I overperform by 4 standard deviations (I think, please correct if wrong). So if I cheated a few moves in some games, still lost some games, etc. I won't be detected. But aren't I adding games where I cheated into my baseline data and therefore corrupting it? Won't I be able to cheat a little more and at higher levels each time? Just asking for fun.

[MrJeo]

Innocent until proven guilty is written down in law, it is not a rule of our society generally

[martenhernebring]

Chesswire video and hearing from Alejandro today and this podcast yesterday made me change view on Hans. I believe he has been clean since 2020 now.

[barrang]

A serial cheater calls everyone a fool and then the rest of the world must apologise. Reminds me of something...

[bingusbangus]

The big grey area thing for me is whether the lies weigh into the picture and how much.

1. I was moved by Han's interview by what seemed to be authentic emotions. His statement about cheating in money events to be the worst thing ever and claiming to never do it confuses me a lot.

It makes me wonder whether his emotional display is actually authentic. If not, then it's surprising how well he can act the part.

2. Again, a psychological thing, but cheating 100 times even after getting caught suggests a Machiavellian mindset of thinking it's ok to do something if there's no repercussions. In his first offense, he was very regretful and accommodating with Danny.

This is speculation now, but the fact that afterwards he cheated at least 100 times more makes me think his first exchange is not due to being sorry but being scared of repercussions. When he found out that he could do it without consequences, he did it more, and at large scale.

3. Stringing together a premeditated emotional narrative and then putting chesscom on blast despite knowing they're aware of his cheating history seems highly manipulative to me. The first one is understanding how people's feelings work and how to get them to sympathize with him emotionally. The second suggests that that he's willing to step over Danny and chesscom if he thinks they won't do anything about it (though I don't think he expected chesscom to make a reply).

4. Han's explanation was that he made a mistake 3 years ago, regretted it deeply, and since then come clean. The fact that he's been lying isn't helping his narrative of being a morally changed person.

It's hard to process since I can't help considering a person's mental framework when trying to piece things together. However, it is obviously not concrete evidence for OTB cheating, so not sure if the whole mental angle of understanding how a person thinks is objectively relevant.

[timcannon]

Wow former professional poker player turned writer and chess enthusiast. I feel like I was this week's guest!

[TCS]

Nate and Ben appear to be apologists for Hans. The report, which I've read, concluded that Hans cheated in over 100 online games and in money games, and therefore lied in his interview when he downplayed the amount of his cheating.

[oraz.]

Seeing that French FM reading a number without concerning themselves with what the underlying definition was and then making dispositive statements invoking probability based on it bothered me too, and it convinced everybody. It's really irresponsible for amateurs to present themselves in that way.

[danielyau]

Nate and Ben almost appear to be apologists for Hans although I know they are trying to be neutral, they basically breeze past the scope of this online cheating which included him streaming games while cheating and this gem:

As you [Hans] admitted to me [Danny] in our call where you confessed that “having a higher rating would mean people tune in more to my streams when I’m battling Hikaru, Danya or Eric (Hansen). I need people to believe that I’m a worthy rival to follow and subscribe”. (Page 57)

[robertellis]

So I saw a different data scientist show his centipawn loss is not comparable to his peers in OTB chess. Not saying the data alone proves anything, either for or against Hans.

[ruster]

A lot of people feels deeply that he is cheating but nobody can tell how. Very similar to the nordstorm pipeline scandal. Majority of the experts think it is sabotaged but no-one can say how and by who. Today's technology makes these kind of mysteries more often than we've ever experienced in the history of the mankind.

[mikes]

I think choosing to have the WSJ break the story hours before the Hall of Fame ceremony was not the best decision.

[brasileirosim]

Guys, I would appreciate if you check this video on ACPL and SDCP in Hans’ OTB games.

Highly abnormal is that the ACPL of all moves of all games played between 2018 and 2020 is 27. Why is this highly suspicious? Because the expected number for a 2700 player is 22.

There is a high correlation between rating and ACPL. The pattern is clear and intuitively expected, right? Hans’ numbers are far away from this pattern. It is as he began almost from one day to another to play with a strength of 2500 in 2018 and this didn’t change!!! He is STILL playing at this strength! Although his rating is 2700??!

This is a strong evidence of cheating! He is obviously using an engine sporadically in critical positions. This is the reason why his ACPL and SCDP didn’t change. He didn’t think on this when he began to cheat, he was only making sure that the cheating would be impossible to detect by the anticheating algorithms.

Also Hans SDCP is unusual. It is 47, but the expected number for 2700 players is 38. You will probably not find a single 2700 player with these values. Because you can’t get at this rating with a ACPL of 27 and a SCDP as high as 47. This is simply not enough to constantly win or draw against 2600+ players.

The problem is that these values didn’t basically change since 2018. Almost nothing (I think 1%).

Please read this carefully: this is highly unusual!!! In the same analysis of other talented strong players (also young) the ACPL and the SDCP decreases continuously in time. This is obviously expected - stronger players make less inaccuracies and are more consistent when compared with weaker players. Why is Hans an exception to this pattern? A miracle? Why he is clumsy analyzing the game he played against Magnus? One reason could be he forgot already his thoughts (which is crazy, it was not a bullet game played months ago) or he didn’t calculate the difficult positions (what would explain that Magnus found odd that it didn’t seem focus on the game).

Now: Why are people not talking about this? Nakamura commented it, found interesting, and ChessBase published a summary of the work, and I am discussing the topic in Chessable, otherwise people just don’t mention it. This “analysis” of Hans games mentioned in the podcast is of course irrelevant and we should forget this. But the work by the Brazilian Milky Chess (Rafael Leitão) is highly relevant as far as I can see. I really hope you will once invite a specialist to talk about this work (you could invite Rafael, as he speaks quite well English and will be happy to talk about his work - he invested a lot of energy in this investigation).
Here the video (there are two)


Thanks for the attention and thanks for the podcast, I am listening all episodes.

[reallycoolguy]

The one caveat about his elo rise is that he gained over 100 elo in one tournament and his play in that tournament was not even particularly strong. If you exclude this one tournament, his rise suddenly looks normal.

[chilln]

How is he still losing to many other lower rating gm when he can outplay magnus like that? Shouldnt they be a piece of cake if he has that skill that was able to outplay even magnus and everyone else etc. Aronian, wesley, hikaru? Shouldnt that skill make him in the same category as magnus and nepo who are rarely losing games?