With that said, pretty much everyone in my family, including my SO, are lawyers and I have been around the block a few times when it comes to discussing slander / libel suits in the US.
As an independent 3rd party with no interest in the world of Chess, I don't see how Niemann expects to win any damages in this case.
In the US the bar for slander is very high due to the existence of the first amendment and trying to protect it, you will basically have to prove malicious intent and that the offending party knew they were lying. Other countries like the UK have a much lower bar which is why it's a bigger deal there.
Unless I am missing some clear piece of evidence no one made a bad faith comment (and i need to stress you need to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt)
Magnus felt there was foul play because he knew of Nieman's history of cheating which was public knowledge in the chess world, same thing with his comments regarding the coach
Chess.com simply made available data that is rightfully theirs and stated that his rise has been exceptional.
Hikaru simply commented on the situation like a million other youtubers / twitch streamers and influencers, he just happens to be an expert in the field so he made his opinion using his domain knowledge and the fact that Niemann had been previously accused of cheating.
Again, unless i am missing some clear piece of evidence no one acted maliciously or twisted the truth to purposely cause harm, only gave their opinion using the information they had available.
>> I don't see how Niemann expects to win any damages in this case
I don't think that's the only reason you bring a slander lawsuit. I think sometimes people do it expecting they will lose, but knowing the defense will be "we have no evidence the things we said were true, but our false statements are technically legal", and making the defendants go on the record with that defense.
IANAL but I think if they knew the statements were false (or with reckless disregard for the truth) then it would be slander. This is the "actual malice" standard. But in this case it seems absurdly unlikely that Niemann could prove this.
Is this guy enough of a public figure to require the actual malice standard? Because for a private citizen, you would only have to prove that the accusations were wrong, assuming the topic is also not considered to be of public concern.
But maybe chess championships and champions are a big enough deal to be considered public.
In this case everyone mentioned in the suit public figure within the worldwide chess playing community which would suffice. Also this event has had international coverage from multiple sources which would be presented as evidence that they are indeed public figures if there was any doubt.
Shame that it is so difficult to navigate twitter at times, there is a lot of really good analysis here for anyone that is interested. I didn't go over the conspiracy and anti trust charges but he does a good job covering the bases and explaining what Niemann needs to show in order to be awarded damages or not have the suit thrown out.
> As an independent 3rd party with no interest in the world of Chess, I don't see how Niemann expects to win any damages in this case.
That's not the goal with most of these libel/slander law suits. Consider the most famous one - Billy Mitchell the most infamous professional gamer of all time. The evidence is basically unanimous he cheated but he uses lawsuits to shut down people who can't afford to fight them.
I imagine this is no different. Your only mistake is assuming the court won't throw out such a trashy lawsuit and lawyers exist that actually have some dignity.
The Billy Mitchell strategy doesn't make sense in this case though, since I guarantee you that all three named entities have more money to fight lawsuits than Hans Niemann.
We don’t know what Hans’s resources are. Perhaps his lawyers are working pro bono or otherwise agreed to take his case on contingency, with the rationale being that Hans is a public figure and this case may serve as advertisement for the law firm.
Same point applies, since a firm is not gonna take a pro bono (this would actually be contingency fee) case they don't think they can win, which was what the OP was saying.
Assume for a moment Hans did not cheat (aside from the times he admitted to cheating).
In the scenario where he did not cheat - how amazing is his performance? I.e. beating Magnus, Elo rating, etc. I know chess.com did an analysis, which I've read, but I'm hoping someone more impartial could explain it.
In the scenario where he did not cheat, is he really on a Bobby Fischer-like ascendance?
This is what I'm trying to understand - both scenarios seem so wild to me. Either (a) this guy is cheating a pro-level chess (totally wild) OR (b) he's on a crazy ramp-up of skill (totally wild).
(a) is pretty self-explanatory.
(b) is what I want someone to explain - if this is the scenario, just how crazy is the rate of his skill increase?
He has had an impressive but not unprecedented ramp up, from 2400(ish) to 2700 in around 3 years. There are actually other young stars, in particular a trio of Indian prodigies who've had a similar surge at the same time. I recommend the work of Nate Solon, a chess master and data scientist, easy to find on Twitter, he's published some interesting analysis. It's surprising for Magnus to lose a White game at all, especially to someone not in the top ten, but really no more than surprising - these sort of things happen. Can Djokovic lose to the world #100? Absolutely, he can have a bad day. The world #100 (in tennis or chess) is 98% (ish) as good as the world #1. Did Niemann cheat against Magnus? Obviously I don't know but I do think extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence and I don't see it in this case.
Carlsen was also immediately worse out of the opening and the game went directly from the opening to an endgame where Carlsen(white pieces) was slightly worse.
His win over Carlsen wasn't considered to be superhuman. Neither player played perfectly. In his podcast, Fabiano Caruana (someone capable of judging this) said he felt very strongly that Niemann hadn't cheated in the tournament.
His ELO gains are impressive, but not unique. [1]
If he is cheating, no sensible hypothesis of how he's doing it has yet been offered. So it seems more probably he's a legitimately talented player whose merit's obscured by his past.
There was nothing particularly amazing. His rise is not extraordinary. The only part that is slightly unusual is that it came towards his mid to late teens, whereas such a rise is commonly seen in the early teens. However, even that can very easily be explained by the pandemic, where he used that time to dedicate himself to chess (which is something no one is questioning).
Further, in the particular game he beat Magnus in, he did not play an extraordinary game or anything. He simply did not make any major mistakes. Whereas Magnus did. If imagine the majority of GMs playing in Hans’s position would have won that game.
I‘ve been trying to draw parallels to other sports in this regard. Nobody accused Tiger Woods of cheating (at golf) when he redefined the sport. People DID accuse Lance Armstrong, and they were right (although in that case the whole field was cheating). New England Patriots? Kinda cheated. Michael Phelps has never been accused AFAIK.
As a non-chess player, I can’t help but wonder if this is just an entire sport refusing to accept that someone could come along and achieve this, or if it’s really just too good to be true.
Plus Hans did admit to at least some amount of cheating.
Golf's a game of precision motor control, while insanely long drives might be evidence of cheating, it's hard to imagine a way to make yourself more accurate besides skill, at least without it being obvious on live television.
Biking obviously involves a lot of different things but it's much easier to see how doping is going to help.
Football has so many facets that it's kind of surprising there aren't more cheating scandals, but at the same time it's harder to isolate any one thing and say that's what's giving a team an edge.
Michael Phelps rose to prominence after most of the big doping scandals by which point anti-doping measures were well established. Besides doping, it's tough to cheat at swimming.
With chess, it's trivial to have a computer on your person capable of beating any human alive, it's just communicating with said computer that is a challenge. Given that chess masters are supposed to be extremely good at strategy and making clever moves people won't see coming, I'm sure there have been some ridiculous cheating attempts.
“Improving your lie” is a common way, meaning altering the environment around the player, swing path, ball, or shot path in a way that yields some advantage.
This would include things like breaking off a twig in your way, removing leaves or grass around the ball, etc.
To be clear online chess legitimately has a cheating problem. I think it has gotten better but according to chess.com there have been a number of Grandmasters including some of the top 100 players in the world who have cheated on the site and admitted it. Cheating in over the board chess seems to be much less common but everyone realizes it is possible and if done well would be challenging to catch. I think this has primed the field for people to be suspicious.
I’m a bit skeptical of this figure that chess grandmasters have admitted it. From what I understand, if chess.com accused you of cheating, they tell you “you have 3 days to admit it or be banned”. So in the face of that, of course they’re going to admit to cheating (since admitting it leads to no other repercussions). To me it seems like a way for the anticheat team to farm credibility. This was my impression based on Maxim Dlugy’s statement
> I can’t help but wonder if this is just an entire sport refusing to accept that someone could come along and achieve this
That's what Niemann wants you to believe, but it's not right. Carlsen is rated about 200 Elo points above Niemann. That makes a win in classical an upset, sure, but far from unprecented, and far from proof that he's a threat to Magnus' dominating position in the chess world the last decade. Weaker players have beaten Magnus, even with black.
Hans is currently rated around 2700 (at least his live rating after his performance at the US Chess Championship). A few other GMs around that rating have beaten Magnus in just the last week or two (Arjun Erigaisi and Gukesh to name a couple), so it's not out of this world. It is still certainly an upset, but not impossible.
> In the scenario where he did not cheat - how amazing is his performance?
Not amazing at all. It’s a fairly standard performance which is why it’s very dubious he cheated OTB. The chess.com report has to stretch the truth considerably to try to imply there is something fishy OTB. Magnus was just playing aggressively to score against a weaker opponent and had a bad day.
His performance ramp up is not particularly impressive. He played less tournaments that people his age four years ago and his rating went up towards competitive GM level when he started seriously playing. That’s a typical trajectory for a young pro-player. To be clear, we are not talking about a Fischer-like, world champion contender path here.
His rate of improvement, assuming no cheating since his ban in 2020, is a faster ascendance than any other player in history, including Bobby Fischer. So yes, assuming he suddenly quit cheating cold turkey, his performance would indicate he is a once in a generation talent and could easily become the best in the world, according to the Chess.com report.
I'm a huge Hans fan. (F him for cheating, but setting that aside.) His play is objectively insane. Either he's somehow been cheating this whole time via shoefish, or he's the real deal.
GothamChess has had excellent coverage of his games.
Hans threw a masterful knockout punch at the end, one which his opponent completely overlooked, and was solely a single move. There wasn't cheating-like high level strategy involved -- it was a one-move fatality.
Whatever else the kid has done, he is one hell of a chess player. I find it hard not to root for him, even knowing his history.
But he doesn't do himself any favors with comments like "the chess speaks for itself", or offering what according to other GMs is a lackluster analysis of those astounding moves.
Whether it's immaturity or cheating remains to be seen.
Please listen to Duda,Keymer, Ali reza do post game analysis. They can speak very well about their ideas. It is not normal to be a 2700 and be unable to give your thoughts on the game you just played.
Yeah, because being a GM is a completely normal thing in the first place.
Bobby Fischer was one of the top chess players of all time and was a certifiably insane nut job. There’s nothing normal about being a GM in the first place.
Niemann literally just won the biggest game of his life. He did something none of Duda, Alireza, etc have achieved. His situation was not normal. Trying to judge his actions based on whether it’s what Duda, etc would have done themselves in a situation they’ve never found themselves despite having had many opportunities to do so is silly.
This whole idea of le crazy chess grandmaster is so silly. Fischer, even as he was declining precipitously, was producing cogent analysis and annotations on grandmaster level games.
>He did something none of Duda, Alireza, etc have achieved.
At some point I would expect the younger players to start doing this more often. After all, they have the ability to grow up learning to play from/like an engine. It just seems obvious that their play should diverge from what was traditionally canon.
GothamChess is amazing in general. He’ll be casting an upcoming chess tournament (kind of like football commentators, but chess). So hyped for it. If you haven’t seen him before, check out some of his other vids too — he does a variety of styles, like “Guess the ELO” and 1:1 chess tutorials with other popular non-chess streamers.
I think the most impressive thing is that he’s posted a video every single day for… I don’t know how long. He makes it a point of pride not to miss one.
His performance at the US chess championship with strict anti-cheating measures in place proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he's as good as his rating. This whole "improved too fast" as proof of cheating is nonsense.
He might have still cheated to beat Magnus but there's no proof.
As ridiculous as it sounds, did the US chess championship explicitly check to prevent the vibrating buttplug that has been jokingly thrown around as a theory?
It's an honest question. I didn't follow this closely and don't know whether a metal detector could find metal inside a human body.
Games were on a 30 minute broadcast delay with no in person audience. Vibrating butt plug works for receive but can't think of a plausible way for Hans to send the moves out.
You don't need to be a genius engineer, you need to be a competent stage magician. And competent stage magicians are more common than 2700 Elo chess players, so it's not by itself unreasonable to suspect.
No, not in morse code. Instead, the computer will (through vibration) cycle through a list of likely last moves, and you confirm the opponent's last move by clenching right after it comes up. This minimizes the considerable risk of incorrect move entry.
The list will also include a special entry indicating "none of the above", which will make the computer switch to the next set of less likely moves.
This scheme could be refined be having some move partitioning on top. For example, an initial list that has only ["pawn move", "light piece move", "heavy piece move"].
This isn't really true. He started later then most other high level players, and then the pandemic meant he was studying and playing online a lot without raising his OTB rating. He's a good player but I don't think there is any real argument that he might ever be world champion.
This is just not true. Check out the analysis here [0], for example. His rating improvement has been steep but he's also played a very large number of games, so his rating gain per game as opposed to per unit of time is not so crazy.
Also, no one seriously expects Hans to be a world championship contender.
Every chess player plays a lot of games, Hans' have just been more public/documented ones. You really don't think that every 2400+ player is treating chess like a full time job, and Hans just simply is just outworking them?
>Assume for a moment Hans did not cheat (aside from the times he admitted to cheating).
as far as i can tell he's hasn't cheated since 2020. Ive seen several of his games though where he certainly has cheated.
>In the scenario where he did not cheat - how amazing is his performance? I.e. beating Magnus, Elo rating, etc. I know chess.com did an analysis, which I've read, but I'm hoping someone more impartial could explain it.
Magnus ultimately drew the match; the one he lost he resigned on move 2. So no remarkable performance.
>In the scenario where he did not cheat, is he really on a Bobby Fischer-like ascendance?
The chess.com allegations has him better than bobby fischer in terms of rise. Though I would say that's not accounting for elo inflation.
>This is what I'm trying to understand - both scenarios seem so wild to me. Either (a) this guy is cheating a pro-level chess (totally wild) OR (b) he's on a crazy ramp-up of skill (totally wild).
He's an admitted cheater; but what seems to have gone unsaid is that perhaps his cheating isn't actual cheating. Rather he was reading his stream comments and viewers were cheating for him. It's not quite the same.
Flipside, streaming is always going to take some of your focus and attention. Streamers are by default not going to be able to compete at the top most level. So the probability he's at a supergm level is basically impossible.
> He's an admitted cheater; but what seems to have gone unsaid is that perhaps his cheating isn't actual cheating. Rather he was reading his stream comments and viewers were cheating for him. It's not quite the same.
..what?! Your definition of cheating appears to differ from the accepted meaning of the word in quite a few ways
From everything said about Hans the thing that sticks out to me the most is his analysed centipawn loss over all his games. Typically, as someone improves, both their loss per move and loss-variance falls. For hans, there is limited improvement over time and a high variance in the quality of his moves. He effectively has played at a 2700 level for a couple of years... This seems to be unusal compared to compariable pros.
I have listened to some his interviews recently and he talks extensively about engine analysed lines. He talks about avoiding lines he hasn't analysed or is uncertain on. I wouldn't be surprised if he has optimised his development on engine analysis. It would explain a high number of highly accurute games. It would also explain the variance in his play where he forced into unknown lines.
Hans went from 2400 to 2700, so he obviously improved. Centipawn analysis is just youtuber snakeoil. Everyone at the top level has trained and analyzed lines with engines for the past 25 years.
> Assume for a moment Hans did not cheat (aside from the times he admitted to cheating). In the scenario where he did not cheat - how amazing is his performance? ...In the scenario where he did not cheat, is he really on a Bobby Fischer-like ascendance?
I think so, yes, and even considerably moreso.
According to Yosha Iglesias[1] and her anonymous mathematician friend, for 5 tournaments in a row starting at the Philadelphia Open in July 2021 Hans Niemann played at an average engine correlation of 73%, beating Bobby Fischer's average engine correlation of 72% during his 20 game winning streak between 2 Dec. 1970 and 30 Sept. 1971. Fischer's peak rating was 2895 in October 1971 at 27yo. Niemann's peak rating was 2699 this month, October 2022, at 19yo.
Also according to Yosha, in three years Niemann has played 10 games with a perfect 100% engine correlation and 23 games with engine correlations above 90%.[2]
My own chess layman analysis of the experts' analyses is that the best chess players in the world right now generally play games with engine correlations ranging game to game from the mid-60%s to the high-80%s, with much rarer games in the 90%s, and games 100% engine correlated being a once or twice in a lifetime event. Magnus Carlson at his best has an engine correlation of 70%.[1]
Unless he cheated, it is quite clear to me, at least, that Hans Niemann is the singular greatest chess player of all time.
Only the ROI of the probability of 6 consecutive tournaments was miscalculated, not the engine correlation percentages.
Fischer at his best during 20 consecutive winning games at his peak performance had an average engine correlation of 72%, while Niemann's average was 73% across 5 tournaments. I just saw this: Magnus Carlson's average engine correlation across 5 tournaments in 2021 (roughly the same period as Niemann's 5) was 66.48%[1].
Niemann conspicuously appears to be a superior chess player at 19yo than both Bobby Fischer at 27yo during the peak performance of his career and a much better chess player than Magnus Carson at 30yo while he was and is reigning World Champion.
It's a very impressive rise, but in part because it started later in life than other young GMs. In absolute terms, he's still on par with about a dozen young 2700s who are about the same age. It's just that he caught up really fast.
If I never bowled in my life, started, and two weeks later claimed I was getting 270 or higher on a consistent basis you wouldn't say "well there are pro bowelers his age that get similar scores "
The problem is Hans is still playing OTB at a 2700ish level. If Hans is managing to cheat in OTB chess with so many eyes on him, with all the security measures in place, and doing it so he's able to fool all of the anti-cheating statistical analyses, then honestly he should just be robbing banks or something because he could make way more money with those skills.
What I don't think most people are appreciating in this thread is that at this level of play the cheating can be extremely subtle and yet extremely effective. None of the players in this dramas are talking about a cheater having a hidden mind link to a chess engine. These games typically hinge on one or two crucial moments. GMs need only one bit of information at the right moment to play several hundred points above their normal rating. A cough at a point where there's a win opportunity or a potential trap is all that's needed.
You can prove statistically that he used Stockfish in some critical games; 100% same moves. In other games he was at Magnus' level, around 75%, and in some on his normal level.
Yes, Stockfish is really good. But not crazy. Just call him Hans Shoefish.
Not a lawyer but I’ve been in lawsuits on all sides. It’s the general recommended practice.
The number can only go down, never up, so you ask for all that you can.
It does have -some- sense if you think about it: this is a young kid with a whole career ahead of him. Because of this accusation, his career is pretty much over. Since he could have been one of the best (as demonstrated by beating magnus) he would have made $100m over a lifetime. Based This is probably the order of magnitude that hikaru and magnus will make in their careers. Or some loose logic like that
>The number can only go down, never up, so you ask for all that you can.
This is false. A jury can absolutely award more than what the plaintiff seeks, and the judge can increase it even more than what a jury awards.
I mean one of the most famous civil cases, the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, is an example of the jury awarding significantly more than what the plaintiff sought. For a recent example is the Alex Jones lawsuit where the plaintiff's sought a combined total of 300 million dollars but were awarded almost 1 billion dollars.
Those are extremely exceptional cases. What I gave is pragmatic advise for a normal person in general situations. But by all means, conduct your law suits however you want.
No, the fact that damages can change (and increase) over the course of a trial is not extremely exceptional at all, in fact it's the norm. The vast majority of civil suits are for unspecified claims.
I only mentioned McDonald's and Alex Jones because most people would be familiar with them, not because they are exceptional. OJ Simpson's wrongful death suit is another example where the damages significantly exceeded what the plaintiff claimed.
Your advice is neither pragmatic or actually advisable by the ABA either and in all honesty, it sounds like you're just making stuff up.
I've worked with multiple lawyers on multiple suits and this is literally how they advised me. I've been on the other side of the table where I received legal letters asking to repair harms, and this is a similar story.
I'm telling stories about my life experiences. If you choose not to believe them, whatever I don't care.
And obviously you should not take the advise of me, an internet stranger, over your personal counsel. But yeah, when you get a suit handed to you, don't be surprised if this is the way things play out. Probably in your analysis you forgot to factor in that the vaaaast majority of disputes never reach an actual trial or a jury and are settled out of court.
When discussing legal matters, please avoid making statements like this:
"What I gave is pragmatic advise for a normal person in general situations."
Avoid purporting to give people legal advice if you are not a subject matter expert.
If you want to discuss your own personal experiences, by all means you're welcome to do so and there's nothing wrong with that. In that case avoid making factual or categorical claims that could mislead people and certainly don't do so with the notion that you're giving people advice on the matter.
When you say something can never happen that's a factual legal claim that is false when in fact it happens all the time. Perhaps in your specific circumstances that was the correct course of action, but that does not mean that this is a legal principle that can be generalized and from which you can advise others on.
You're basically just stating a set of arbitrary life principles and then saying everyone should live by them.
I thought my comment was 1) definitely ethical based on the fact the first sentence stated I'm not a lawyer, then later stating that you should always take the advise of your personal lawyer and 2) added value to ppl who didn't have any legal experience at all on the topic.
You think I was using the word "never" literally? Okay well how about you just said "in fact it happens all the time". Okay so it happens 100% of the time right? Does it even happen 50% of the time? You're a hypocrite for criticizing the use of conversational shortcuts and then using them yourself.
You've failed to convince me of anything, and I'm going to keep living my life and making comments the way I was.
> Because of this accusation, his career is pretty much over.
That was the conventional wisdom 3 weeks ago, when chess.com unleashed their report and things looked pretty bad for Hans.
But he performed respectably at the US championship over the past ~2 weeks (4 wins, 3 losses, 6 draws). He was entertainingly arrogant in interviews (I consider this a plus) and seemed to spontaneously conjure chaos (see the king decapitation near the end of the US championship).
If he continues like this (and if security measures are improved), he will be one of the (let's say) top-25 players and also one of the most entertaining.
I don't think we can pronounce the fate of his career yet. He's also only 19 years old.
In chess, a lot of tournaments are invite-only and he reports his invite was already dropped from Tata Steel and other high-profile tournaments. Without playing them he is stuck at open tournaments like US Chess Championship.
Magnus made clear that tournament organizers will need to choose between him or Hans. What's the point of choosing Hans?
> The number can only go down, never up, so you ask for all that you can.
I've heard the same logic applied to Patent claims, though I also understand that there is also a countervailing force, where it's against your interest to make too many claims.
His chess career. He most certainly has a wealth of other opportunities, and I tend to think of these chess grandmaster types as very capable of being very good at a lot of other things.
Chess is most of these peoples lives. Hans has talked about how basically all he does is study chess, play chess, and eat take out food. He doesn't really have any non chess basked skills.
That's great, but if for some reason I would lose the ability to make a living through my usual means then nobody would defend me. All I would get is "get your ass and go work [in McD/whatever]".
It is similar to the physical sports - after your career is ended (especially if abruptly from an injury) you just go and work like everyone else.
Man, I really hope nobody treated Brittney Griner like that when she came home...
"Hey, I know you're an Olympic athelete who has been unfairly persecuted for overblown doping allegations, but... have you ever considered a career in journalism?"
Griner is accused of some drug offenses, but AFAIK not doping. She's not accused of cheating in her sport.
In either case, she may well be too old to continue playing competitively when she comes back. But both she and Hans might still find careers in the sport as coaches. By all accounts Hans is an excellent player, even if he's cheated, and a former cheat could still find modest work as a coach.
Yeah... In that example though it's a basketball player caught with vape pens in her luggage, not olympic doping. The big difference is that she's not harmed her reputation with her behavior, like Hans has (or she would have were it Olympic doping). For better or worse, we care about how people represent themselves, and at least in the US vape pens don't impact your reputation like allegations of cheating do.
This would be more like _if_ she had admitted to doping during Junior Worlds, then wondered why nobody had confidence in her performance in the Olympics.
> 69. Upon announcing the Merger, it was reported that “With this, there is no other realistic chess competitor in sight (apart from the open-source and free Lichess platform), raising questions about monopolistic issues in the space and the reasons behind Chess.com’s recent price hike.”
> 70. Once completed, the Merger will further solidify Chess.com’s monopoly over the chess industry by, among other things, providing it total control over Chess24, one of the last few alternatives to Chess.com for online chess, and purchasing the Play Magnus brand, which has become virtually synonymous with chess.
Seems like a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" kind of argument.
The baseline from Alex Jones' cases is significantly higher: Jones built a multibillion dollar company off of slanderous lies about grieving parents and dead children. I don't think anybody in this context is worth close to that much, has had nearly that much public influence, etc.
That's much more than I expected. That being said, it's not really the same as Jones: chess.com's revenue comes from a paid service, one that's basically orthogonal to any support they've lent to the cheating accusations. This is in contrast to InfoWars, where a significant income driver was Jones's repeated defamations.
I think this whole drama is on chess.com for allowing cheaters back on their platform and not having a public wall of shame. They've known that Hans had cheated online and never disclosed it. Now they are trying to fool us into thinking they're on the public's side.
If you don't penalize cheaters early on then every kid that's promising at chess will start to cheat online to boost their stream views and to have enough income to focus fully on chess.
Is it normal for these suits to be so... salty? in their formulations. I've never read one before, but a lot of the wordings are pretty hilarious.
> Carlsen, having solidifed his position as the "King of Chess", believes that when it comes to chess, he can do whatever he wants and get away with it.
> On September 4, 2022, Niemann soundly defeated Carlsen during an in-person game
> Notably, this was not the first time that Niemann beat Carlsen at chess
> Notorios for his inability to cope with defeat, Carlsen snapped. Enraged that the young Niemann, fully 12 years his junior, dared to disrespect the "King of Chess", and fearful that the young prodigy would further blemish his multi-million dollar brand by beating him again
Just a thought experiment: what if it turns out that, for all practical purposes, it is impossible to prevent cheating in chess?
I mean the sport of Tour de France cycling disappeared for a decade, replaced by an identical-looking-but-fundamentally-different sport of competing to see who can cheat (dope) the best. It was probably not even possible to get into the TdF during that time period, without doping, there were so many people doing it.
It is entirely possible, that chess (as a professional competition) is not going to survive this, because it will turn out that with modern computing and communications technology, it is not possible to prevent cheating. Whoever wins the competition, will be the one who cheated the best. Chess will be replaced with an acting and subterfuge competition.
> Chess will be replaced with an acting and subterfuge competition.
Which sort of prompts the question: Why isn't there a "World Chess Cheating Championship"?
The competitors would be given the chance to either demonstrate a type of cheating, or demonstrate a counter-measure, and then judges would be able to organise rigorous tests that paired the methods off against each other.
One sort of test that would be interesting to try is to have a GM who is able to receive a one-bit signal from an accomplice once per game (the much-discussed "this is an important move, think carefully" signal), and then statisticians should try to pick that game (or some set of such games) out of a sea of non-cheating games.
Basically I think that the chess community shouldn't take any "security measures" by event organisers at face value. Without red-teaming, any such measures are just security theatre.
This is an old citation[0] but it's pretty difficult to find much on it. It doesn't look like it's very popular but I remember reading an article years ago that discussed "advanced" or "centaur" chess (human + computer teams) and their ability to beat computers alone. This is assuming that the human is already at the forefront of human performance in chess, though.
I'm not a chess player but have been interested in the developments of this saga from exposure via HN and other sources.
Here is Carlsen's twitter statement in regards to the issue in case anyone wants to see or needs a refresher. I'm personally not aware of other "public statements" made that could be closely related but I'm just a rando
I think him being damaged by being called a cheater is incredibly obvious, it has materially impacted his future earnings directly, and it has also had a significantly impacted his reputation beyond what the prior cheating allegations did. Magnus and Hikaru are two of the biggest chess celebrities on the planet, and Chess.com (According to Hans himself) has the best anti-cheat team in the chess world. Being accused of cheating by these individuals publicly, as well as being accused to cheating RECENTLY, both have severely impacted his reputation.
I don't think the legal question is going to be establishing that Hans has faced harm. I think that's self-evident. The interesting question is more did Magnus Carlsen's/Chess.com's/Hikaru Nakamura's statements amount to Libel/Slander?
My money is against Hans. Libel/Slander is hard to prove in the US.
I'd also note that Chess.com prefers to deal with things privately and would've been quiet about this had Hans not publicly used Chess.com's brand to bolster his own credibility, essentially saying that Chess.com vouches for him. Then Chess.com asked him to retract his words but Hans refused.
One might even think that his own documented and admitted history of cheating is what has damaged him. Who wants to play against a cheater? Has he suddenly come down with a case of honor? How can he prove that? He has already destroyed his own reputation. Why should anyone want to play him? He is whining because he is reaping what he has sown himself.
I believe his past and admitted history of cheating did damage him, but that does not mean these recent allegations of cheating have not additionally damaged him.
The allegations also weren't "Why - this man has admitted to cheated in the past - therefore we shouldn't trust him in the future". In the case of chess.com, they made specific and explicit allegations of cheating across a number of RECENT games. Magnus accused him specifically of cheating in the Sinquefield cup. The difference between somebody who cheated a few years ago as a teenager only online and seemingly reformed, and somebody who cheated again after claiming not to and cheated OTB as well, is significantly different in many peoples eyes. In a way that materially impacts his future career.
Before the Magnus allegations of recent cheating, nobody was seriously considering banning Hans from tournaments. Now he has already been banned from money tournaments by chess.com. I believe the fact he has faced harm as a result of these novel allegations is so obvious as to be beyond dispute. It is by far the easiest part of Hans legal case to prove. Unflattering allegations against Hans literally ended up in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal because of the recent novel allegations of Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen.
Past misdeeds do not mean the end of all future legal protections. Just because you have a shady past doesn't mean you can't sue for slander/libel and win, you see shady journalists who lie all the time win slander/libel cases all the time.
>Just because you have a shady past doesn't mean you can't sue for slander/libel and win, you see shady journalists who lie all the time win slander/libel cases all the time.
It is actually very rare for anyone to win a slander/libel case, shady journalist or otherwise. The salient issue here isn't his, "shady past", it's the specific behavior he was engaged in. Specifically, he has a documented history as a cheater. If you alleged that he was having sex with farm animals, which is unrelated to his history of cheating, he would have a much easier time proving tangible harm. He is going to have to prove that the recent damage to his reputation was both unfounded and resulted directly from the new allegations of his cheating, and not simply the fact that Carlson and Chess.com publicized his past, documented history of cheating. In short, if you refuse to race against Lance Armstrong because you say he is blood-doping, he's going to have a very difficult time suing for for slander, even if he is not currently engaged in that behavior.
The guy has admitted to cheating in the past, to make money. Basically he said that if his rating was above X, he could make more money streaming.
Chess.com put out a massive publication proving he cheated a hell of a lot more than "once or twice when he was younger".
Because if he's not cheating, he's literally the prodigal child of AlphaZero and Bobby Fischer and should be crowned the GOAT immediately. Some of his play is unreal.
There are more examples of him playing games with 100% accuracy against fellow GMs in the past few years than Magnus has had in his entire career IIRC. Some of his losses are against much lower rated opponents and somehow he manages to play some of the most accurate games against the highest rated opponents.
Honestly, what needs to happen is chess needs to be replaced with Fischer Random, and matches played in significantly faster time controls so players don't have the time to have moves evaluated and transmitted to them.
Or just delay the live stream instead? There’s a whole lot of hyperbole in your comments. He definitely cheated in online play as chess.com and Hans himself has said. Don’t think there’s been any proof of OTB cheating so far and his OTB play seems to be pretty realistic at this point.
I don't understand the comments regarding delayed live stream. Splitting video feed, visually analysing a board from it, and feeding it feeding into an engine, are all rather straight forward things to do. And delayed feed for conspirators seems redundant.
If the stream is delayed such that the previous move is being broadcast as the current move is played, than a cheater would need to communicate with their collaborators in duplex. A transmitter is a lot easier to detect than a receiver. The other alternative would be carrying the entire cheating apparatus on your person, which also presents a larger "cross section", if you will.
My argument was that you don't need a collaborator for online cheating. It is simple enough to automate everything from just the video feed, and would be undetectable by any software running on the machine.
Use a hdmi splitter. Do image processing on one feed to register moves as they are played (regardless of delay), pass those moves into an engine, and show the output on a hidden display, vibrations to a butt plug, what have you.
For OTB cheating, it becomes more complicated, but I'm sure a computer can be made small enough, and register inputs in any number of ways, while the output can be encoded vibrations.
We present evidence in this report that Hans likely cheated online much more than his public
statements suggest. However, while Hans has had a record-setting and remarkable rise in rating
and strength, in our view there is a lack of concrete statistical evidence that he cheated in his game
with Magnus or in any other over-the-board (“OTB”)—i.e., in-person—games. We are presenting
our findings here and will cooperate with FIDE on any further investigation.
...
Despite the public speculation on these questions, in our view, there is no direct evidence that proves Hans
cheated at the September 4, 2022 game with Magnus, or proves that he has cheated in other OTB games
in the past.
Uh oh ... that doesn't look good for the defendants.
It doesn't matter. Nobody outright said that Hans cheated in the match (except for Hikaru, but that's commentary on youtube. He has the right to say that.)
There's no basis to sue Chess.com. Their report is their stance. They sponsor online games and run their own platform, so they can remove Hans if they please. Magnus specifically didn't call Hans a cheater, he just said that he believes that he has cheated more that Hans admitted. Libel starts at "you are" not "I believe".
There was a lot of pilling-on on the internet, but that's the nature of the internet. You can't sue the internet.
But none of this is provably untrue. In fact, chess.com’s report gives evidence that Hans has cheated more than he has led on. In the report evened admits it.
In their report, Chess.com statistically showed why they believed that Hans was cheating on their site. They also shared that he admitted it, and why he said he did it (a higher rating gets more streams). That all they need to show, because that’s all they assert.
Nah, chess.com asserts that he's cheating more than he admitted to. While Carlsen asserts that Hans cheated on OTB games against him. No clear evidence on any of those things.
Also, chess.com is far from an authority here, plus, there's a conflict of interest. They would have to show with some method that a court considers valid (much better than "trust me, bro ;)") that Hans was cheating. Disregarding the underlying truth, something like that is quite difficult to prove.
Making all the right moves and "you can't be that good" is not evidence of cheating, they have to prove that there was an artifact/device/technique being used by Hans to win. Good luck with that.
Invariably, I suspect that this trial will not prove anything. While I’m frustrated at the realization that Chess.com has a conflict of interest, I think halting Niemann’s career without proof of OTB cheating is absolutely foolish from the Carlsen camp. A far better solution is to tell Niemann he has been flagged, and his games will be watched for an extended time period with added scrutiny, he’ll need to explain why he made the moves accurately, etc etc. if after an extended period up against difficult opponents he proves he can’t function with the same fervor as he had against Carlsen, “let that speak for itself” as everybody seems to want to say wrt this case.
I don’t know if Carlsen is personally liable, but man, it seems pretty fucking foolish on his part to have said what he said.
>While I’m frustrated at the realization that Chess.com has a conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest outside of keeping games fair. They are a platform that hosts chess matches. That's it. Banning an admitted cheater who admitting to cheating in order to make more money is not a conflict of interest at all - it's what would keep people from using their site.
>A far better solution is to tell Niemann he has been flagged
And that's happened. And Niemann STILL cheated. Did you see the letter the Chess.com folks sent Hans? Hans admitted to cheating, was banned, was allowed to come back, and cheated again. Chess.com was extremely lenient with Hans, and admitted as such.
>he’ll need to explain why he made the moves accurately
That's where the whole "the chess speaks for itself" thing came from....he was put on the spot in the post match interview against Carlsen. He couldn't explain why he made some of the moves he made and would fall back to "the chess speaks for itself" line. That's why people are suspicious of him.
Chess.com is the authority on the data gathered on their site… which is their basis of kicking him off of their site. They’ve done nothing else.
They really don’t have to prove anything to remove him from their site. Him admitting to it, and their interpretation of the stats is icing on the cake.
-- the lawyer he is using is an interesting choice - https://www.gartnerlawfirm.com/ - has no particular specialty in this - somewhat reads like an ambulance chaser --
Niemann should be treated like the equivalent of a major league athlete, where FIDE as chess's governing body should have the final say as to whether Hans is allowed to compete at major tournaments instead of corporate sponsor Chess.com. The accusations of him cheating at over-the-board play have been dubious at best, and the allegations of doing so during online play are inconclusive with no smoking gun to indicate outside help. Chess.com's report[0] focused on analyzing his online games and de-emphasized his strong play in over-the-board games, and also says their report shouldn't be used as a reason for him not to play at in-person tournaments; yet do the doublespeak of banning him from the 2022 Global Championship!
While it is true that even a single small outside hint can change the outcome of a game, Niemann and the entire chess community have benefitted from practicing against increasingly stronger computer engines where play styles have adjusted to this new era as well in addition to self-funding his tuition at a private school. Many of these tournaments over the past 3 years have only been played online, and have easier access to both stronger real and virtual opponents so having a faster increase in his ELO rating than anyone previously is not outside the realm of possibility.
Defamation, while likely will be settled for much less than the stated amount, on this is case is very justified as tournaments are invite-only rather than climbing a tournament ladder by winning local/regional games. Barring an athlete based on unsubstantiated political decisions and effectively trying to destroy Niemann's livelihood should be seen as highly unethical action by Chess.com and Carlsen.
Chess.com's position is that FIDE should make its own rulings. But unlike the NFL, there is no "other" NFL that makes any serious money; in chess this is different. The 2022 Global Championship is a tournament organized by Chess.com.
I was under the impression that the 2022 Global Championship was an in-person event sponsored by chess.com but instead is fully online. Having read through more of the report with Niemann's interactions with the CEO regarding his previous online cheating, admission of prior cheating & promise to "never ever do it again", and then making statistically improbable moves (yet denies assistance) during online play does raise some suspicion.
While I might personally disagree with the company's decision and think it's a bad image to deny the best players from participating, FIDE doesn't have the same level of oversight over players/sponsors like say the PGA does over its relationships. There is a FIDE Code of Ethics[0] that mentions a ban if an advisory panel finds credible evidence of cheating, where I still believe that centipawn loss and the other metrics published in the aforementioned report don't clear the bar of unconditionally cheating and a ban shouldn't be enforced.
While I don’t think he will win, I think a stronger response is necessary because none of the allegations have been proven.
An elite set has condemned someone. Even under a lower standard of more likely than not, I do not believe that it is more likely than not that Neiman cheated. I’m glad he’s standing up for himself but I’m sad to see a lawsuit.
Why wouldn't he win? As you mentioned, nothing has been proven, and yet in the "court of public opinion" he's already guilty and is the butt (in the literal sense) of jokes all due to the insinuations and accusations from Mr. Carlsen, the chess tournament hosts, etc.
This guy's reputation is in shambles and yet hasn't been formally charged with anything and there's no hard proof anywhere (AFAIK).
Seems to me that there's an onus on the defendants to prove he cheated, and if they can't do that... wouldn't they have to be found guilty of defaming him?
Notably: I'm no lawyer and have no idea how defamation cases actually work.
In the U.S. you don't have to prove everything you say. It's pretty hard to demonstrate defamation, UK is much looser about what classifies as defamation.
Hans would pretty much have to demonstrate someone else knowingly lied or was extremely negligent with regard to the truth . Which will be very difficult.
> The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a Federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.
One is not entitled to a good reputation. Your reputation arises from your actions, and Hans has cheated in the past and apparently has very few allies who would defend him for some reason.
Wouldn’t some aspect of the case be about whether the defendants actually knew for a fact if Hans was cheating? In other words, were they saying “Hans cheated in this tournament and we have the proof” or “Hans’ play has been super sketchy he’s cheating”. There seems to me a difference here, both in intent and scope.
Right, but... who has the onus to prove anything in a libel case? Does the defendant have to prove cheating happened, or the offense have to prove no cheating happened? Or... neither?
Or perhaps it's neither an something more like "an expert, with a lifetime's worth of domain-specific intuition, should be allowed to express an opinion based on that intuition"?
The defendant isn't required to prove cheating happened, but it sure would win the case for them, so obviously they're going to try as hard as they can.
> I’m glad he’s standing up for himself but I’m sad to see a lawsuit.
This confuses me. How else could he stand up for himself, words alone? If he truly is innocent, he should fight back with the means he's legally entitled to, not with his hands tied behind his back.
If you previously still had respect for Hans, does that mean you considered it possible he is innocent of these specific cheating accusations? Supposing for the sake of argument that he really didn't cheat, isn't he well within his right to sue those defaming him?
Personally I don't know; I see smoke but no fire and I'm not qualified to judge the meaning of that smoke. Hans' admitted history of cheating before online makes me inclined to believe he's cheated again, but it doesn't prove anything. In the future going forward, I think the chess community should adopt a zero tolerance policy towards cheating; one strike and you're out even if you were a teenager when you did it. This would be the most fair to the players who never cheat even once. But this isn't the sort of standard that should be applied retroactively.
He has the option to sue, but the way to gain respect is to demonstrate his ability in an environment that controls for any means of cheating posited by those who suspect him of doing so.
That video itself immediately suggests some ways Niemann could offer to demonstrate he is not cheating, beginning with changing (under supervision) into clothing provided for him, and minimizing the number of people present at all stages.
In any such proposal, he could reasonably require the same of his opponents and any monitors present.
Do you have any idea of what is in place to prevent cheating in those competitions? The only possible improvement would be for the players to be naked.
This is just an easy excuse.
"He cheated!" "There are anticheat measures" "They're not good enough"
It's a cycle that can never be solved. The loser can always claim the anticheat measures were "not enough".
You know what. I think Carlsen has cheated in every single one of his games. Prove the contrary.
> The only possible improvement would be for the players to be naked.
Something might be placed inside the organism.
> I think Carlsen has cheated in every single one of his games. Prove the contrary.
That's easy. He streamed a lot of games with the tightest time requirements happening in the discipline, kind of 3 minutes per player plus extra 1 second per move. The speed of that game is so high that there is simply no time for having a conversations with cheating device. Also he always notice some suspicious moves (in not that fast games) which becomes correlating with chess engine.
> That's easy. He streamed a lot of games with the tightest time requirements happening in the discipline, kind of 3 minutes per player plus extra 1 second per move. The speed of that game is so high that there is simply no time for having a conversations with cheating device.
Conversations? A cheating software can read the board and even move the pieces for him, this is ridiculous. 100% a cheater.
What can be proved about past games performed in less-than-fully-stringent conditions is beside the point.
As far as I am concerned, once Niemann has passed all the tests his accusers can come up with, he would be vindicated, and they would be subject to opprobrium - it would be a vindication unavailable even through a successful libel suit. There's no infinite regress of suspicion in this view.
I mean we know he cheated before, he's said as much. Now, I don't know if he actually cheated in the match with Carlsen, but Carlsen had every reason to believe the man would and did.
Which would make libel and slander pretty untenable by my limited understanding.
Well, perhaps then Magnus and Chess.com shouldn't have tried to deplatform him? Turns out, in civil matters what you say can bite you in the ass. Who knew.
I'd note that Chess.com prefers to deal with things privately and would've been quiet about this had Hans not publicly used Chess.com's brand to bolster his own credibility, essentially saying that Chess.com vouches for him. Then Chess.com asked him to retract his words but Hans refused.
As much as I want to support Carlsen/Nakamura camp... Honestly Niemann’s claims of conspiracy seem wild, but not totally outrageous. My opinion of the situation has been largely informed by findings from Chess.com reports, and so if Niemann wants to claim that he’s being conspired against, seems like we should rely on a consensus of impartial chess experts, of which there must be plenty.
Everybody involved should know that the public would be more interested in knowing who is lying in a court of law than blindly taking sides. If Carlsen camp settles out you know he’s got nothing.
This is not a good thing for chess that Hans Niemann is filing a lawsuit against world champion Magnus Carlsen and others. The lawsuit is a distraction from the game of chess and takes away from the enjoyment that fans of the game get from watching the top players compete.
In any case, if Carlsen, Nakamura, and Chess.com are in fact colluding to stifle the anomalously fastest-ascending player, that would be quite the story.
How so? If he's cheating, he was never actually caught in person, so probably pretty innovative, and if he's not cheating, then his career is crumbling around him at 19 and he can't possibly innovate around the #1 player and one of the largest chess organizations conspiring against him. (I think he's cheating for the record)
You may think that cheating without getting caught is some sort of innovation, but I think you're really stretching for that one.
Maybe the phrase should be updated to "If you can't innovate, litigate. Or cheat"
If you were moving yourself to a better place or even the "sport" or whatever you're involved is moved forward because of you getting better, that would be innovation. Trying to win but not putting in the effort of actually getting better but finding loopholes just flat out isn't. Don't care how much you admire the cleverness in the cheat
I don't know, especially on this website. Half of the super innovative high market cap companies everyone laudes on here just have "cheating/ignoring regulations and common decency" as half of the innovation.
Sounds like you're ready for another round of investment! Probably the biggest lesson to be learned from YC or any incubator. (Fake it 'til you make)++. If you can't fake it, lie lie lie until they believe it.
Yes, there are people who make a living from playing. It doesn't mean it isn't healthy to take a step back every now and then and consider the ridiculousness of taking this too seriously.
I don't know what the right way for him to fight back is, but this is a teenager who's made a few mistakes and in disproportionate response has been steamrolled by some of the biggest forces in chess - which could have had quite terrible mental health consequences for some - so I'm glad he has found an avenue for redress, however it pans out.
I agree. kids shouldn’t play in low security events like Titled Tuesday or other online tournaments with no arbiter. Kids don’t have the self control to never open up another tab and check some moves, and we shouldn’t be surprised when it happens.
If they're right and he faced severe mental health consequences as a result of people correctly pointing out he has cheated for pride and money, in the words of the great Ben Finegold all I can say is...
Yeah totally these fragile snowflakes crying "boohoo I lost my career that I had been working on for my entire life and people harass me whenever I appear in public and call me a sham :..("
All you need to maintain your mental health is a good bottle of whisky and a stiff upper lip!
I didn't mean him, I meant those who immediately grasp for some lame armchair psychology interpretation of everything. So somebody cheated, they got caught, and it feels bad to get roasted -- so what? He gets what he gets, we don't need to try to manage his internal mental states. It absolutely is snowflake-ism. A stiff upper lip goes a long ways, you should try it.
Except I hope they lose their career when they admittedly have cheated in money matches?... Like we should just let them continue and cheat because they feel bad about being called out? Hes not even apologetic, he has continued to lie throughout this whole ordeal about the scope of his cheating. We only know the scope because he kept insisting it was only a few incidents until chess.com showed him admitting otherwise to them. You can say he cheated as a teen and should be forgiven, but he's still trying to lie as much as he can until forced to otherwise. At what point does he have responsibility for his own actions?
With that said, pretty much everyone in my family, including my SO, are lawyers and I have been around the block a few times when it comes to discussing slander / libel suits in the US.
As an independent 3rd party with no interest in the world of Chess, I don't see how Niemann expects to win any damages in this case.
In the US the bar for slander is very high due to the existence of the first amendment and trying to protect it, you will basically have to prove malicious intent and that the offending party knew they were lying. Other countries like the UK have a much lower bar which is why it's a bigger deal there.
Unless I am missing some clear piece of evidence no one made a bad faith comment (and i need to stress you need to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt)
Magnus felt there was foul play because he knew of Nieman's history of cheating which was public knowledge in the chess world, same thing with his comments regarding the coach
Chess.com simply made available data that is rightfully theirs and stated that his rise has been exceptional.
Hikaru simply commented on the situation like a million other youtubers / twitch streamers and influencers, he just happens to be an expert in the field so he made his opinion using his domain knowledge and the fact that Niemann had been previously accused of cheating.
Again, unless i am missing some clear piece of evidence no one acted maliciously or twisted the truth to purposely cause harm, only gave their opinion using the information they had available.