Btw, if his moves correlate with an engine, can't that just mean he has based his style and decision making off of the engine? What better a teacher than a brain that does it better than the human brain?
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@@ihaveasandwichinmypocket The 2022 Sinquefield Cup was played in person. This means cheating is harder... but classical chess games are played over hours. Participants often get up and walk around in between moves, which leaves opportunity for him (or an accomplice) to run an engine and signal a preferred move. Yet, the lack of any found mechanism for Hans to cheat is probably his strongest defense. Or to quote the defective detective Monk, "that's a nice theory, now do you have any proof."
So he has been caught cheating not once, not twice, but three times YET he was still allowed to take part in tournaments both online and in on-board play. That there is insanity. Take any other sport out there and those who have been caught cheating. They either got decade bans or banned for life.
Your chess club should try out the vibrating anal bead theory to see if it's plausible. U know, to uphold the integrity of the chess community, and for science 📿👉🏽👌🏽
ua-cam.com/video/WR-4_ouXUV4/v-deo.html He did against Karjakin, of course he didn't react as badly as he did to Hans but there were plenty instances where Magnus got really angry. There were also a time where Magnus left the photo session before the ceremony started because he got really angry at the result.
Nah even if he thought he cheated the first time the second time he literally rage-quit. This is toddler behavior and it fits with the mentality of someone used to and comfortable with being called a "grand-master." Also if he had literally any proof all he has to do is say so. He's got nothing but pure salt over someone he sees as less getting the better of him.
@@Ki_Adi_Mundi lmao being a "grand master" means nothing, there are gms who could never beat magnus no matter how hard they tried. The fact that you think this has anything to do with this showcases you know nothing about the competitive scene.
way back at the start the thing that struck me as weird was Hans' inability to say anything meaningful about his own positions in the game he won against Magnus, right afterwards. that game should have been seared into his memory.
@@victorbasurto1584 and @Jack-o'-Lantern Panic . Do you have some sort of history? Are you like two chess Nemesis. Now that's a scandle. I have a theory: You two where once great friends and chess Enthusiast. You had a falling out, about a different chess Scandle. However to insure that you both could still watch chess youtubers and interact with them you divided all the Chess youtubers up and each of you got half of them. The other Person is forbidden to comment under Videos of youtubers that don't "belong" to him. Now this channel Was not on the list, because it is not a chess channel so you met by accident in the comments and you said it was an open Comment section, because you knew he didn't belong to any of you. Thereby sending a secret Signal only you two know. And you both stopped commenting because you decidet this entire channel was quarantined now to assure you both wouldn't ever meet again. Yes i'm high, but I am way more intressted in this Story than the Magnus and nieman Story,
@@Morphysince94 I'm sorry that I'm spamming but I need an answer @Victor Basurto and @Jack-o'-Lantern Panic . Do you have some sort of history? Are you like two chess Nemesis. Now that's a scandle. I have a theory: You two where once great friends and chess Enthusiast. You had a falling out, about a different chess Scandle. However to insure that you both could still watch chess youtubers and interact with them you divided all the Chess youtubers up and each of you got half of them. The other Person is forbidden to comment under Videos of youtubers that don't "belong" to him. Now this channel Was not on the list, because it is not a chess channel so you met by accident in the comments and you said it was an open Comment section, because you knew he didn't belong to any of you. Thereby sending a secret Signal only you two know. And you both stopped commenting because you decidet this entire channel was quarantined now to assure you both wouldn't ever meet again. Yes i'm high, but I am way more intressted in this Story than the Magnus and nieman Story,
Just felt like saying the "someone else was feeding me engine moves, didn't know he was using an engine"-excuse is an extremely bad one. Someone else feeding you moves is cheating, regardless of how they came up with the moves, period.
I'll be real here, I just like the idea that some guy got a remote controlled buttplug so someone could send him the winning moves by morse code. It's just so hilarious to think about, some guy constantly vibrating and then playing the best possible moves.
I have to agree. I only discovered this channel a few days ago, and I really appreciate the "straight-shooting" takes I've watched so far. I know next to nothing about chess, but this story is so huge I really wanted to know more. I feel like I got a solid take from this video!
The last chess scandal before this was when the female chess tournament was in a middle eastern country where they wanted to force all woman from all countries to wear head coverings and of course nobody wanted to do that. It was a very bad situation.
Nah, nah, nah. Ask any feminist online, and they will confirm that Middle Eastern countries aren't like that -- in fact, when they "where in the Middle East, they wore a head covering *because they wanted to,* not because they *had to.* "
@@keonkla Normal line is "we have issues to solve in our own country first". That goes out the window when talking about Brexit or aussie right leaning politicians.
That wouldn't solve the problem, if indeed Hans is a cheater. The concern in the chess community is that the taint of this uncertainty may never go away.
@@Teddy-se8qb No, I mean the accusations are a taint. I do believe Magnus handled it poorly, but his actions did not and do not taint the entire competitive chess field. That blame falls solely on Hans.
A couple of points: 100 engines does not mean each will have a different move and it will not increase the chance of an engine move being recorded by 100 times. I.e. not linearly. As long as the other players are being compared using the same set of engines then the relative figures have some significance. It would be interesting to see the results based on engine versions available at the time the games were played if they differed from the engines used in the analysis.
"As long as the other players are being compared using the same set of engines" That's the problem. ChessBase uses a different number of engines depending on the game. For Hans, many people have analyzed his games recently, so he has many, many engines. Therefore it's hard for him to avoid matching at least one of those 150 engines each move. If you go to ChessBase page you'll see they say "this is not to be used to detect cheating". For good reason!
@@LegendLength just because you use 150 engines it won't mean it will suggest 150 moves, there are only 1-3 engine moves in a given position maybe 5 at best in a very very complicated position.
@@hatakenewt348 That's not the issue. Every move Hans makes is matched against 150 engines of varying strength. But for Magnus it's only a few engines. So Hans has much higher chance of having a 'perfect game'. Seems crazy and hard to believe i know. All can be verified easily on any of the chess forums where longer posts can be done.
Literally in this very video it is mentioned that Hikaru ran the check for his game, it showed 100% accuracy for his games, and then he cut it from the video to make it appear flawless. At 17:35
If you were a mid 2000s rated player and had good opening theory knowledge and did your prep work, you would only need an engine recommendation 2 or 3 times per game. So you could appear to play very convincingly, even making weak moves initially. Because chess usually comes to a critical point in a game where there is a forced line or an exchange is won and you head into a winning end game. A decent player could navigate this type of play and finish games with only minimal engine assistance.
exactly, and actually all you would need to know is that there is more than one great move or that the obvious great move isn't the best. Then they could find the other move themselves. They wouldnt necessarily need the notation
There was an interesting theory in one of the comments for a different youtuber covering this as well. The theory was that Magnus Carlson's prep (the studying and strategic decisions done before the match) had been leaked to Neiman. It was a weird line and the fact that Neiman played it perfectly was what spooked Carlson (the theory goes). Given the level of prep for each of these tournaments, it would seem completely reasonable to have cheated like that instead of cheating through computer analysis.
Yeah, that seems reasonable. The idea that Carlsen played a line that *transposed* into the line seems wonky; Niemann studying a line and getting lucky, then misremembering which line it was a day later (and after using that prep to pull off a massive upset) is hard to buy. If he'd actually 'gotten lucky' and studied a line that just happened to transpose into the line Carlsen played, you'd think he'd have properly remembered it.
If you know anything about GM level chess, you'd know that theory makes absolutely no sense. GMs often blitz out their first 10-20 moves. Leaking "prep" doesn't mean anything. Hans & his instructor are known to have cheated multiple times. It's that simple.
@@tricky8068 Is that why GM:s discuss this very possibility? Theory makes perfect sense, unless you are unable to understand it. Prep is instrumental. Just look at the Karpov vs Kasparov matches.
@@japphan It's a theory parroted by people who don't know chess. Whenever I see GMs discussing it, it's to debunk it. Can you name one or two GMs who believe Carlson's prep was leaked?
@@tricky8068 Noone believes it any more. It was clear with Magnus' first official statement what his suspicions were, which dispersed the whole theory. Not because opening theory makes no sense, but because there is no longer any doubt about why Magnus quit. They discuss it to debunk it, because it was a reasonable theory. They don't discuss the anal beads theory, because such a theory needs no explanation.
The statistical analysis is only a recent development and I wouldn’t consider it one of the “pillars”. More damning is Niemann’s complete inability to analyze his own moves post-game, discuss alternative lines, accurately weigh the strength of a theoretical position. Half the fun of watching tournaments at the super GM level is seeing their post-game discussion in which they discuss why they made particular moves, what their plan was, what opportunities the opponent missed, etc. They learn from eachother and mutually benefit. But Neimann was incapable of all of this post-game, and it was only much later (presumably with the help of an engine) that he could discuss the moves. When the interviewer (not a GM) is out-analyzing you about the strength of a position, something is up. That is far more damning evidence than the statistical analysis.
Most of the super-smart people I knew had difficulties expressing themselves in the moment. Guy can be drained after a match, too, and not be entirely present. It still looks bad, and it sounds like there was something going on.
@@monteraid I disagree with Brian. Analysis of that particular game by OTHER people, the consensus was that Hans didn't win by super brilliant play in THAT game. He won through being lucky. Magnus had a terrible day and played well below his normal level. There is no cheating mechanism that makes your opponent play poorly, unless we go to spy stuff like spiking their food and drinks.
As a chess lover who is following the saga from the beginning, I can say the research done to make this video is really top notch, & the video is fairly balanced and has inputs from both sides. 👍
@@ryankelly369 Hans is definitely a cheater as confessed by himself. The main question now is whether he did it again in sinquefield or not. But then again, innocent until proven guilty.
@@SK-vw3in That's the uncertainty of which I speak. And Hans has only himself to blame for that uncertainty. Did he cheat in sinquefield? I don't know if the evidence would hold up in court, but it looks pretty damning to me.
@@ryankelly369 Then why are you saying "we can't say whether Hans is a cheater or not" (not exactly the words you used, but close), when he is a self-confessed cheater? You should say "we know he IS a cheater, but whether he cheated in this particular game is uncertain".
"Nobody believes a liar... even when he is telling the truth." And so goes the fable of the boy who cried wolf - a tale to warn us of the dangers of being dishonest.
Nice work, this actually brought some new stuff into the table I had not seen / heard before, although I was mildly disappointed that the "anal bead" theory was absent, as it was such an absurdly hilarious bit of this entire drama and what made it even more funny was how it was just a random joke by a stream chat member that somehow made its way out into the wider public and some mainstream media outlets just ran and went to town with that. But man, there's a reason why I never skip and miss any of your videos. Thank you for your hard work.
I also love how that idea was backed up with a post-competition video of the first time he beat magnus and got approached by interviewers only to say nothing and run off with a poop-waddle to the bathroom.
My old chess teacher liked to say: "Never play a game under conditions denying you the ability to punch your opponent in the face, should the necessity arise." I play chess daily, never played a single game in digital form.
Are you retired or something? When I want to play a quick game of chess online is my only real option. I don't have the free time to sort out a daily chess match against someone of similar skill level in person. I can do that if I play online chess though - and contrary to what you might believe it's not overrun with cheaters using chess engines. I've come across maybe 3 people in literally thousands of games I suspected of cheating, I reported them and I never came across them in another game of chess ever again. And anyway this tournament that he was accused of cheating at WAS a physical tournament done in person and apparently the possibility of being punched in the face wasn't a deterrent at all if he did in fact cheat. Having never played a digital game of chess isn't something to brag about, it just makes you seem old and out of touch.
just to set the scene the game was played in person face to face with strict sercurity and surveillance measures before and during the match. The cheating Hans Niemann commited in the past were online matches.
@@victorbasurto1584 This argument makes no sense. Maybe Magnus wanted to make sure he's a cheater and played him to find out. After the match he was certain, and the rest is history. Please come up with better arguments if you're going to defend a known cheater.
@@kristoffer8609 That’s my point Kriss, he wanted to proof he was facing a cheater, maybe he even lost on purpose? Why didn’t he finished the tournament and why didn’t he didn’t show for the interview, he could have spoken his theory of Hans cheating to Alejandro and the world. Also, he should have done this in private and with the correct authorities.
The same thing that applies in the CS GO scene applies here: once a cheater, always a cheater. They only get better at hiding it, they never stop. Also, the cheaters are always the arrogant ones. They develop a narcistic way of dealing with others to coverup their internal insecurity.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! I have listened to people gumbling about this for a while now, with some confusion on my part as to what actually happened, and this is the first comprehensive, evenhanded analysis of the controversy. Well done.
No idea, but the guy did in the end do this to himself. Your morality is taken into account and the guy obviously has very little....So no matter what he will always be looked at in a certain light by many....an earned light....Cant really blame people who cry guilty faster then they would at another who doesnt have such a spotty past.
Caruana's criticism of the chess cheating expert is pretty flawed: Yes, he might have cleared a now known cheater once, but mathematically, it's literally impossible to catch all cheaters, and the more cheaters you want to catch, the more non-cheaters will be falsely accused. If you want the number of false accusations of cheating to be as low as realistically possible, only somewhere between 30 to 70 percent of cheaters will be caught, but since most cheaters cheat multiple times, they will be caught at some point in their career.
I must say, the fact that maybe the best recap of this entire situation comes from outside the chess world is surprising, but kudos for the great work.
@@user-zb8tq5pr4x Dude, that's just a simple slip up - he meant a lossless streak. But do get back to me when you produce a comprehensive video like this that attempts to explain a very complicated thing to an audience that doesn't even understand the subject without making a single mistake in the process - good luck.
@@notyourdad He also said that Hans looked at the game the night before, when in reality Hans said he looked at it in the morning. It's just those little details that tell you he hasn't put the work into this that he should. Definitely not enough to call this great work. I've been following this since day 1 and knowing Hans said he looked at it in the morning is like really basic information that anyone watching his interview should get right.
@@user-zb8tq5pr4x Alright, man, this is the literal definition of a nitpick that makes absolutely no difference whatsoever - in fact having to point out an error that meaningless means he did a great job with the video. Calling a lossless streak a winstreak is a legitimate mistake but this is just not even worth noting let along brining up. I can't honestly imagine the tantrums you must throw watching other people covering this since I've seen far more grievous and frequent errors made by people who are actually in the chess world and should have far better understand of the subject. But hey, I really do hope you have a great day because I can't imagine what it must be like going through life having to make mountains out of pebbles all day long - it must be exhausting.
16:00 It's not even remotely true, while an increased number of engines does increase engine correlation it does not even remotely increase a hundred fold with a hundred engines. Aside from the reality that any given turn a player practically never has a 100 moves certain moves are simply better. If there is a clear optimal move it would be rare for a whole host of engines to give wildly different moves. Realistically speaking using a hundred engines your chances of getting a 100% engine correlation only increases ~4 fold. It's statistically insignificant that a player plays perfectly like an engine multiple times, but yes it can in theory happen. While without context this would be akin to winning a lottery multiple times in a row, within the context of his past and his coach's past it's far more likely he simply cheats. (and badly at that, even highschoolers know when you cheat you never should get a 100% of the questions right)
Reagan’s method assumes that a cheater cheats in every game, instead of selectively. He’s good at catching foolish cheaters, but it’s not as good at people who cheat selectively. On pillar 2, there is no way Hans would take limited prep time to look at an opening that Magnus played twice in two decades. This isn’t a match, it’s a round robin tournament. You get little prep time and what you have wouldn’t usually be used on such a rare line. Lastly, chess base shows Hans having more engine correlation over a longer period. Bobby Fisher’s 20 game win streak had a 72 percent correlation. One thing that is unusual is that Hans doesn’t always play well, but his competitors usually play unusually poorly. Not sure how that factors in but there you have it. Love your videos.
>competitors usually play unusually poorly Source on that? If that's the case I think it would explain the high correlation rate: the optimal play is obvious against bad moves.
@@as_if6224 cheaters normally get over confident if not caught for a while, he's been caught twice which means he's been over confident twice.. wonder how many times he's cheated overall.
Hans knew he was going to play Magnus in this event for about a week beforehand and he very recently played a match against him in another event where he no doubt also already spent significant time prepping for him so I don't find it anywhere close to impossible that he'd stumbled upon this line by accident. And while this engine correlation definitively is raises an eyebrow, that's not enough proof to ruin a young man's career and mental health over - you can't send a community of millions after a guy based on suspicions alone - you need proof or you need to find a way to gather that proof - regardless of the outcome here Magnus went about this the wrong way. And yeah, a lot of people do play poorly against him, including Magnus Carlsen. Most top GMs agree that he played that game against Hans far below his usual level and that there's nothing suspicious about that particular game, and the computer engines agree.
@@notyourdad Although I agree with you, there is far from enough evidence, it has to be said that cheaters also become better cheaters overtime. Having been caught at 12 and 16 means he can effectively brush it of as being "young and stupid" and given him a chance to learn from his failures, just not in a positive way. Using an engine can only expose you in a single match if you turn it up to the max, but if you make it play at a rating only slightly higher than your opponent's you can still cheat without playing a perfect game.
Problem with Regan's method is that it's a summary that looks for a consistent over performance. If you strategically cheat only certain matches or a tournament here and there, you'd come in with a normal distribution and so would be cleared. It also can't account for cheating only a few times a game, usually there's only a couple key moments in a game, if you just pick those moments, you're not getting caught by his method no matter what. If anything, the evidence suggests that either Hans did suddenly stop cheating and just coincidentally had an unprecedented rise in rating. (Which if he was that good, why would he need to cheat to advance faster anyway?) Or he simply got more subtle after getting caught a couple times and started being more strategic with it. That game against Magnus by the way, just happened to be a game where winning it meant he hit 2700 - super GM level. For someone who has been motivated by advancing faster in his previous admitted cheating, he definitely had the necessary motivation to cheat that game. And there was really one move that turned that whole game, and it was an unnatural looking one that he struggled to explain. Could all be coincidence, but coming from a tech background, I can say firmly that he pretty easily could have if he was motivated and willing to. But without catching him red-handed, how do you prove he cheated on that one move? You really can't. But that's the question, if it's not possible to catch anyone who isn't blatant and rather dumb in how they cheat, then you pretty much have to rely on their integrity to trust them. Has Hans, who has cheated numerous times before and then publicly lied about his previous cheating, showed that integrity?
Small correction, Magnus Carlsen did not go on a 120 game winning streak, but a 120 game undefeated streak, meaning that included (a lot of) draws. The record of wins in a row against significant opponents is either fishers 20 game winning streak, or the much older steinitz 25 game winning streak.
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It was great to see your take on this. Fully agree with your conclusions: Niemann has cheated a lot in the past, so other players don't feel comfortable playing him. Rivals would be constantly over-analyzing his moves, especially when they diverge from the most common lines. There is one more thing: a smart cheater would not have 100% engine correlation. A smart cheater would only play top engine moves only at a few key moments, to secure a victory. That way they wouldn't raise suspicion as those key moments could be as little as twice a game. Great vid.
Actually, those are the cheaters that are discovered within 9 games, using Ken Regan's (flawed) analytical method, by his own admission. A smart cheater using top engine moves via a low-level engine constantly rather than a deep-level engine sporadically will be much less detectable, especially if there are many engines that you can choose from to obfuscate things.
You can't defeat Magnus Carlsen just by using engin on a few move, you need to use it right after the opening otherwise you will draw/loose. Engin is winning against Magnus by capitalising on the accumulation of his few "inaccuracy", it's a slow builded victory that required precision at every single move.
I really like your videos and the way you structure them. I like to listen while I work, you have a great presentation style. Keep em coming, more subs will follow
If he'd actually 'gotten lucky' and studied a line that just happened to transpose into the line Carlsen played, you'd think he'd have not just properly remembered it. He'd have stood from the table and shouted it. I do not buy it sir.
The Devs should just introduce anti-cheat at this point, yeah the game engine is a couple thousand years old and the there hasn't been a major content patch or DLC since launch but still, the integrity of the game must be preserved !
@@inthefade that is not how that kind of thing is described just fyi. It would be called a ring 0 anti-cheat. at least by anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge. ;)
People used to have a solution for this kind of thing. It was called 'reputation' and, if was dogshit, that person didn't get to play with the world's best players, because they might harm the entire sport. Maybe we should bring it back. Alternatively, known chess cheats should only be allowed to play in person, while wearing just their underwear and without shoes (apparently others have cheated via shoes that sent morse-code via electrical jolts O_o ).
The problem with the criticism of the chess base correlation is that if it was the case that adding computers would make it more and more likely, well, you would expect at least one other player to be just somewhere close to Hans. But the most important thing to me is the fact that Hans seems to be the only GM at his level to pack the ability to analyse his own games.
From my understanding, engines get attached to a game by way of a user selecting them in analysis, so a game could be scrutinized by hundreds of engines while another by only one or none. In this video is also the element of multiple custom engines being attached by the creator of the reddit post, the exclusion of which drops Niemann's accuracy to levels in line with other grandmasters. I'm no chess expert, I'm just a videogamer with a working knowledge of IT and statistics, but from the statistics and IT angle this screams that ChessBase is not even reliable for comparing players. It's simply not the same benchmark. Indeed, the tool maintainers seem to agree with that, since they say it's not to be used for cheating detection.
Also it doesn't make it more and more likely that's assuming independence. But why would engines designed with the same goal be independent. If there's a good move any good engine is going to see it as a good move
Everything I’ve seen about cheater tells me that Hans Niemann probably cheated. The amount of previous instances, the lies, the past use of engines, the study of an answer to a very specific strategy that Carlsen used ONCE... it’s either a mountain of extremely unlikely coincidences or a mountain of evidence.
@@diomedes7971 Problem is, Magnus has lost to black several times and never threw a fit like this. The fact they wanded him the day after was weird af. I think Magnus is a dumbass for going about it like this, he should’ve kept quiet and silently sent an inquiry.
@@diomedes7971 Furthermore on this point, Hans did take one game against Magnus, just lost the match, as well as losing all other matches. Seems most likely that Hans was not cheating at a tournament where he lost every match, and that shows that he *is* good enough to beat Magnus every once in a while in a single game. Hans was fortunate that Magnus played way below his own average for their single game in the Sinquefield Cup
@@diomedes7971 The way you properly deal with cheaters is by not letting them play in the first place. If you get wishy washy about it you then get situations like this.
I think at some point it is worth to actually define the word "proof". Most time people use this word it should be replaced by "strong correlation" or "indicators". If you look up how hard it is to proof something, like let’s say in math/physics people would not use this word so carelessly.
Hikaru intentionally cutting the part where the same method gives 100%for his games, just to make it seem more damning than it is, is a disgraceful move, and he should be shamed for it. Regardless of if hans cheated or not. He is willing to lie to his audiance to rile them up and get clicks.
For your analysis of pillar three: you bring up a good point that the more engines used in a comparison, the larger the chance that the human's moves correspond to at least one of those engines. However, to say that using 100 engines increases the chances 100 fold is not correct. It would be correct if each of those engines had wildly different ideas on what the best moves were. But in reality most engines will agree on most moves, especially during the opening and endgame there will be almost 100% agreement between engines. The midgame is the most computationally intensive and so there will be some disagreement between the engines, but even here the disagreement is often minimal. So really, even with a large number of engines used in the comparison, it is still highly unlikely to the point of impossibility that the human matches the engines by chance to this degree
Cheating is a form of lying. But I'm sure we can totally trust the guy who said he only lied twice, when he only admitted to it after getting caught. Especially when he gets caught out lying while trying to explain that he isn't lying again...
@ 2:40 Little correction: It was a 120 game streak of no lost game (wins and draws) not a win streak. It was an unbelievable show of dominance as it is.
The problem with cheating in chess is that the correlation doesn't tell you anything. You don't need to let the engine run all the time, you would just need to find the right sequence of moves in a critical position. Afterwards, you would just need to confirm that the moves you thought of are not blundering away the game. Kasparov stated that he would not even need to be given the move, just a hint that the next move is critical would elevate his strength to a degree that he would have an unsurmountable advantage. That makes the situation even more difficult, since it makes the accusation impossible to prove, and impossible to clear.
I've been ignoring the whole controversy for a long while now since it's so dense and I don't really follow Chess too much. But, hey, thanks for giving a high level overview of what I have been out of the loop for. 👍
Thank you UEG for bringing this up. This was well researched. Many people including me are really frustrated by the fact that many people rather confirming their bias than double checking and understanding the methods. It doesn't help that the biggest chess influencer, Hikaru, joined the bandwagon and only cares about his bias.
Dude, Hans was CAUGHT TWICE cheating. That means he is a serial cheater by definition. Some people never cheat and scoff at the idea. If it is KNOWN that you cheated twice, and was not properly punished, that tells a lot about the cheater AND the system, of course he would abuse it if he seen there is no consequences.
It really is quite frustrating. On one hand, we have Magnus accused of being a sore loser, which is true since you can find video evidence of his after match reactions online. On the other hand, we have Hans accused of being a cheater, which is also true since it's been confirmed by chess officials and Hans himself. After careful deliberation, I think most people would come to the same obvious conclusion: Magnus is in the wrong and Hans is in the right. Because being a sore loser is illegal in chess, but being a cheater is not!
Great recap. You missed to mention however one of the most sus pieces of “evidence”: the niemann interviews where he analyses games. Without those interviews, I would provably think exactly the same thing you said at the end of the video, but I just cannot believe anyone playing at a certain level being so akward during a post-game interview, failing to understand the position at a radical level.
Again, why didn’t Magnus gave an interview about how did he lost against Hans? Is very easy to point the finger but miss the point entirely, Hans did the interview you do the interview too.
I'm waiting for more things to unfold So far Magnus accuse Hans of cheating but not giving any proof But, I also understand that giving proof of cheating on chess is hard I just hope this scandal doesn't give chess world a bad reputation
Not sure how the chess or even other sports and gamegroups act on cheating, but imho, cheating once is forgivable after a serious 6-24 month ban, to make it clear, it is not acceptable, but we are willing to consider your changing. Cheating twice is not forgivable in this level, it should have an automatic and permanent ban from any event and similar. You made clear, you are willing to break the most important rules multiple times, we cannot know, if you will do it again, but we are no longer willing to even give you the chance.
As someone who has done no research into this, and probably knows only a fraction of the stuff that the Echelon knows on this topic, I feel the need to point at the Lance Armstrong scandal. He denied cheating, be he performed at the same level as cheaters... and 'surprise!' he was cheating. While its theoretically possible for a chess god to exist, does it make sense for said chess god to also have an established history of cheating?
@Vandole Oh, I assumed as much. The main reason I even knew about Armstrong to begin with is I knew an oppressively self-righteous prick with an absurdly 'black and white' view of the world, who openly mocked the French *experts* for "Daring to question the American spirit!" I'm American myself, and I was like... "F*** dude, humans are humans, and the experts are actually providing logical support behind their accusations." ...and then I was vindicated. XD Though, in terms of physical sports, I do kinda wonder if you split some of these in two, and allowed for a "pro-doping" league... A. Would it be popular? B. Would it reduce cheating in the non-doping league? C. How far could the mad scientists take it? I assume the pro-doping league would be a total train wreck early on, but it would kinda be like NASCAR's main draw: "Are they gonna wreck?"
I never get tired that actual research that goes into these topics when UEG covers them. I've heard this story several times this week, but all different and revolving around one specific thing. The last one I heard involved Magnus being the one who cheated and was using morse code and a butt plug. Surprise, the plug and someone cheating being the common factor while the details were always different.
saying Carlsen is a sore lose is like calling water wet, everyone knows how he is. But he openly accused this guy. He's not that egoistic to do that without reason.
@@victorbasurto1584 I would think the tournament organizers are exactly all of those things, with public opinion influencing the entire courtroom. If it's a solo 1v1 and not a pro game, it's a he-said-she-said situation and thus irrelevant. That said, known cheats should not play world champions without adequate safeguards. If they do, then the organizers have failed at their job and it will erode the sport's reputation as a whole.
@@DarkVeghetta The organizers can be intimidated, have you seen the video when Magnus gets caught cheating OTB against Alexandra the Chess Queen? That is cheating and is in camera, even slow motion, is quite funny. I cannot post the link but is in her channel The Chess Queen beats Magnus Carlossen.
@@victorbasurto1584 I don't follow chess as a sport. This video is my only exposure to the controversy and my stance regarding cheating in sport is universal. I have no further interest in the topic, having already expressed my distaste for any cheating in sports in the above and other comments.
When it comes to that corelation thing - pick one method, apply it to a few more top players including Niemann and compare the results. If there is a big discrepancy between him and others, he most likely is a cheat, if not then most likely the dude really is that good. But the fact that he cheated on multiple occasions in the past giving lame excuses kinda makes me lean towards him cheating. But like you said - there is no definite proof. It's not like you can test his blood like in other sports and get an a100% answer.
@@anti0918 That's how his mathematical/statistical model works, he checks for outstanding elements in plays over long period of moves and comparing it to how player of that level should play, looking for discrepancies in ability. The recent interview with him is really interesting. Sorry if I don't word myself correctly, English isn't my first language.
Multiple instances of cheating, why even question it at this point? You destroyed your own career by no ones fault other than your own, caught multiple times himself and his coach. That's makes it pretty obvious dude is a cheater.
@@dawfydd They played a friendly game on the beach and Magnus won. And for some reason the people defending the rage quitter are using a friendly game on a beach as some kind of comparison to a ranked OTB game.
@@cgoodwin256 calling him a rage quitter is poisoning the well you know? magnus doesn't seem like a nice fellow i watched gothamchess for abit, seems like abit of a c word but. Doesn't mean the other guy played legit, though it could've been a fluke i'm willing to accept that and from magnus's point of view as i stated on another thread could've been legit upset because this guy is a known cheater.. even if he lost legit.. its possible that he still thought the guy had cheated, being as the guy *is* a cheater so i can understand why he would be more angry than normal but those who hate Magnus don't seem to be willing to throw him a bone? I haven't really picked a side, Magnus is a prick the other guy is a cheater - if he cheated this time or not is the question so is, will he cheat again.. known cheaters tend to reoffend in time but he'd be smart to never do it again if he's good, otherwise if he's smart he'll let it die down and retire quietly from chess onto something else which i think is most likely to happen. As for magnus will he ever stop being a prick? likely not even if he stays champ i doubt he'll improve with age if he hasn't done so already i imagine he's been with a woman he's famous enough so maybe he'll never change but i dunno lots of pricks in the world i try not to get upset about it.
@@dawfydd It's somewhat undeniable that Magnus rage quit the last game against Niemann. There is an argument to be made that it was the right thing to do, but he did do it. I put games on the beach and cheating online when you're 12 in a completely different column than cheating in person as an adult and a known personality. I think the whole thing is super sus, but the problem is that there has been 0 actual evidence to prove it. By all accounts Magnus played well below his usual standards, but seething and wild sex toy accusations are the best he and his fans can do. I have a issue with that. Absent real proof it just comes across as sour grapes.
@@dawfydd Calling him "rage quitter" is not enough. No matter what, Magnus behavior goes directly against both FIDE General Regulations for Competitions and FIDE ETHICS & DISCIPLINARY CODE. "Sore loser" or "rage quitter" doesn't even begin to describe what he did, it's pretty much game-fixing.
Just a little more to the "claim that he studied Carlsen's exact line the night before" narrative, when he was diving into his prep in the post game interview he mentioned side lines he looked at and considered for actual play that were flat out full piece losing blunders... twice... Also, Carlsen wasn't the first upset. Hans steamrolled two other players who were much higher rated than him before facing Carlsen. The organizers introduced a stream delay the very next day and Hans proceeded to lose half his games and draw the other half after overperforming to the extreme in his previous games. Regardless of if he cheated in the actual game, he brought this on himself and I have zero sympathy. Chess cheating needs a heavy stick when it comes to punishment since it's so incredibly easy to do, yes even over the board.
Yeah I'm sure the added stress didn't affect Hans' play in the subsequent rounds at all - it must've been that he was cheating. Wait, he still drew against top GMs in later rounds even after the stream delay and the increased security measures? Oh... yeah he totally must've been cheating and isn't at all a 2700 rated player under an unprecedented amount of stress - I'd like to see how many 19 year olds would hold up as well under the same circumstances.
@@blancoot in a perfect world, I wouldn't. But this is not such a world. Imagine the best active players calling you a cheater. And with him also his followers. Everyone makes theories about it, analyzing every move you have ever made, and we're in internet age. You'd know for sure that you got so many death threats to your email because of this.
@@theyhaventfedmesince for the kid's sake I hope he can unplug and weather the storm, if he actually didn't cheat. But even if he did in the past, that doesn't necessarily prove he did in the matches with Magnus, especially if those were monitored and in-person as opposed to online games. I don't know jack about chess tbh just what I gleaned from this video and a few other scattered references I've heard about there being a chess cheating scandal off-hand.
you dont become a player of carlsons caliber by running away from somebody as soon as they beat you once... he OBVIOUSLY knows SOMETHING.. what that is is what will unravel this whole fiasco. i think we need to know what really made carlson resign from an entire tournament after being defeated once by neiman and then why he dropped out of another tournament after simply being paired up with him....
This reminds me a lot of the Amber Heard video in the fact that one can not reliably judge any testimony to be true because they were caught in the past and ends up making it impossible to judge properly
There's simply no evidence in this case though. Virtually all grand masters have said Carlsen played badly and that Hans didn't do anything special in that game.
@@LegendLength Carlsen played an obscure line to test his theory about Nieman. Nieman then said he by chance had prepped that line but then in the recap couldn't give analysis on the positions. He cheated and has cheated again and again. Only Capablanca has anywhere near his level of 90+ accuracy games and at much less complex positions. Either Nieman is randomly by far the greatest player in history and then not or he sometimes cheats.
@@AndyTomlins "said he by chance had prepped that line" He did explain the line but misquoted the time and place that game occurred. You realize they study > 100k lines over their career?
I saw parts of the Depp Vs Heard trial, at some point Depp just like Hans went open about his previous sins, Amber was also insinuating that he was a wife abuser and Johnny lost contracts and people turned against him. In the end he prevailed and the defamation plot by Amber was exposed.
I know nothing about this situation as I don't follow chess news, but I have serious doubts towards the credibility of 2 serial cheaters who disregard the most important rule of the game. Cheating multiple times regardless of your reasons shows that you have a lack of respect for the game and your opponent. Hans should be barred from competitive play irrespective of if he actually cheated in this specific instance or not. Cheating with no consequences to speak of just encourages the same behavior.
I read somewhere that just recently they caught someone cheating at chess with a vibrating apparatus up his behind; it would send code vibrations for the move to make.
Another Billy Mitchel like case that technology is locking up. I think the key to this puzzle is : the time that passed between the first time he got caught cheating (age 12) and the second time (age 16), 4 years later. You have to understand. He did not, 4 years later decided to start cheating again. Instead, during 4 years he cheated on and on and was only caught cheating again, 4 years later (age 16) after the first time. So. If during those 4 years or so, he got lots of points ("ranked" climbing) to get where he is now. That's kind of messed up and surely a big problem for "not cheaters GM's", "tournament organizers", "official ranked players" I would assume. Also I found this : Assuming that players know three or four systems with both white and black, we can say that grandmasters know about 1,200 distinct opening sequences. You think it's possible to learn, by hearth, all the moves the AI would do in response to all those 1200 distinct opening sequences...??? If you study enough. Maybe. 100% accuracy...Maybe not.
You generally study the openings you know your opponent is most likely to play and it's not uncommon that to players play 20ish moves of pure preparation in a game. And in regards to the cheating he admitted to, that's online chess where cheating is indeed very easy - in person over the board chess is a different matter entirely and he just became a so-called super Grandmaster after crossing 2700 official FIDE rating - cheating consistently over the board in dozens of tournaments over several years without being caught in order to gain actual FIDE rating would be very difficult - besides no one denies that he's a very strong player - if not 2700 then at least 2600 without any assistance.
If Neimann is a confirmed cheater, why would you EVER let him back into the rankings? If you take fair competition seriously there should be zero tolerance for cheating, regardless of how famous or 'talented' a person is. I fail to see why this confirmed cheat is given the time of day, so someone please enlighten me.
Because he was caught cheating online by a private company called Chesscom on their platform - not in official over the board tournaments by the governing body of FIDE - and that company chose to give him another chance as per their own policy. Also, basically no sport has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to cheating, usually the punishment involves a suspension of a few months to a few years so why should chess be any different?
@@notyourdad Every sport SHOULD have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cheating. It taints the game and all the players in it. Once a cheater, always a cheater.
@@notyourdad Unless the organizers can ensure a known cheater can not possibly cheat (regardless how harsh those measures must be), then said known cheater should NEVER be allowed to participate in any official matches, period. Failing to do so tarnishes the reputation of the entire sport and that venue in particular. It's why boxing has had a terrible reputation for decades, due to a minority of fights being rigged. Even setting aside morals, cheating is incredibly bad for the business of a sport - potentially harming a LOT of people financially.
My only question is, why is a confirmed cheater ever allowed to play competitively again? Just look at Magic The Gathering. Cheating is an addiction that slaps on the wrist do not cure. They only sharpen it.
I think that in Miami, the so called elite players and Magnus decided that Hans was rubbing them the wrong way. Like they found him SUS… Some of the elite: ‘Hey Magnus, we don’t like Hans, we think he cheated you, he could not have won over you, is just not possible’. Magnus: ‘I don’t like him guys, he is a cheater, I don’t know how he managed’ ‘Elite’: ‘Hello, Hans, want to go to the beach for a game with Magnus, will be fun? He will play Black, don’t worry’ Hans: ‘ Thank you guys, you are quite friendly, thank you’
Kudos on a very good video. I guess you had to leave a lot out to not have it go on for too long, but I think you left out some absolutely essential information: 1. After Magnus withdrew several top GMs (you mentioned Nakamura, but forgot about Hansen and Caruana) spoke out publicly about rumors surrounding Niemann. People also found a two year old video of the player currently ranked as the world number three, Nepo, where he alleged Niemann cheats in online games. Nepo followed this up in a more recent podcast by telling that he had asked the organizers for more stringent anti-cheating measures once he knew Niemann was going to be at the Sinquefield Cup. Carlsen did the same thing as well, according to Caruana (this was later confirmed by Carlsen himself). So what I'm saying is that these allegations against Niemann have been circulating in the milieu for a while now. All of this heavily contributed to the insinuations people read from Carlsen's tweet. This was well before the second withdrawal where Carlsen confirmed with his action that this was about Niemann. 2. The second instance of Hans cheating didn't happen 4 years after the first one. It happened 5 years after, in 2020. This can be confirmed two ways: Hans said it was during the pandemic. And the account that was banned, "hanscoolniemann" played it's last game on chessdotcom 10 August 2020. This also means that he was older when he was banned for the second time than what he admitted to in the interview. 3. Ken Regan is indeed the expert, but some the best players, like Caruana, Nakamura and (obviously) Carlsen do not think his methods are sufficient to pick up on cheating that isn't blatant. (Edit: I recommend Caruana's podcast c-squared for more information on this. In a recent episode he speaks of a player he knows with absolute certainty cheated, but who was still exonerated by Regan). A player can, for example, be very selective about when to use computer moves and sometimes make weaker moves to not draw suspicion. Another way to cheat that Ken Regan wouldn't be able to pick up on is if a player use an eval bar to know when they're in a critical position, but then come up with the moves without the help of a computer. This would allow them to avoid blunders and use extra time for decisive moves. This wouldn't work for a medicre player, but for an already very good player, which Niemann undoubtedly is, this could be more than enough to beat players with considerably higher ratings. Ken Regan has also said that his methods can't prove that someone hasn't cheated, just provide evidence of it. He airs on the side of caution, and rather accepts some false negatives in order to avoid false positives. The reasoning seems to be that it's better if some guilty go free, than if some innocent are punished. That is good news for a careful cheater.
I'll add this as well, just because I think it's interesting. Tang, who used to be a really close friend of Niemann, is publicly supporting Carlsen for taking a strong stand against cheating in chess. Tang is probably the best hyper bullet chess player in the world, but the more interesting thing is that Tang and Niemann had a falling out related to cheating a couple of years ago. So make of that what you will.
Additionally, "Carlsen said he was informed ahead of time that someone in is close circle was leaking his strategy and he changed it the day before to test that and, surprise, that was the opening Hans had studied which is WHY he got up after one move." (I remember reading this prior, and this quote comes from a comment from Dorth Lous a bit further down the comments from your own reminding me of this tidbit, so I decided to come up and remark on it here since I'd argue it's also an essential bit of information). EDIT: Spelling.
Imagine thinking a global average of chess players is the same thing as registered professionals. There's just over 1 million pros registered with FIDE, and 250 millions registered pro soccer players. The estimate you take doesn't even include teenage or child players that are in the pro format or training it, since it's adult only. Chess is not the biggest sport .
As someone who has only casually played chess a dozen times at most with close family, it is both surprising and somehow disappointing to me that chess of all things has such a cutthroat and uptight community.
Look at Niemann's last game against Aronian. 14.b3! It is a totally anti-positional move. It weakens the c3 knight, opens the h8-a1 dark diagonal for blacks bishop eyeing whites rook. 14.b3 does nothing except fortify the c4 square for white. When I saw 14.b3 my jaw dropped, no human plays such a move and I even mentioned it to my wife. The natural 14.Nd5 or 14.h4 and white continues the attack and is better. So I open Stockfish 15 and low and behold, 14.b3 is the top engine move. Aronian was lost three moves later. I am no GM, but see that move really makes me wonder.
Regarding the conclusion of the video, Magnus never specifically stated that Hans cheated on that particular last game, he merely said Hans is a cheater. He also stated that when Hans got a last-minute invitation to the tournament he considered not showing up for the tournament. This practically means he's accusing Hans of cheating BEFORE the loss to him in the tournament. Also, Ian Nepomniatchi (Magnus's opponent in the last World Championship match, and a contender in the next one- arguebly the second strongest chess player in the world) when he knew about Hans getting that last-minute invite to the tournamet he communicated with the organizers to increase anti-cheating security measures. So this all tells us that the top grandmasters of the world KNEW Hans is a cheater (in over the board chess, not just online) even before the tournamet even started. And the saga that followed was the just the straw the broke the camel's back.
Or they just dislike him (which they do) and are strongly biased against him (which they are). If anything, them judging him guilty before anything happened is argument against them being reliable in their opinions.
@@Dorrovian Hikaru Nakamura was (probably still is) one of the most disliked players among his peers- was never accused of cheating by any of those who disliked/hated him. Gary Kasparov probably is the most disliked- was never accused of cheating either. Magnus and Hikaru and Nep and others (the biggest names of chess rn) won't risk their reputations by accusing some 19 years-old kid of cheating just because they don't like him. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. People of this caliber won't risk entering this mine field without being certain it won't damage their own statures.
@@mostafaelbakry9821 I mean, amount of controversy between Karpov and Kasparov matches beats this small drama out of water, so that's not exactly good for rest of your argument.
@@Dorrovian controversy is one thing, cheating accusation is a whole other thing. Try to think about the answer of this question: "why would a world champion, a world championship contender, a two-time candidate, and multiple other top grandmasters falsely accuse a 19 years-old nobody of cheating and risk their integrity in the process if they're not sure?"
@@mostafaelbakry9821 Well, there was a lot of saying matches between Karpov and Kasparov weren't really fair, because of 1984 not being counted and Karpov mental state being under great pressure. That's pretty much different type of cheating, but I digress. Why would they accuse him? None of them has balls to do so, all of them are just throwing around whispers, insinuations, world champion just fixed the game breaking FIDE General Regulations for Competitions and FIDE ETHICS & DISCIPLINARY CODE. They have no proof and they know it, but they are destroying his career nevertheless.
Hey, UEG; on a lot of videos from various channels, I'm noticing that the like/dislike counters have been 'disabled by owners', and I'm seriously suspecting that almost none of the channel owners, themselves, have actually done that, but rather; UA-cam has actually disabled likes by now making them a preset option into the uploading process -meaning uploaders have to manual enable like function in order for them to be viewable, and likely no one has been made aware of this. Plenty of channels still seem to have enabled likes/dislikes -like yours, for example, but its entirely possible the uploaders noticed the option during the uploading process and simply switched it on. I suspect this is all because UA-cam is still warring against the Dislike function, repeatedly trying and failing to get the Restore-Dislikes browser add-on disabled, but have now changed tactics, tricking channels into hiding the dislikes themselves so that now the browser add-on won't be able to show them (kind of brilliant, if its actually true) Its possible that this change doesn't exist and that channel owners are simply intentionally disabling the function for the respective videos, but given how they've never seemed to have done that before, I honestly doubt it. UPDATE: Apparently this is some kind of bug where you have to reload the page in order to get the numbers to reappear. I've heard this because Google is still trying to screw with the coding to get rid of dislikes, though I can't outright confirm it. Only that reloading pages does in fact work
Dislike counters have been removed. You can make them reappear with a browser add-on (although they are estimated and not actual figures). It's been like this for a bunch of months though.
Dude's been caught cheating before, admitted to cheating, his mentor was a confirmed cheater. After investigating, he got banned for cheating more than he admitted to. I mean the most likely explanation is that he is cheating, if you were good enough to beat top players why cheat at all? And his reasoning for cheating in order to get to play vs higher rated players...that makes no sense, if you can't beat lower rated players honestly then why would you want to play higher rated ones?
An "undefeated streak" is not equal to a "win streak", since there is a very high draw rate in top level chess (draw = neither player wins) The streak was 125 games in total, 42 wins, 83 draws. (According to wikipedia.)
I was waiting for your take on this! I am an amateur chess player with some achievements in the past and I am extremely worried about the whole situation.
This is more akin to catching someone cheating in Monopoly and accusing them of financial fraud. He was caught cheating online, not in official over the board in person tournaments.
@@JJS563 Most renewed world expert on cheating in chess is clearing him of accusations over long period of time at this point. We are not going to get more, you can't really prove if someone was cheating in one game or not unless you catch someone red handed.
Nice video! I'm 100% with you on the final conclusion. Carlsen snapped because he knows there is a *chance* that Niemann was cheating. And even if he wasn't, the fact that a confessed cheater is being invited to those Grand Masters tournaments might be enough for Magnus to be upset. Maybe Niemann have cheated so much that he just instinctively mimics some great plays and then doesn't know how to explain his decisions like a traditional chess player does.
Mistake at 16:12. Likelyhood isn't 100 times higher from 100 engines Vs 1. But somewhat higher with each added engine. And less higher likelyhood increment with each added engine.
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Why don't they just play in person?
Btw, if his moves correlate with an engine, can't that just mean he has based his style and decision making off of the engine?
What better a teacher than a brain that does it better than the human brain?
Also I've seen more that believe he didn't cheat than did cheat. I don't think the walls are closing in.
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@@ihaveasandwichinmypocket The 2022 Sinquefield Cup was played in person. This means cheating is harder... but classical chess games are played over hours. Participants often get up and walk around in between moves, which leaves opportunity for him (or an accomplice) to run an engine and signal a preferred move. Yet, the lack of any found mechanism for Hans to cheat is probably his strongest defense. Or to quote the defective detective Monk, "that's a nice theory, now do you have any proof."
So he has been caught cheating not once, not twice, but three times YET he was still allowed to take part in tournaments both online and in on-board play. That there is insanity. Take any other sport out there and those who have been caught cheating. They either got decade bans or banned for life.
Yeah that seems to be the real fuckup. If you let known cheaters play, somehing like this is bound to happen eventually.
Well Tom Brady got caught cheating like 6 times and still gets to play.
@@McDicker96 Yeah, this is delusional. A slap on the wrist is the norm in basically every major sport.
Jon bones jones...
@@GregHuffman1987 suspended a gazillion times for it but Dana white likes money so he ain't gonna Perma ban him.
Thank you UEG, the chess community has been in shambles and my chess club has gone insane.
Your chess club should try out the vibrating anal bead theory to see if it's plausible. U know, to uphold the integrity of the chess community, and for science 📿👉🏽👌🏽
@griffy It was not in fact, the clip we were all looking for.
😭😭😭 let these fools make their content man
How does this ‘shambles’ and ‘insanity’ manifest, exactly, because my imagination is running wild?😊
@@vienna227 Two of my members got into an argument, one stopped showing up, and another curled up into a ball and cried.
I am not persuaded by the "Carlsen is a sore loser" theory. Carlsen has lost many games in the past and never once reacted this way.
In a loss to Ivanchuck he stands up in frustration
But nothing, nothing like this we're seeing here.
I believe Magnus.
ua-cam.com/video/WR-4_ouXUV4/v-deo.html
He did against Karjakin, of course he didn't react as badly as he did to Hans but there were plenty instances where Magnus got really angry. There were also a time where Magnus left the photo session before the ceremony started because he got really angry at the result.
Nah even if he thought he cheated the first time the second time he literally rage-quit. This is toddler behavior and it fits with the mentality of someone used to and comfortable with being called a "grand-master." Also if he had literally any proof all he has to do is say so. He's got nothing but pure salt over someone he sees as less getting the better of him.
@@lalajun5902 Well, I don't mean that he never showed anger in defeat.
@@Ki_Adi_Mundi lmao being a "grand master" means nothing, there are gms who could never beat magnus no matter how hard they tried. The fact that you think this has anything to do with this showcases you know nothing about the competitive scene.
way back at the start the thing that struck me as weird was Hans' inability to say anything meaningful about his own positions in the game he won against Magnus, right afterwards. that game should have been seared into his memory.
And why didn’t Magnus did an interview as well explaining us how he lost to Hans?
@@victorbasurto1584 why tf are you here?
@@Morphysince94 Did I say something offensive or not amenable? Is an open comment section right? No need to be rude Jack…
@@victorbasurto1584 and @Jack-o'-Lantern Panic . Do you have some sort of history? Are you like two chess Nemesis.
Now that's a scandle. I have a theory:
You two where once great friends and chess Enthusiast. You had a falling out, about a different chess Scandle. However to insure that you both could still watch chess youtubers and interact with them you divided all the Chess youtubers up and each of you got half of them. The other Person is forbidden to comment under Videos of youtubers that don't "belong" to him. Now this channel Was not on the list, because it is not a chess channel so you met by accident in the comments and you said it was an open Comment section, because you knew he didn't belong to any of you. Thereby sending a secret Signal only you two know. And you both stopped commenting because you decidet this entire channel was quarantined now to assure you both wouldn't ever meet again.
Yes i'm high, but I am way more intressted in this Story than the Magnus and nieman Story,
@@Morphysince94 I'm sorry that I'm spamming but I need an answer
@Victor Basurto and @Jack-o'-Lantern Panic . Do you have some sort of history? Are you like two chess Nemesis.
Now that's a scandle. I have a theory:
You two where once great friends and chess Enthusiast. You had a falling out, about a different chess Scandle. However to insure that you both could still watch chess youtubers and interact with them you divided all the Chess youtubers up and each of you got half of them. The other Person is forbidden to comment under Videos of youtubers that don't "belong" to him. Now this channel Was not on the list, because it is not a chess channel so you met by accident in the comments and you said it was an open Comment section, because you knew he didn't belong to any of you. Thereby sending a secret Signal only you two know. And you both stopped commenting because you decidet this entire channel was quarantined now to assure you both wouldn't ever meet again.
Yes i'm high, but I am way more intressted in this Story than the Magnus and nieman Story,
Just felt like saying the "someone else was feeding me engine moves, didn't know he was using an engine"-excuse is an extremely bad one. Someone else feeding you moves is cheating, regardless of how they came up with the moves, period.
2:42 technically its not a win streak just a set of games he was undefeated as you can draw in chess and it's not uncommon in high ELO games
I accidentally said winstreak because I had just written the section on Bobby fischer 20 game streak
@@UpperEchelon a simple error. Any chess fan knows what you meant.
I'll be real here, I just like the idea that some guy got a remote controlled buttplug so someone could send him the winning moves by morse code. It's just so hilarious to think about, some guy constantly vibrating and then playing the best possible moves.
It come from Elon I think and it reveals more about Musk than about Hans, it was pretty vulgar but people loved it.
@@victorbasurto1584 revealing he's not a total fake like some people call him?
It didn't come from Elon. It was started by chessbrah and caught fire
@@hectorg5809 but Elon bad 😠
All the while he's purring like a kitten with a massive shit eating grin spread across his face to his opponents dismay.
My ex wife taught me; once a cheater, always a cheater.
Truer words have seldom been written.
Sir, you make a more honorable opponent than some folks I know make honorable allies. Your thoroughness and fairness is exemplar. Never change.
What a wonderful compliment
I have to agree. I only discovered this channel a few days ago, and I really appreciate the "straight-shooting" takes I've watched so far. I know next to nothing about chess, but this story is so huge I really wanted to know more. I feel like I got a solid take from this video!
Not honest. Only naïve.
@@stevelenores5637 ? Elaborate
@@davethescrub858 Guy watched gamed of thrones and now he thinks he is another Machavelli and every other person is naive girl.
The last chess scandal before this was when the female chess tournament was in a middle eastern country where they wanted to force all woman from all countries to wear head coverings and of course nobody wanted to do that. It was a very bad situation.
Nah, nah, nah.
Ask any feminist online, and they will confirm that Middle Eastern countries aren't like that -- in fact, when they "where in the Middle East, they wore a head covering *because they wanted to,* not because they *had to.* "
@@cyphercracker I guess everybody lost their head ...
@@nathanaeljulien3391 Im also assuming not a peep from entitled white american feminists.
It was in Iran iirc and the Women's chess champ refused to play. Boss move.
@@keonkla Normal line is "we have issues to solve in our own country first".
That goes out the window when talking about Brexit or aussie right leaning politicians.
Can we just settle this and have Hans and Magnus sit down at a physical board and play 10 games in a row?
That would be too easy. Drama must continue ;-)
That wouldn't solve the problem, if indeed Hans is a cheater. The concern in the chess community is that the taint of this uncertainty may never go away.
@@ryankelly369 proof will solve the problem. so wheres the proof he cheated against magnus?
@@ryankelly369 oh you mean magnus being tainted. i agree. he handled this the wrong way.
@@Teddy-se8qb No, I mean the accusations are a taint. I do believe Magnus handled it poorly, but his actions did not and do not taint the entire competitive chess field. That blame falls solely on Hans.
A couple of points:
100 engines does not mean each will have a different move and it will not increase the chance of an engine move being recorded by 100 times. I.e. not linearly.
As long as the other players are being compared using the same set of engines then the relative figures have some significance.
It would be interesting to see the results based on engine versions available at the time the games were played if they differed from the engines used in the analysis.
"As long as the other players are being compared using the same set of engines"
That's the problem. ChessBase uses a different number of engines depending on the game. For Hans, many people have analyzed his games recently, so he has many, many engines. Therefore it's hard for him to avoid matching at least one of those 150 engines each move.
If you go to ChessBase page you'll see they say "this is not to be used to detect cheating". For good reason!
@@LegendLength just because you use 150 engines it won't mean it will suggest 150 moves, there are only 1-3 engine moves in a given position maybe 5 at best in a very very complicated position.
@@hatakenewt348 That's not the issue. Every move Hans makes is matched against 150 engines of varying strength. But for Magnus it's only a few engines. So Hans has much higher chance of having a 'perfect game'.
Seems crazy and hard to believe i know. All can be verified easily on any of the chess forums where longer posts can be done.
Literally in this very video it is mentioned that Hikaru ran the check for his game, it showed 100% accuracy for his games, and then he cut it from the video to make it appear flawless.
At 17:35
@@carpedm9846 Yes. So that has some significance, does it not? ;-)
If you were a mid 2000s rated player and had good opening theory knowledge and did your prep work, you would only need an engine recommendation 2 or 3 times per game. So you could appear to play very convincingly, even making weak moves initially. Because chess usually comes to a critical point in a game where there is a forced line or an exchange is won and you head into a winning end game. A decent player could navigate this type of play and finish games with only minimal engine assistance.
exactly, and actually all you would need to know is that there is more than one great move or that the obvious great move isn't the best. Then they could find the other move themselves. They wouldnt necessarily need the notation
Actually finding that critical moment is the hard part, thouhg
There was an interesting theory in one of the comments for a different youtuber covering this as well. The theory was that Magnus Carlson's prep (the studying and strategic decisions done before the match) had been leaked to Neiman. It was a weird line and the fact that Neiman played it perfectly was what spooked Carlson (the theory goes). Given the level of prep for each of these tournaments, it would seem completely reasonable to have cheated like that instead of cheating through computer analysis.
Yeah, that seems reasonable.
The idea that Carlsen played a line that *transposed* into the line seems wonky; Niemann studying a line and getting lucky, then misremembering which line it was a day later (and after using that prep to pull off a massive upset) is hard to buy. If he'd actually 'gotten lucky' and studied a line that just happened to transpose into the line Carlsen played, you'd think he'd have properly remembered it.
If you know anything about GM level chess, you'd know that theory makes absolutely no sense. GMs often blitz out their first 10-20 moves. Leaking "prep" doesn't mean anything.
Hans & his instructor are known to have cheated multiple times. It's that simple.
@@tricky8068 Is that why GM:s discuss this very possibility? Theory makes perfect sense, unless you are unable to understand it.
Prep is instrumental. Just look at the Karpov vs Kasparov matches.
@@japphan It's a theory parroted by people who don't know chess. Whenever I see GMs discussing it, it's to debunk it. Can you name one or two GMs who believe Carlson's prep was leaked?
@@tricky8068 Noone believes it any more. It was clear with Magnus' first official statement what his suspicions were, which dispersed the whole theory.
Not because opening theory makes no sense, but because there is no longer any doubt about why Magnus quit.
They discuss it to debunk it, because it was a reasonable theory. They don't discuss the anal beads theory, because such a theory needs no explanation.
The statistical analysis is only a recent development and I wouldn’t consider it one of the “pillars”. More damning is Niemann’s complete inability to analyze his own moves post-game, discuss alternative lines, accurately weigh the strength of a theoretical position. Half the fun of watching tournaments at the super GM level is seeing their post-game discussion in which they discuss why they made particular moves, what their plan was, what opportunities the opponent missed, etc. They learn from eachother and mutually benefit. But Neimann was incapable of all of this post-game, and it was only much later (presumably with the help of an engine) that he could discuss the moves. When the interviewer (not a GM) is out-analyzing you about the strength of a position, something is up. That is far more damning evidence than the statistical analysis.
Maybe that's because the poor guy was busy dealing with butt plug theories?
or busy dealing with the plug?
Most of the super-smart people I knew had difficulties expressing themselves in the moment. Guy can be drained after a match, too, and not be entirely present.
It still looks bad, and it sounds like there was something going on.
he analyzed his moves but you are too fanboy to admit it.
@@monteraid I disagree with Brian. Analysis of that particular game by OTHER people, the consensus was that Hans didn't win by super brilliant play in THAT game. He won through being lucky. Magnus had a terrible day and played well below his normal level. There is no cheating mechanism that makes your opponent play poorly, unless we go to spy stuff like spiking their food and drinks.
As a chess lover who is following the saga from the beginning, I can say the research done to make this video is really top notch, & the video is fairly balanced and has inputs from both sides. 👍
It's not that Hans is a cheater. I don't believe we can say definitively that he is not. It is the uncertainty itself that is damaging the community.
@@ryankelly369 Hans is definitely a cheater as confessed by himself. The main question now is whether he did it again in sinquefield or not.
But then again, innocent until proven guilty.
@@SK-vw3in That's the uncertainty of which I speak. And Hans has only himself to blame for that uncertainty. Did he cheat in sinquefield? I don't know if the evidence would hold up in court, but it looks pretty damning to me.
r/chess has been a goldmine for the last month.
@@ryankelly369 Then why are you saying "we can't say whether Hans is a cheater or not" (not exactly the words you used, but close), when he is a self-confessed cheater?
You should say "we know he IS a cheater, but whether he cheated in this particular game is uncertain".
"Nobody believes a liar... even when he is telling the truth." And so goes the fable of the boy who cried wolf - a tale to warn us of the dangers of being dishonest.
If the liar is not a proven liar then he or she are only ‘alleged’ liars.
Why if Magnus slandered Hans, is that not worse than cheating?
@@victorbasurto1584 well, good thing Hans is a proven liar then
the difference is he's lying in this case as well
Nice work, this actually brought some new stuff into the table I had not seen / heard before, although I was mildly disappointed that the "anal bead" theory was absent, as it was such an absurdly hilarious bit of this entire drama and what made it even more funny was how it was just a random joke by a stream chat member that somehow made its way out into the wider public and some mainstream media outlets just ran and went to town with that.
But man, there's a reason why I never skip and miss any of your videos. Thank you for your hard work.
I also love how that idea was backed up with a post-competition video of the first time he beat magnus and got approached by interviewers only to say nothing and run off with a poop-waddle to the bathroom.
My old chess teacher liked to say:
"Never play a game under conditions denying you the ability to punch your opponent in the face, should the necessity arise."
I play chess daily, never played a single game in digital form.
Certified boomer moment
I stopped playing chess when people I knew lost interest in it. Online play just isn't the same, and I don't enjoy it nearly as much.
Are you retired or something? When I want to play a quick game of chess online is my only real option. I don't have the free time to sort out a daily chess match against someone of similar skill level in person. I can do that if I play online chess though - and contrary to what you might believe it's not overrun with cheaters using chess engines. I've come across maybe 3 people in literally thousands of games I suspected of cheating, I reported them and I never came across them in another game of chess ever again. And anyway this tournament that he was accused of cheating at WAS a physical tournament done in person and apparently the possibility of being punched in the face wasn't a deterrent at all if he did in fact cheat.
Having never played a digital game of chess isn't something to brag about, it just makes you seem old and out of touch.
@@anon2427 certified soy-boy comment
A slight comment: the 120 game streak was a 120 game undefeated streak, and included many draws as well.
just to set the scene the game was played in person face to face with strict sercurity and surveillance measures before and during the match. The cheating Hans Niemann commited in the past were online matches.
My point, why playing then if you know he is a cheater, but now not wanting play for the same reason?
@@victorbasurto1584 This argument makes no sense. Maybe Magnus wanted to make sure he's a cheater and played him to find out.
After the match he was certain, and the rest is history.
Please come up with better arguments if you're going to defend a known cheater.
@@kristoffer8609 That’s my point Kriss, he wanted to proof he was facing a cheater, maybe he even lost on purpose? Why didn’t he finished the tournament and why didn’t he didn’t show for the interview, he could have spoken his theory of Hans cheating to Alejandro and the world. Also, he should have done this in private and with the correct authorities.
@@victorbasurto1584 beacuse he cheated 6 years in 2 unimportant online matches
@@victorbasurto1584 A cheater doesn't deserve having their cheating kept private.
Truth is, the game was rigged from the start
Ribbed*
@@andrewamann2821 🤣🤣🤣
The same thing that applies in the CS GO scene applies here: once a cheater, always a cheater. They only get better at hiding it, they never stop.
Also, the cheaters are always the arrogant ones. They develop a narcistic way of dealing with others to coverup their internal insecurity.
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
I have listened to people gumbling about this for a while now, with some confusion on my part as to what actually happened, and this is the first comprehensive, evenhanded analysis of the controversy.
Well done.
It's crazy to me that this guy and his coach were banned for cheating twice and allowed to compete in these tournaments ever again.
No idea, but the guy did in the end do this to himself.
Your morality is taken into account and the guy obviously has very little....So no matter what he will always be looked at in a certain light by many....an earned light....Cant really blame people who cry guilty faster then they would at another who doesnt have such a spotty past.
Caruana's criticism of the chess cheating expert is pretty flawed: Yes, he might have cleared a now known cheater once, but mathematically, it's literally impossible to catch all cheaters, and the more cheaters you want to catch, the more non-cheaters will be falsely accused. If you want the number of false accusations of cheating to be as low as realistically possible, only somewhere between 30 to 70 percent of cheaters will be caught, but since most cheaters cheat multiple times, they will be caught at some point in their career.
I must say, the fact that maybe the best recap of this entire situation comes from outside the chess world is surprising, but kudos for the great work.
Well, it's easier for someone who isn't emotionally involved to have a more level-headed approach.
The dude literally said magnus went on a 120 game win streak which is not even remotely true, he has no clue what the fuck he's even talking about
@@user-zb8tq5pr4x Dude, that's just a simple slip up - he meant a lossless streak.
But do get back to me when you produce a comprehensive video like this that attempts to explain a very complicated thing to an audience that doesn't even understand the subject without making a single mistake in the process - good luck.
@@notyourdad He also said that Hans looked at the game the night before, when in reality Hans said he looked at it in the morning. It's just those little details that tell you he hasn't put the work into this that he should. Definitely not enough to call this great work. I've been following this since day 1 and knowing Hans said he looked at it in the morning is like really basic information that anyone watching his interview should get right.
@@user-zb8tq5pr4x Alright, man, this is the literal definition of a nitpick that makes absolutely no difference whatsoever - in fact having to point out an error that meaningless means he did a great job with the video.
Calling a lossless streak a winstreak is a legitimate mistake but this is just not even worth noting let along brining up.
I can't honestly imagine the tantrums you must throw watching other people covering this since I've seen far more grievous and frequent errors made by people who are actually in the chess world and should have far better understand of the subject.
But hey, I really do hope you have a great day because I can't imagine what it must be like going through life having to make mountains out of pebbles all day long - it must be exhausting.
16:00 It's not even remotely true, while an increased number of engines does increase engine correlation it does not even remotely increase a hundred fold with a hundred engines. Aside from the reality that any given turn a player practically never has a 100 moves certain moves are simply better. If there is a clear optimal move it would be rare for a whole host of engines to give wildly different moves. Realistically speaking using a hundred engines your chances of getting a 100% engine correlation only increases ~4 fold.
It's statistically insignificant that a player plays perfectly like an engine multiple times, but yes it can in theory happen. While without context this would be akin to winning a lottery multiple times in a row, within the context of his past and his coach's past it's far more likely he simply cheats. (and badly at that, even highschoolers know when you cheat you never should get a 100% of the questions right)
Reagan’s method assumes that a cheater cheats in every game, instead of selectively. He’s good at catching foolish cheaters, but it’s not as good at people who cheat selectively.
On pillar 2, there is no way Hans would take limited prep time to look at an opening that Magnus played twice in two decades. This isn’t a match, it’s a round robin tournament. You get little prep time and what you have wouldn’t usually be used on such a rare line.
Lastly, chess base shows Hans having more engine correlation over a longer period. Bobby Fisher’s 20 game win streak had a 72 percent correlation.
One thing that is unusual is that Hans doesn’t always play well, but his competitors usually play unusually poorly. Not sure how that factors in but there you have it.
Love your videos.
>competitors usually play unusually poorly
Source on that? If that's the case I think it would explain the high correlation rate: the optimal play is obvious against bad moves.
@@as_if6224 cheaters normally get over confident if not caught for a while, he's been caught twice which means he's been over confident twice.. wonder how many times he's cheated overall.
Hans knew he was going to play Magnus in this event for about a week beforehand and he very recently played a match against him in another event where he no doubt also already spent significant time prepping for him so I don't find it anywhere close to impossible that he'd stumbled upon this line by accident.
And while this engine correlation definitively is raises an eyebrow, that's not enough proof to ruin a young man's career and mental health over - you can't send a community of millions after a guy based on suspicions alone - you need proof or you need to find a way to gather that proof - regardless of the outcome here Magnus went about this the wrong way.
And yeah, a lot of people do play poorly against him, including Magnus Carlsen. Most top GMs agree that he played that game against Hans far below his usual level and that there's nothing suspicious about that particular game, and the computer engines agree.
@@as_if6224 the Reagan analysis showed that players played unusually poorly against him. Not terrible, but not at super grandmaster levels.
@@notyourdad Although I agree with you, there is far from enough evidence, it has to be said that cheaters also become better cheaters overtime. Having been caught at 12 and 16 means he can effectively brush it of as being "young and stupid" and given him a chance to learn from his failures, just not in a positive way.
Using an engine can only expose you in a single match if you turn it up to the max, but if you make it play at a rating only slightly higher than your opponent's you can still cheat without playing a perfect game.
Problem with Regan's method is that it's a summary that looks for a consistent over performance. If you strategically cheat only certain matches or a tournament here and there, you'd come in with a normal distribution and so would be cleared.
It also can't account for cheating only a few times a game, usually there's only a couple key moments in a game, if you just pick those moments, you're not getting caught by his method no matter what.
If anything, the evidence suggests that either Hans did suddenly stop cheating and just coincidentally had an unprecedented rise in rating. (Which if he was that good, why would he need to cheat to advance faster anyway?)
Or he simply got more subtle after getting caught a couple times and started being more strategic with it.
That game against Magnus by the way, just happened to be a game where winning it meant he hit 2700 - super GM level.
For someone who has been motivated by advancing faster in his previous admitted cheating, he definitely had the necessary motivation to cheat that game.
And there was really one move that turned that whole game, and it was an unnatural looking one that he struggled to explain.
Could all be coincidence, but coming from a tech background, I can say firmly that he pretty easily could have if he was motivated and willing to. But without catching him red-handed, how do you prove he cheated on that one move? You really can't.
But that's the question, if it's not possible to catch anyone who isn't blatant and rather dumb in how they cheat, then you pretty much have to rely on their integrity to trust them.
Has Hans, who has cheated numerous times before and then publicly lied about his previous cheating, showed that integrity?
Small correction, Magnus Carlsen did not go on a 120 game winning streak, but a 120 game undefeated streak, meaning that included (a lot of) draws.
The record of wins in a row against significant opponents is either fishers 20 game winning streak, or the much older steinitz 25 game winning streak.
It was great to see your take on this. Fully agree with your conclusions: Niemann has cheated a lot in the past, so other players don't feel comfortable playing him. Rivals would be constantly over-analyzing his moves, especially when they diverge from the most common lines.
There is one more thing: a smart cheater would not have 100% engine correlation. A smart cheater would only play top engine moves only at a few key moments, to secure a victory. That way they wouldn't raise suspicion as those key moments could be as little as twice a game.
Great vid.
Actually, those are the cheaters that are discovered within 9 games, using Ken Regan's (flawed) analytical method, by his own admission. A smart cheater using top engine moves via a low-level engine constantly rather than a deep-level engine sporadically will be much less detectable, especially if there are many engines that you can choose from to obfuscate things.
@@KainYusanagi you can easily beat ken Reagan's equation with a coin, if it flips head u cheat, if not then you don't, it's really as simple as that
You can't defeat Magnus Carlsen just by using engin on a few move, you need to use it right after the opening otherwise you will draw/loose. Engin is winning against Magnus by capitalising on the accumulation of his few "inaccuracy", it's a slow builded victory that required precision at every single move.
and still no evidence so all what you said is just mumbling
I really like your videos and the way you structure them. I like to listen while I work, you have a great presentation style. Keep em coming, more subs will follow
If he'd actually 'gotten lucky' and studied a line that just happened to transpose into the line Carlsen played, you'd think he'd have not just properly remembered it. He'd have stood from the table and shouted it.
I do not buy it sir.
I also don’t buy that Magnus was nowhere to be interviewed about how he lost the game to Hans.
I do find it hard to believe that someone who needed to cheat in order to win just 3 years ago, was able to get so good he could beat Magnus Carlson.
It's not about what you BELIEVE. lol
@@FlameOfRoyeca go away Hans
The Devs should just introduce anti-cheat at this point, yeah the game engine is a couple thousand years old and the there hasn't been a major content patch or DLC since launch but still, the integrity of the game must be preserved !
i think what its missing is microtransactions, that would fix everything. want a queen? that will be 100$
Punk Buster with Kernal level permissions in your brain what could go wrong?
@@inthefade More like colon level, amiright?
@@inthefade that is not how that kind of thing is described just fyi. It would be called a ring 0 anti-cheat. at least by anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge. ;)
People used to have a solution for this kind of thing. It was called 'reputation' and, if was dogshit, that person didn't get to play with the world's best players, because they might harm the entire sport. Maybe we should bring it back.
Alternatively, known chess cheats should only be allowed to play in person, while wearing just their underwear and without shoes (apparently others have cheated via shoes that sent morse-code via electrical jolts O_o ).
Seems like by each day more communities are splitting/being split. Something like a society-wide divide, difference or something.
Sounds like the early signs of a major world conflict is brewing
Hyper-polarization in every domain and aspect of life, everything is fracturing more and more. It's sad.
The problem with the criticism of the chess base correlation is that if it was the case that adding computers would make it more and more likely, well, you would expect at least one other player to be just somewhere close to Hans.
But the most important thing to me is the fact that Hans seems to be the only GM at his level to pack the ability to analyse his own games.
From my understanding, engines get attached to a game by way of a user selecting them in analysis, so a game could be scrutinized by hundreds of engines while another by only one or none.
In this video is also the element of multiple custom engines being attached by the creator of the reddit post, the exclusion of which drops Niemann's accuracy to levels in line with other grandmasters.
I'm no chess expert, I'm just a videogamer with a working knowledge of IT and statistics, but from the statistics and IT angle this screams that ChessBase is not even reliable for comparing players. It's simply not the same benchmark. Indeed, the tool maintainers seem to agree with that, since they say it's not to be used for cheating detection.
Also it doesn't make it more and more likely that's assuming independence. But why would engines designed with the same goal be independent. If there's a good move any good engine is going to see it as a good move
Everything I’ve seen about cheater tells me that Hans Niemann probably cheated. The amount of previous instances, the lies, the past use of engines, the study of an answer to a very specific strategy that Carlsen used ONCE... it’s either a mountain of extremely unlikely coincidences or a mountain of evidence.
@@diomedes7971 Problem is, Magnus has lost to black several times and never threw a fit like this. The fact they wanded him the day after was weird af.
I think Magnus is a dumbass for going about it like this, he should’ve kept quiet and silently sent an inquiry.
@@diomedes7971 Furthermore on this point, Hans did take one game against Magnus, just lost the match, as well as losing all other matches. Seems most likely that Hans was not cheating at a tournament where he lost every match, and that shows that he *is* good enough to beat Magnus every once in a while in a single game. Hans was fortunate that Magnus played way below his own average for their single game in the Sinquefield Cup
@@diomedes7971 The way you properly deal with cheaters is by not letting them play in the first place.
If you get wishy washy about it you then get situations like this.
It’s not 120 something win streak, it’s 120 something not lose streak. There’s a important distinction.
I think at some point it is worth to actually define the word "proof". Most time people use this word it should be replaced by "strong correlation" or "indicators". If you look up how hard it is to proof something, like let’s say in math/physics people would not use this word so carelessly.
Hikaru intentionally cutting the part where the same method gives 100%for his games, just to make it seem more damning than it is, is a disgraceful move, and he should be shamed for it.
Regardless of if hans cheated or not.
He is willing to lie to his audiance to rile them up and get clicks.
For your analysis of pillar three:
you bring up a good point that the more engines used in a comparison, the larger the chance that the human's moves correspond to at least one of those engines. However, to say that using 100 engines increases the chances 100 fold is not correct.
It would be correct if each of those engines had wildly different ideas on what the best moves were. But in reality most engines will agree on most moves, especially during the opening and endgame there will be almost 100% agreement between engines. The midgame is the most computationally intensive and so there will be some disagreement between the engines, but even here the disagreement is often minimal.
So really, even with a large number of engines used in the comparison, it is still highly unlikely to the point of impossibility that the human matches the engines by chance to this degree
Cheating is a form of lying. But I'm sure we can totally trust the guy who said he only lied twice, when he only admitted to it after getting caught.
Especially when he gets caught out lying while trying to explain that he isn't lying again...
Star comment 🌟
@ 2:40 Little correction: It was a 120 game streak of no lost game (wins and draws) not a win streak. It was an unbelievable show of dominance as it is.
The problem with cheating in chess is that the correlation doesn't tell you anything. You don't need to let the engine run all the time, you would just need to find the right sequence of moves in a critical position. Afterwards, you would just need to confirm that the moves you thought of are not blundering away the game.
Kasparov stated that he would not even need to be given the move, just a hint that the next move is critical would elevate his strength to a degree that he would have an unsurmountable advantage.
That makes the situation even more difficult, since it makes the accusation impossible to prove, and impossible to clear.
This was the best thing to happen for Chess in a long time. So many new people are looking to learn about how to play chess
I've been ignoring the whole controversy for a long while now since it's so dense and I don't really follow Chess too much. But, hey, thanks for giving a high level overview of what I have been out of the loop for. 👍
Thank you UEG for bringing this up. This was well researched. Many people including me are really frustrated by the fact that many people rather confirming their bias than double checking and understanding the methods. It doesn't help that the biggest chess influencer, Hikaru, joined the bandwagon and only cares about his bias.
Hikaru has looked at both sides. Of course he leans towards guilty, but you are being biased against Hikaru in hypocritical fashion.
Come on, man! I want to believe. The situation is comical!
Dude, Hans was CAUGHT TWICE cheating. That means he is a serial cheater by definition.
Some people never cheat and scoff at the idea.
If it is KNOWN that you cheated twice, and was not properly punished, that tells a lot about the cheater AND the system, of course he would abuse it if he seen there is no consequences.
It really is quite frustrating. On one hand, we have Magnus accused of being a sore loser, which is true since you can find video evidence of his after match reactions online. On the other hand, we have Hans accused of being a cheater, which is also true since it's been confirmed by chess officials and Hans himself.
After careful deliberation, I think most people would come to the same obvious conclusion: Magnus is in the wrong and Hans is in the right. Because being a sore loser is illegal in chess, but being a cheater is not!
@@glipmine7109 Chesscom are not Chess officials. There is a reason FIDE is not treating online chess as serious as OTB chess
Great vid! Magnus was the youngest when he reached 2800, but the record has since been beaten by Alireza.
Great recap.
You missed to mention however one of the most sus pieces of “evidence”: the niemann interviews where he analyses games.
Without those interviews, I would provably think exactly the same thing you said at the end of the video, but I just cannot believe anyone playing at a certain level being so akward during a post-game interview, failing to understand the position at a radical level.
Again, why didn’t Magnus gave an interview about how did he lost against Hans? Is very easy to point the finger but miss the point entirely, Hans did the interview you do the interview too.
I'm waiting for more things to unfold
So far Magnus accuse Hans of cheating but not giving any proof
But, I also understand that giving proof of cheating on chess is hard
I just hope this scandal doesn't give chess world a bad reputation
You're videos lately have been awesome man, good job!
Not sure how the chess or even other sports and gamegroups act on cheating, but imho, cheating once is forgivable after a serious 6-24 month ban, to make it clear, it is not acceptable, but we are willing to consider your changing. Cheating twice is not forgivable in this level, it should have an automatic and permanent ban from any event and similar. You made clear, you are willing to break the most important rules multiple times, we cannot know, if you will do it again, but we are no longer willing to even give you the chance.
As someone who has done no research into this, and probably knows only a fraction of the stuff that the Echelon knows on this topic, I feel the need to point at the Lance Armstrong scandal. He denied cheating, be he performed at the same level as cheaters... and 'surprise!' he was cheating. While its theoretically possible for a chess god to exist, does it make sense for said chess god to also have an established history of cheating?
@Vandole Oh, I assumed as much. The main reason I even knew about Armstrong to begin with is I knew an oppressively self-righteous prick with an absurdly 'black and white' view of the world, who openly mocked the French *experts* for "Daring to question the American spirit!" I'm American myself, and I was like... "F*** dude, humans are humans, and the experts are actually providing logical support behind their accusations." ...and then I was vindicated. XD
Though, in terms of physical sports, I do kinda wonder if you split some of these in two, and allowed for a "pro-doping" league... A. Would it be popular? B. Would it reduce cheating in the non-doping league? C. How far could the mad scientists take it?
I assume the pro-doping league would be a total train wreck early on, but it would kinda be like NASCAR's main draw: "Are they gonna wreck?"
I never get tired that actual research that goes into these topics when UEG covers them. I've heard this story several times this week, but all different and revolving around one specific thing. The last one I heard involved Magnus being the one who cheated and was using morse code and a butt plug. Surprise, the plug and someone cheating being the common factor while the details were always different.
100 engine correlation would also mean other GMs will have 100 percent games as well, which they do not have
Make them have a UA-cam boxing match. I wanna see their strategies in the ring.
saying Carlsen is a sore lose is like calling water wet, everyone knows how he is. But he openly accused this guy. He's not that egoistic to do that without reason.
Yes but he is not the Judge, not the Jury and not the Executioner, nobody is.
@@victorbasurto1584 I would think the tournament organizers are exactly all of those things, with public opinion influencing the entire courtroom. If it's a solo 1v1 and not a pro game, it's a he-said-she-said situation and thus irrelevant.
That said, known cheats should not play world champions without adequate safeguards. If they do, then the organizers have failed at their job and it will erode the sport's reputation as a whole.
@@DarkVeghetta The organizers can be intimidated, have you seen the video when Magnus gets caught cheating OTB against Alexandra the Chess Queen? That is cheating and is in camera, even slow motion, is quite funny. I cannot post the link but is in her channel The Chess Queen beats Magnus Carlossen.
@@victorbasurto1584 I don't follow chess as a sport. This video is my only exposure to the controversy and my stance regarding cheating in sport is universal. I have no further interest in the topic, having already expressed my distaste for any cheating in sports in the above and other comments.
Man I’m so so happy you picked up this story because I knew it had to be more nuanced then it seemed but was to lazy to dig for answers :P
When it comes to that corelation thing - pick one method, apply it to a few more top players including Niemann and compare the results. If there is a big discrepancy between him and others, he most likely is a cheat, if not then most likely the dude really is that good. But the fact that he cheated on multiple occasions in the past giving lame excuses kinda makes me lean towards him cheating. But like you said - there is no definite proof. It's not like you can test his blood like in other sports and get an a100% answer.
That's kinda what Ken Regan does (but more complicated).
@@Dorrovian not really
@@anti0918 That's how his mathematical/statistical model works, he checks for outstanding elements in plays over long period of moves and comparing it to how player of that level should play, looking for discrepancies in ability. The recent interview with him is really interesting.
Sorry if I don't word myself correctly, English isn't my first language.
Multiple instances of cheating, why even question it at this point? You destroyed your own career by no ones fault other than your own, caught multiple times himself and his coach. That's makes it pretty obvious dude is a cheater.
The thing that clenched it for me is the beach plays, where Magnus beat Hans like he was a junior player. Hans is a cheat, no doubt in my mind.
Beach plays? (i don't follow the community i'd be keen to check it out if you let me know how to find this)
@@dawfydd They played a friendly game on the beach and Magnus won. And for some reason the people defending the rage quitter are using a friendly game on a beach as some kind of comparison to a ranked OTB game.
@@cgoodwin256 calling him a rage quitter is poisoning the well you know? magnus doesn't seem like a nice fellow i watched gothamchess for abit, seems like abit of a c word but.
Doesn't mean the other guy played legit, though it could've been a fluke i'm willing to accept that and from magnus's point of view as i stated on another thread could've been legit upset because this guy is a known cheater.. even if he lost legit.. its possible that he still thought the guy had cheated, being as the guy *is* a cheater so i can understand why he would be more angry than normal but those who hate Magnus don't seem to be willing to throw him a bone?
I haven't really picked a side, Magnus is a prick the other guy is a cheater - if he cheated this time or not is the question so is, will he cheat again.. known cheaters tend to reoffend in time but he'd be smart to never do it again if he's good, otherwise if he's smart he'll let it die down and retire quietly from chess onto something else which i think is most likely to happen.
As for magnus will he ever stop being a prick? likely not even if he stays champ i doubt he'll improve with age if he hasn't done so already i imagine he's been with a woman he's famous enough so maybe he'll never change but i dunno lots of pricks in the world i try not to get upset about it.
@@dawfydd It's somewhat undeniable that Magnus rage quit the last game against Niemann. There is an argument to be made that it was the right thing to do, but he did do it.
I put games on the beach and cheating online when you're 12 in a completely different column than cheating in person as an adult and a known personality. I think the whole thing is super sus, but the problem is that there has been 0 actual evidence to prove it.
By all accounts Magnus played well below his usual standards, but seething and wild sex toy accusations are the best he and his fans can do. I have a issue with that. Absent real proof it just comes across as sour grapes.
@@dawfydd Calling him "rage quitter" is not enough. No matter what, Magnus behavior goes directly against both FIDE General Regulations for Competitions and FIDE ETHICS & DISCIPLINARY CODE. "Sore loser" or "rage quitter" doesn't even begin to describe what he did, it's pretty much game-fixing.
it's more like "entire community coping with a winner that defies their statistical probability of winning so therefore he must be cheating"
Just a little more to the "claim that he studied Carlsen's exact line the night before" narrative, when he was diving into his prep in the post game interview he mentioned side lines he looked at and considered for actual play that were flat out full piece losing blunders... twice...
Also, Carlsen wasn't the first upset. Hans steamrolled two other players who were much higher rated than him before facing Carlsen. The organizers introduced a stream delay the very next day and Hans proceeded to lose half his games and draw the other half after overperforming to the extreme in his previous games.
Regardless of if he cheated in the actual game, he brought this on himself and I have zero sympathy. Chess cheating needs a heavy stick when it comes to punishment since it's so incredibly easy to do, yes even over the board.
Yeah I'm sure the added stress didn't affect Hans' play in the subsequent rounds at all - it must've been that he was cheating. Wait, he still drew against top GMs in later rounds even after the stream delay and the increased security measures? Oh... yeah he totally must've been cheating and isn't at all a 2700 rated player under an unprecedented amount of stress - I'd like to see how many 19 year olds would hold up as well under the same circumstances.
Being under extreme stress because of being called a cheater by most important figure in chess worldwide would make anyone play worse.
@@Dorrovian well if i know that i didn't cheat why would i be stressed
@@blancoot in a perfect world, I wouldn't. But this is not such a world. Imagine the best active players calling you a cheater. And with him also his followers. Everyone makes theories about it, analyzing every move you have ever made, and we're in internet age. You'd know for sure that you got so many death threats to your email because of this.
@@theyhaventfedmesince for the kid's sake I hope he can unplug and weather the storm, if he actually didn't cheat. But even if he did in the past, that doesn't necessarily prove he did in the matches with Magnus, especially if those were monitored and in-person as opposed to online games. I don't know jack about chess tbh just what I gleaned from this video and a few other scattered references I've heard about there being a chess cheating scandal off-hand.
you dont become a player of carlsons caliber by running away from somebody as soon as they beat you once... he OBVIOUSLY knows SOMETHING.. what that is is what will unravel this whole fiasco. i think we need to know what really made carlson resign from an entire tournament after being defeated once by neiman and then why he dropped out of another tournament after simply being paired up with him....
This reminds me a lot of the Amber Heard video in the fact that one can not reliably judge any testimony to be true because they were caught in the past and ends up making it impossible to judge properly
this reminds me alot of the jussie smollet accusations. a hoax with zero proof to back it up.
There's simply no evidence in this case though. Virtually all grand masters have said Carlsen played badly and that Hans didn't do anything special in that game.
@@LegendLength Carlsen played an obscure line to test his theory about Nieman. Nieman then said he by chance had prepped that line but then in the recap couldn't give analysis on the positions. He cheated and has cheated again and again. Only Capablanca has anywhere near his level of 90+ accuracy games and at much less complex positions. Either Nieman is randomly by far the greatest player in history and then not or he sometimes cheats.
@@AndyTomlins "said he by chance had prepped that line"
He did explain the line but misquoted the time and place that game occurred. You realize they study > 100k lines over their career?
I saw parts of the Depp Vs Heard trial, at some point Depp just like Hans went open about his previous sins, Amber was also insinuating that he was a wife abuser and Johnny lost contracts and people turned against him. In the end he prevailed and the defamation plot by Amber was exposed.
I know nothing about this situation as I don't follow chess news, but I have serious doubts towards the credibility of 2 serial cheaters who disregard the most important rule of the game. Cheating multiple times regardless of your reasons shows that you have a lack of respect for the game and your opponent. Hans should be barred from competitive play irrespective of if he actually cheated in this specific instance or not.
Cheating with no consequences to speak of just encourages the same behavior.
2:35 skip the chess intro to Magnus
I read somewhere that just recently they caught someone cheating at chess with a vibrating apparatus up his behind; it would send code vibrations for the move to make.
Another Billy Mitchel like case that technology is locking up.
I think the key to this puzzle is : the time that passed between the first time he got caught cheating (age 12) and the second time (age 16), 4 years later. You have to understand. He did not, 4 years later decided to start cheating again. Instead, during 4 years he cheated on and on and was only caught cheating again, 4 years later (age 16) after the first time. So. If during those 4 years or so, he got lots of points ("ranked" climbing) to get where he is now. That's kind of messed up and surely a big problem for "not cheaters GM's", "tournament organizers", "official ranked players" I would assume.
Also I found this : Assuming that players know three or four systems with both white and black, we can say that grandmasters know about 1,200 distinct opening sequences.
You think it's possible to learn, by hearth, all the moves the AI would do in response to all those 1200 distinct opening sequences...???
If you study enough. Maybe.
100% accuracy...Maybe not.
You generally study the openings you know your opponent is most likely to play and it's not uncommon that to players play 20ish moves of pure preparation in a game.
And in regards to the cheating he admitted to, that's online chess where cheating is indeed very easy - in person over the board chess is a different matter entirely and he just became a so-called super Grandmaster after crossing 2700 official FIDE rating - cheating consistently over the board in dozens of tournaments over several years without being caught in order to gain actual FIDE rating would be very difficult - besides no one denies that he's a very strong player - if not 2700 then at least 2600 without any assistance.
@@notyourdad "the openings you know your opponent is most likely to play" so the exact opposite of what he claimed he did then? Sounds plausible /s
If Neimann is a confirmed cheater, why would you EVER let him back into the rankings? If you take fair competition seriously there should be zero tolerance for cheating, regardless of how famous or 'talented' a person is. I fail to see why this confirmed cheat is given the time of day, so someone please enlighten me.
Because he was caught cheating online by a private company called Chesscom on their platform - not in official over the board tournaments by the governing body of FIDE - and that company chose to give him another chance as per their own policy.
Also, basically no sport has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to cheating, usually the punishment involves a suspension of a few months to a few years so why should chess be any different?
Both Magnus and world #3 Ian Nepo complained to the event organizers BEFORE the tournament that they suspected him of cheating, but they were ignored.
@@anti0918 well then don’t play the tournament!
@@notyourdad Every sport SHOULD have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cheating. It taints the game and all the players in it.
Once a cheater, always a cheater.
@@notyourdad Unless the organizers can ensure a known cheater can not possibly cheat (regardless how harsh those measures must be), then said known cheater should NEVER be allowed to participate in any official matches, period.
Failing to do so tarnishes the reputation of the entire sport and that venue in particular. It's why boxing has had a terrible reputation for decades, due to a minority of fights being rigged.
Even setting aside morals, cheating is incredibly bad for the business of a sport - potentially harming a LOT of people financially.
My only question is, why is a confirmed cheater ever allowed to play competitively again? Just look at Magic The Gathering. Cheating is an addiction that slaps on the wrist do not cure. They only sharpen it.
This story didn't start with the Sinqfield Cup. It started way before that.
I think that in Miami, the so called elite players and Magnus decided that Hans was rubbing them the wrong way. Like they found him SUS…
Some of the elite: ‘Hey Magnus, we don’t like Hans, we think he cheated you, he could not have won over you, is just not possible’.
Magnus: ‘I don’t like him guys, he is a cheater, I don’t know how he managed’
‘Elite’: ‘Hello, Hans, want to go to the beach for a game with Magnus, will be fun? He will play Black, don’t worry’
Hans: ‘ Thank you guys, you are quite friendly, thank you’
Kudos on a very good video. I guess you had to leave a lot out to not have it go on for too long, but I think you left out some absolutely essential information:
1. After Magnus withdrew several top GMs (you mentioned Nakamura, but forgot about Hansen and Caruana) spoke out publicly about rumors surrounding Niemann. People also found a two year old video of the player currently ranked as the world number three, Nepo, where he alleged Niemann cheats in online games. Nepo followed this up in a more recent podcast by telling that he had asked the organizers for more stringent anti-cheating measures once he knew Niemann was going to be at the Sinquefield Cup. Carlsen did the same thing as well, according to Caruana (this was later confirmed by Carlsen himself). So what I'm saying is that these allegations against Niemann have been circulating in the milieu for a while now. All of this heavily contributed to the insinuations people read from Carlsen's tweet. This was well before the second withdrawal where Carlsen confirmed with his action that this was about Niemann.
2. The second instance of Hans cheating didn't happen 4 years after the first one. It happened 5 years after, in 2020. This can be confirmed two ways: Hans said it was during the pandemic. And the account that was banned, "hanscoolniemann" played it's last game on chessdotcom 10 August 2020. This also means that he was older when he was banned for the second time than what he admitted to in the interview.
3. Ken Regan is indeed the expert, but some the best players, like Caruana, Nakamura and (obviously) Carlsen do not think his methods are sufficient to pick up on cheating that isn't blatant. (Edit: I recommend Caruana's podcast c-squared for more information on this. In a recent episode he speaks of a player he knows with absolute certainty cheated, but who was still exonerated by Regan). A player can, for example, be very selective about when to use computer moves and sometimes make weaker moves to not draw suspicion. Another way to cheat that Ken Regan wouldn't be able to pick up on is if a player use an eval bar to know when they're in a critical position, but then come up with the moves without the help of a computer. This would allow them to avoid blunders and use extra time for decisive moves. This wouldn't work for a medicre player, but for an already very good player, which Niemann undoubtedly is, this could be more than enough to beat players with considerably higher ratings. Ken Regan has also said that his methods can't prove that someone hasn't cheated, just provide evidence of it. He airs on the side of caution, and rather accepts some false negatives in order to avoid false positives. The reasoning seems to be that it's better if some guilty go free, than if some innocent are punished. That is good news for a careful cheater.
I'll add this as well, just because I think it's interesting. Tang, who used to be a really close friend of Niemann, is publicly supporting Carlsen for taking a strong stand against cheating in chess. Tang is probably the best hyper bullet chess player in the world, but the more interesting thing is that Tang and Niemann had a falling out related to cheating a couple of years ago. So make of that what you will.
ill check it out
@@IageF Do you mean Andrew Tang, I think his chess name is "Penguingim1"?
Additionally, "Carlsen said he was informed ahead of time that someone in is close circle was leaking his strategy and he changed it the day before to test that and, surprise, that was the opening Hans had studied which is WHY he got up after one move." (I remember reading this prior, and this quote comes from a comment from Dorth Lous a bit further down the comments from your own reminding me of this tidbit, so I decided to come up and remark on it here since I'd argue it's also an essential bit of information). EDIT: Spelling.
@@SuedeStonn Yes, Andrew. :)
Imagine thinking a global average of chess players is the same thing as registered professionals. There's just over 1 million pros registered with FIDE, and 250 millions registered pro soccer players. The estimate you take doesn't even include teenage or child players that are in the pro format or training it, since it's adult only.
Chess is not the biggest sport .
If Chess is so popular, why hasn't there been a Chess 2 yet, huh?
There will be a Chess Remaster on PS5 next year, exclusive, 80 bucks.
@@ElGentoo Well, 80 bucks for the base game. If you want anything besides pawns, you'll have to open loot boxes.
As someone who has only casually played chess a dozen times at most with close family, it is both surprising and somehow disappointing to me that chess of all things has such a cutthroat and uptight community.
Look at Niemann's last game against Aronian. 14.b3! It is a totally anti-positional move. It weakens the c3 knight, opens the h8-a1 dark diagonal for blacks bishop eyeing whites rook. 14.b3 does nothing except fortify the c4 square for white. When I saw 14.b3 my jaw dropped, no human plays such a move and I even mentioned it to my wife. The natural 14.Nd5 or 14.h4 and white continues the attack and is better. So I open Stockfish 15 and low and behold, 14.b3 is the top engine move. Aronian was lost three moves later. I am no GM, but see that move really makes me wonder.
Your approach to videos like this is very impressive. Keep it up!
Once a cheater always a cheater. Its compulsory.
I truly appreciate the effort to keep the video unbiased and objective.. Very hard to find these days..
This reminds me to Dream's "how much luck is too much luck?"
This is by far and away the best video I have seen from this topic so far. Well done
Regarding the conclusion of the video, Magnus never specifically stated that Hans cheated on that particular last game, he merely said Hans is a cheater. He also stated that when Hans got a last-minute invitation to the tournament he considered not showing up for the tournament. This practically means he's accusing Hans of cheating BEFORE the loss to him in the tournament. Also, Ian Nepomniatchi (Magnus's opponent in the last World Championship match, and a contender in the next one- arguebly the second strongest chess player in the world) when he knew about Hans getting that last-minute invite to the tournamet he communicated with the organizers to increase anti-cheating security measures. So this all tells us that the top grandmasters of the world KNEW Hans is a cheater (in over the board chess, not just online) even before the tournamet even started. And the saga that followed was the just the straw the broke the camel's back.
Or they just dislike him (which they do) and are strongly biased against him (which they are). If anything, them judging him guilty before anything happened is argument against them being reliable in their opinions.
@@Dorrovian Hikaru Nakamura was (probably still is) one of the most disliked players among his peers- was never accused of cheating by any of those who disliked/hated him. Gary Kasparov probably is the most disliked- was never accused of cheating either. Magnus and Hikaru and Nep and others (the biggest names of chess rn) won't risk their reputations by accusing some 19 years-old kid of cheating just because they don't like him. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. People of this caliber won't risk entering this mine field without being certain it won't damage their own statures.
@@mostafaelbakry9821 I mean, amount of controversy between Karpov and Kasparov matches beats this small drama out of water, so that's not exactly good for rest of your argument.
@@Dorrovian controversy is one thing, cheating accusation is a whole other thing.
Try to think about the answer of this question: "why would a world champion, a world championship contender, a two-time candidate, and multiple other top grandmasters falsely accuse a 19 years-old nobody of cheating and risk their integrity in the process if they're not sure?"
@@mostafaelbakry9821 Well, there was a lot of saying matches between Karpov and Kasparov weren't really fair, because of 1984 not being counted and Karpov mental state being under great pressure. That's pretty much different type of cheating, but I digress.
Why would they accuse him? None of them has balls to do so, all of them are just throwing around whispers, insinuations, world champion just fixed the game breaking FIDE General Regulations for Competitions and FIDE ETHICS & DISCIPLINARY CODE. They have no proof and they know it, but they are destroying his career nevertheless.
and thats why you should never cheat... you will always be marked as a cheater even if your win is legit
I don't care what anyone says. waking up one morning and Reading "Chess player cheating with Anal Beads" will forever be a highlight of my memory.
I used to play Chess as a kid. Shame what came about it, Fischer was right.
Hey, UEG; on a lot of videos from various channels, I'm noticing that the like/dislike counters have been 'disabled by owners', and I'm seriously suspecting that almost none of the channel owners, themselves, have actually done that, but rather; UA-cam has actually disabled likes by now making them a preset option into the uploading process -meaning uploaders have to manual enable like function in order for them to be viewable, and likely no one has been made aware of this.
Plenty of channels still seem to have enabled likes/dislikes -like yours, for example, but its entirely possible the uploaders noticed the option during the uploading process and simply switched it on.
I suspect this is all because UA-cam is still warring against the Dislike function, repeatedly trying and failing to get the Restore-Dislikes browser add-on disabled, but have now changed tactics, tricking channels into hiding the dislikes themselves so that now the browser add-on won't be able to show them (kind of brilliant, if its actually true)
Its possible that this change doesn't exist and that channel owners are simply intentionally disabling the function for the respective videos, but given how they've never seemed to have done that before, I honestly doubt it.
UPDATE:
Apparently this is some kind of bug where you have to reload the page in order to get the numbers to reappear. I've heard this because Google is still trying to screw with the coding to get rid of dislikes, though I can't outright confirm it. Only that reloading pages does in fact work
Dislike counters have been removed. You can make them reappear with a browser add-on (although they are estimated and not actual figures). It's been like this for a bunch of months though.
This is real journalism. An unbiased approach looking at both sides while keeping personal opinions to an absolute minimum. Keep it up UEG 👍
Dude's been caught cheating before, admitted to cheating, his mentor was a confirmed cheater. After investigating, he got banned for cheating more than he admitted to. I mean the most likely explanation is that he is cheating, if you were good enough to beat top players why cheat at all? And his reasoning for cheating in order to get to play vs higher rated players...that makes no sense, if you can't beat lower rated players honestly then why would you want to play higher rated ones?
An "undefeated streak" is not equal to a "win streak", since there is a very high draw rate in top level chess (draw = neither player wins)
The streak was 125 games in total, 42 wins, 83 draws. (According to wikipedia.)
I was waiting for your take on this! I am an amateur chess player with some achievements in the past and I am extremely worried about the whole situation.
@Guy Whose opinions will offend you just keep practicing and you can do better.
@Guy Whose opinions will offend you And i will end it...cause i not even know how to play! :*(
Definitely been waiting on your video of this. As always love the breakdown and level take.
Imagine allowing a twice caught cheater to continue playing the game they were caught cheating in...how that working out for you?
This is more akin to catching someone cheating in Monopoly and accusing them of financial fraud. He was caught cheating online, not in official over the board in person tournaments.
@@notyourdad Guess we will find out soon enough as the world of chess is now combing through everything with a microscope.
@@JJS563 Most renewed world expert on cheating in chess is clearing him of accusations over long period of time at this point. We are not going to get more, you can't really prove if someone was cheating in one game or not unless you catch someone red handed.
@@Dorrovian Maybe, maybe not. Guess we will see
@@JJS563 Yes, FIDE made investigatory panel like day-two ago. Best course of action will be to wait what they decide.
Dog ive been following this very closely. So glad you're covering it because it is intriguing. Great channel man I never miss a video
Nice video! I'm 100% with you on the final conclusion. Carlsen snapped because he knows there is a *chance* that Niemann was cheating. And even if he wasn't, the fact that a confessed cheater is being invited to those Grand Masters tournaments might be enough for Magnus to be upset.
Maybe Niemann have cheated so much that he just instinctively mimics some great plays and then doesn't know how to explain his decisions like a traditional chess player does.
Once a cheater, always a cheater. Why was he allowed in a tournament at all? That should be the question.
Mistake at 16:12. Likelyhood isn't 100 times higher from 100 engines Vs 1. But somewhat higher with each added engine. And less higher likelyhood increment with each added engine.