Is nothing sacred?

[Skybird]

Investigations are being started against Niemann. He should have cheated much more often than he admitted, over 100 times. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes (with reference to the Walls Street Journal):
----------------------------
The scandal surrounding chess grandmaster Hans Niemann is widening: The American is alleged to have played incorrectly in more than 100 online games - also in tournaments in which prize money was at stake.

The controversial chess grandmaster Hans Niemann, whom World Champion Magnus Carlsen has openly accused of illegal methods, is alleged to have cheated in more than 100 online games. This is the result of an investigation report by the portal chess.com, reported by the "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) on Tuesday. According to the report, the 19-year-old American is said to have cheated many times more often than on the two occasions as a 12- and 16-year-old, which he had admitted to himself most recently.

According to the WSJ, Niemann admitted to the allegations in the report and was banned for some time from the site, which is popular with both amateurs and chess grandmasters. According to the information, Niemann cheated most recently in 2020 and that too in tournaments where prize money was at stake.

Carlsen accuses his US rival of cheating: "I believe that Niemann has cheated - also recently - more than he has admitted publicly." The first incident between the two had occurred in early September. At the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, the superstar surprisingly lost to Niemann and withdrew from a tournament for the first time in his career. The 31-year-old Norwegian did not give any reasons at the time.

The chess scene interpreted Carlsen's withdrawal as an accusation of cheating against Niemann. The American admitted in an interview during the Sinquefield Cup that he had cheated twice as a teenager at the age of twelve and 16 in online games, but never in presence at the chess board.

According to the WSJ, the chess.com report makes no statement on whether Niemann also cheated in direct duels. However, it does suggest that Niemann's strongest performances merit further investigation based on the data.

The World Chess Federation had announced last week that it would set up a commission of enquiry.
-------------------------------

[Shady Bill]

I was surprised to hear about this also, but then not so much, because the reigning Norwegian champ has a tendency towards the dramatic and often appears unstable.

I used to be an avid correspondence chess player. I would buy the packs of cards from USCF...I think they even came pre-stamped in those days.

With the rise of the internet, and other modern perversions, sacred things like correspondence chess, and not cheating at chess, disappeared.

I started going to chess clubs and some of the parks around Cali in the late 90s, and the more I would lose, I would see my opponents rise up from the table before me, look at me with pride and declare how they were smarter than I. It's at that moment I would pity them most.

I never played chess again after that. I stick to games of chance. Godly things.

[Skybird]

Isn't that obvious? Carlsen seems not to be the problem here. Itr seems instead that he is right.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63140246

Now Chess.com has produced a 72-page investigation <- LINK into Niemann's games on the site, which most of the world's top players compete on, including for cash prizes.

The site, which has banned Niemann for alleged cheating, claims it is likely he cheated as recently as 2020, including in prize money events and against highly-rated "well known" figures in the game.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Shady Bill

I was surprised to hear about this also, but then not so much, because the reigning Norwegian champ has a tendency towards the dramatic and often appears unstable.

I used to be an avid correspondence chess player. I would buy the packs of cards from USCF...I think they even came pre-stamped in those days.

With the rise of the internet, and other modern perversions, sacred things like correspondence chess, and not cheating at chess, disappeared.

I started going to chess clubs and some of the parks around Cali in the late 90s, and the more I would lose, I would see my opponents rise up from the table before me, look at me with pride and declare how they were smarter than I. It's at that moment I would pity them most.

I never played chess again after that. I stick to games of chance. Godly things.

I would argue that correspondence chess in professional manner is meant to use any tool of analysis, including computer and theory books, and that that is no cheating as long as one does not pose as somebody not using these anyalsis methods. Back in the days it was the reason why professional tournament players also turned for correspondence chess: to benefit from the deeper analsis work. For correspondence chess I qualify play via postcard (I did that), and emails (I did that also, until recently). Timewise, both methods made little difference in matches. At leats how I and my partners played. One email every 1-3 days or so.

Playing online live however, that is somethign different to me, and I do not see it as correspondence chess at all, and here I take it as cheating indeed if players do not play themselves, but use assistances, although there are match formats where it is explicitly allowed - but then everbyody lnows that peope do it, and so its fine.

What goes not is to use analysis helps of any kind, but claiming one does not. The cheat is in this lie.

It was nice to have the chess matches we had in the forum, over ten years ago. I used a chess GUI to create and post the diagrams illustrating the moves, but I never had any reason to assume that somebody participating was using a chess engine, nor did I.

Man, its so long ago. Many of us have had some good, some hot and some other times in this forum, hadn't we. Today, compared to my youth days when I played tournaments, I am a chess noob again. Its like shooting: a perishable skill. Rest, and you will rust.

[Shady Bill]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I would argue that correspondence chess in professional manner is meant to use any tool of analysis, including computer and theory books, and that that is no cheating as long as one does not pose as somebody not using these analysis methods.

Yea I agree. I played CC in the late 80s and very early 90s. I remember if I had a position that I wanted to analyze, it would often require me to ride my bicycle to my high school library.

You really couldn't run CC as it once was. You would just have a group of people using their 2800 rated chess apps on their phones to cheat. It has become so easy to analyze any chess position to the nth degree, that it is almost hard to know where "analysis" ends and "cheating" begins.

Interestingly enough, my chess correspondence hobby let me to start collecting stamps. I played with kids from Germany, The Netherlands, France...I would get all these little cards in the mail with the coolest, colorful stamps. European stamps always tended to contain more colors than American stamps.

..then they turned beautiful, lickable stamps into stickers..adults can't really collect stickers, so that ended that hobby.

[Shady Bill]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Isn't that obvious? Carlsen seems not to be the problem here. Itr seems instead that he is right.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63140246

I haven't really studied the case in great detail. I kind of thought it was Carlsen being upset a 19 year old player could suddenly beat him, and somehow he felt this was impossible and therefor it must mean Niemann is cheating. I guess that might be true. Just because the guy cheated as a kid (he still is a kid), doesn't mean he is cheating now.

Carlsen is someone who is very keen of attention. Even from a very young age, chess has been his entire identity. For him, to come to grips with being beaten by a 19 year old kid, it must challenge everything he knows and believes in. Because it shows that Niemann can do in years, what took Carlsen decades..and that must hurt.


What shocked me more was the guys who cheated so blatantly at the fishing competition: (they were stuffing Walleye with lead)


https://www.themeateater.com/fish/wa...eating-scandal

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Shady Bill

I haven't really studied the case in great detail. I kind of thought it was Carlsen being upset a 19 year old player could suddenly beat him, and somehow he felt this was impossible and therefor it must mean Niemann is cheating. I guess that might be true. Just because the guy cheated as a kid (he still is a kid), doesn't mean he is cheating now.

Carlsen is someone who is very keen of attention. Even from a very young age, chess has been his entire identity. For him, to come to grips with being beaten by a 19 year old kid, it must challenge everything he knows and believes in. Because it shows that Niemann can do in years, what took Carlsen decades..and that must hurt.


What shocked me more was the guys who cheated so blatantly at the fishing competition: (they were stuffing Walleye with lead)


https://www.themeateater.com/fish/wa...eating-scandal

Actually Carlsen has said after his last title defence that he is losing interest of repeating endlessly a title, he claled it pointless after the x-th repetition, and he said he will not play another world championship but step down if not a certain player who he rates as strong enoughn to be a real challenge will qualify as challenger.

I too played CC at the late 80s and early 90s, I'm 55 now. I had a very strong fascination for the dedicated chess computers of that era, and I still feel strong love for these machines, their imperfection , the excitement their marketing created, their increasingly elaborated looks and designs. I knew them all, I played them all in warehouses and stores. Back then I had a Chess Challenger Voice, then a Mephisto II, then a Mephisto Exclusive with M-IV module and HG440 opening module. Still have them, and some ten years ago, 15 years, I bought second hand some other objects of my desires that back then neither me nor my parents could afford. It was a golden time and means plenty of very precious memories for me. On some days, when I am blue and my heart is heavy, I am very sad that those times are gone. I played in a club, and for the school team, in those two years we once won the championship of West Berlin schools, and were 2nd or 3rd in the other year. But I never liked the tournament play and the competition thing, I am just no man seeking such tournament competitions, its not my thing to compete, and so I dropped out and went exclusively into "lonesome" CC chess, which was my thing much more (I am a quite unsocial person), and I was damn good at it, I might say. The German CC Federation was (is still?) organised in four main leagues, and you must qualify to access the next higher one. I won the three lower leagues in three tournaments in a row, and then made it second place in my first master class tournament, which was my last, then went to university and had real life getting in the way, played no chess for ten years or more - and when I wanted to return I found that I was so completely out of it that I never got back into it. Too much forgotten, too much routine lost. Today, I play like an idiot again, and thus play almost no more at the live board, only CC - and there really take my time, and need to. Its too frustrating. My three private CC partners however all were dropped by Corona, international guys, knew two of them for over twenyt years, and the third for aroudn 15 years. Never met them, still felt the loss.

Until today I feel very, very sad of this loss rergarding chess skills gone, one of my biggest mistakes I ever made. I should not have allowed to let this happen. I let it slip away, and I was unabel to ever catch it back. And now its too late - its gone forever. Mind and especially memory simply is not what it used to be back then.

How much I hate it to get older. And that is no ironic joke. I mean it. Just losses, no compensations. Every other claim is a lie.

[Shady Bill]

I remember those days, and I remember those chess computers I remember wanting the Mephisto with the wooden chess board so bad, I could taste it, as a kid


It sounds like you were an excellent chess player. I think you are part right in that, it would be quite difficult to re-memorize all the opening lines to the 8-10th move. That having been said, someone who was as advanced in chess as you were, should be able to once again become a very strong player from a tactical and strategic standpoint.


What I did for about 2 years was assign specific study times to chess. I did most of this during Covid. I would sit down for 3-4 hours, 3x a week and purely focus on chess. I also bought Polgar's "Chess; 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games". It is very good indeed. I have read many chess books, only this one and Nunn's stand out.



What you learned as a child is still all preserved in your brain, you just forgot how to access the information.


I urge you to take up your old hobby again. You seem to really miss it.

[mapuc]

@ Shady and Skybird.

Reading your comment in this thread here gave me an idea.

Why don't you two play CC in the old fashion way-which mean using ordinary post service to send letter to each other.

I'm not an expert on CC So my idea is taken from a movie where one of the actor received a letter-He open it read it and walk over to the chess board where he move one of the thing on the chessboard(can't remember which colour or what it was) Later into the movie this actor wrote something on a piece of paper and send it to the other person(which you didn't know who this was)

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Shady Bill

I remember those days, and I remember those chess computers I remember wanting the Mephisto with the wooden chess board so bad, I could taste it, as a kid


It sounds like you were an excellent chess player. I think you are part right in that, it would be quite difficult to re-memorize all the opening lines to the 8-10th move. That having been said, someone who was as advanced in chess as you were, should be able to once again become a very strong player from a tactical and strategic standpoint.


What I did for about 2 years was assign specific study times to chess. I did most of this during Covid. I would sit down for 3-4 hours, 3x a week and purely focus on chess. I also bought Polgar's "Chess; 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games". It is very good indeed. I have read many chess books, only this one and Nunn's stand out.

What you learned as a child is still all preserved in your brain, you just forgot how to access the information.

I urge you to take up your old hobby again. You seem to really miss it.

I'm 55, the mmeory fials me easier now than back then. Believe me, I tried to get back into it, ten years ago, 20 years ago.

Have you never read that if you are a mathematic scientists, you need to set found your career with brilian towkr results until your mid-30s at the latest? After that, you either have scored big - or you will most likely never no more. The brain simply does not play ball anymore.

Also, Chess is a perishable skill. Ten years and more a break and that in the 20s and early 30s - that is too long to get back into it in full.

Believe me, I tried. More than once. But lost the mojo, it seems. Main issue is the memory, it does not record and stpore as easy anymore as it did back then. I played blind chess simultaneously on four boards at one opportunity at the end of my schooltime! And won by narrow margin, without a loss. Today, I would have messe dup the psoitions after ten moves and one board. And only if I know the opening.

I also try to learn piano. I take three and four times as long for every lesson than young ones need, and I find it almost impossible to learn reading notes.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

@ Shady and Skybird.

Reading your comment in this thread here gave me an idea.

Why don't you two play CC in the old fashion way-which mean using ordinary post service to send letter to each other.

I'm not an expert on CC So my idea is taken from a movie where one of the actor received a letter-He open it read it and walk over to the chess board where he move one of the thing on the chessboard(can't remember which colour or what it was) Later into the movie this actor wrote something on a piece of paper and send it to the other person(which you didn't know who this was)

Markus

I did that until Covid, but with emails. One mail every couple of days. Works good.


Some ten or fifteen years ago we had many forum matches, with the diagrams posted into the forum and people commenting. Many of those old member names are gone. It was the golden time of the General Topics. Sometimes aggressive, and people fought often and loud, but so very much alive it was!

[Shady Bill]

I would gladly play online chess. If you set up a game on here, I will gladly play. Or you can send me your first move via personal message. If you want my first move, it is e4. One can not lose playing e4. This is why Bobby played e4!

Chess is freedom. When I sit down before the board, anything is possible. Chess is life. The pieces move more beautiful than any ballerina ever could.
My wife is often jealous of my love for chess, but I explained to her, she will never come close to chess. So either accept that, or don't.



Life is hard. So is chess.

[Skybird]

Is that a gauntlet I see lying in the sand?


So let there be war. Let the drums beat, the swords sharpen and the spears point, someone is standing outside the castle and has lost his glove. Let us help him search!

Lets agree on the rules. No computer engines, else it degenerates into a pure engine match, those damn things will eat you or me alive all too easily. Literature research is allowed if players wants to check it out, it already was back in the CC days. Personally I will restrict to a few surviving books on openings, maybe, I am no archivist maintaining the online databases of Chessbase.



However, if you don't mind, I will use the Chessbase Fritz GUI without active engine and without open window for statistical match information data to keep track of the match and to produce diagrams I post for illustrating the going to the audience. Chessbase simply has the best-looking GUI around, its a work of beauty. Already back then. Still today.


This is how we have run many such matches in this forum 12-15 years ago already, with many participants back then. Audience commented and joked, chatted about past events no longer valid for the actual position, but of course posted no aides or helpful tips.

Can we agree on this? The alternative would be that I use one of these old albums I still have - look what I have found, the protocoll: date 2008, Subsim match. 14 years ago! Man, time is fleeting.

[Skybird]

I found more, I almost forgot that I had shot these photos in 2006. Found them at Google Photos. This is my small collection of machines, one more, a Fidelity Avantgarde (!) with a rare and back then extremely expensive program (!) unfortunately is dysfunctional and in the basement, not on the pics.







My first machine I ever got for christmas. The CC Voice.






My second, two years later. Its the M-II.






And my third from back then, a Mephisto Exclusive, square size 4 cm. The Munich model had 5cm. The cartreidges could be easily switched between computers. The coolest looking chess computer ever, imho.:






The wood unfortunately has suffered in colour, the light wood became dark, the dark became light, and today its difficult to discriminate the two, th epic is 14 or 15 years old. Else, it still works tip-top fully functional. They all do. The images are from 2005 or so.

The Mephisto programs all can be had legally and free from Ed Schroeder'S website in emulated format so that you can run them on Windows without further software, even the GUI mimicks the hardware keys and display. LINK Its strange to see the software calculating 16 half-moves ahead in 3 seconds this way while back then it would have lasted hours and hours and then more hours, if it ever would have reached that far (memory ran out easily). Hardware has come a long way since then...

Astonishing also is that back then everybody was assuming future hikes in playing strength of software would be driven exlcusively by hardware acceleration. Brute Force software appeared to be the thing of the future. For some time, it was. But today, the unbelievable playing strength indeed is driven by algorithm quality and celver assessment criteria and positional "knowledge", and not so much by speed - these programs are killers that even have grandmasters for breakfast, and run on small devices of relatively limited power, compared to fully equipped PCs or mainframes. The selectivity of Shannon-B code has led to a qulity in code that is good for what it is and is less depending on hardware speed alone. The latter was interesting mainly for creating endgame tablebase and such databases.

Today, many professionals would absolutely agree that computers have in parts rewritten theory, and have totally changed the style and playing between humans on the pro tournament level. Its a different chess, more economic, more brutal, less romantic and adventurous. I liked the old world much better. The human scale has been lost. There are calls for altering the starting positions of pieces to level the starting ground again. The theoretic knowledge today is so total and complete that it really does the game no good service, I think. At the pro level. Amateurs like us must not worry.

[mapuc]

@ Skybird and Bill

May I give you a proposal ?

This thread here is about possible cheats in Chess and an online game between you two should have its own thread. I was thinking on starting a thread-Then I came think of it-It should be either Skybird or Bill who create such a CC thread.

Markus