WSJ reporting that Chess.com found 100+ incidents of likely cheating by Niemann.

https://www.wsj.com/...-carlsen-11664911524

ETA: I have now read the entire report. The 100+ incidents of alleged cheating were all in online games. The report concludes that there is not evidence that Niemann cheated in over-the-board games. It finds some anomalous results in his OTB games, including the fact that his performance dropped a lot when the games were streamed with a 15-minute delay. But, overall, it does not find the evidence to show cheating in OTB games including, in particular, the game where he beat Carlsen with the black pieces.

I just saw a tweet about how cheating may have occurred at the chess championship, and I don’t know whether to be happy or sad. It was really weird.

Don’t know the basis for that theory. My impression was that Nepo (the challenger) lost because he fell apart rather than because Carlsen (the champ) played unusually brilliantly. But, I’d be saddened if there was cheating in the world championship.

I read the whole thing too; pretty fascinating.

My takeaway is that they have a high threshold for accusing someone, and while they couldn't meet that threshold for OTB games, they certainly didn't exonerate him, and they absolutely obliterated his credibility as a result of their analysis of his online play.

---

Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

"It was such a beautiful game I don't need to describe it."

-@HansMokeNiemann's brief post-game interview after his victory vs. GM Yoo

Agreed. They presented some facts that pointed toward possible OTB cheating and other facts that went the other way. Their conclusion of no-OTB-cheating was more definite than the mixed facts that they presented.

Greatest chess game of the…decade?

So I've started to get into chess a bit. Lex Fridman podcast with Carlson originally turned me on to it, just finished listening to some more of his with the Gothamchess guy and another with the Botez sisters. Feel like I need to watch the Queen's Gambit now. Watched some of the Gothamchess channel's content for beginners.

Even played a game on chess.com. Clearly the two of us both understood the importance of controlling the center of the board, and it was just getting to the point where I had to start actually figuring out what to do next and the opponent quit.

I have to think I would completely fail to appreciate what makes that a great chess game though.

Gotham does great recaps so you’ll definitely understand why it’s an amazing game.

Chess truly is remarkable as there are so many levels of good. You can think you’re getting better and someone will just crush you because they are just next level to you. But they too would get crushed by someone else. I will never pretend that I could be “good” at chess on any level of the word, but it’s very entertaining to watch, especially Hikaru’s Twitch streams. If you can, watch him play Titled Tuesday competitions on Tuesdays (I think the first one starts at noon EST).

Also, Watch Hikaru’s “Botez Gambit” videos on YouTube. He starts an account on Chess.com with a 500 rating and then plays games where he intentionally sacrifices his queen at the start of the game, and then sees how high he can get his rating doing that every game.

Here’s the start of it, though you may want to skip to episodes when he gets to around a 1000 rating as then the games start to get more interesting.