On the afternoon of September 4, 2022, Norwegian chess world champion Magnus Carlsen sat in front of a rising American star named Hans Niemann in the third round of the prestigious Sinkefield Cup, held in St. Louis, USA, "Carlsen". He started with the movement B4, that is, he moved the pawn standing in front of the minister two steps forward, "Neman" responded with the horse in the F6 box, everything seemed normal, but he did not last long on this situation.
By the thirteenth move of the match, the situation was unusual, Hans was pressing so hard on "Carlsen" that the latter seemed to be struggling to find moves on the board, some time passed until it was confirmed, Hans held the match with an iron hand, in the end we conclude To the superiority of two cruel pawns that can end the match in Hans' favour, the world champion finds no choice but to withdraw in front of this young American who has not yet reached his twentieth year.
Carlsen vs Niemann
After this moment Carlsen walked out of the room, we were only 24 hours away from one of the biggest scandals in all chess history, at least the biggest and most dangerous since the 2006 World Chess Championship, when Vladimir Kramnik was accused (1) By the opponent's manager (Veselin Topalov) visiting the toilet frequently during matches to receive help, nine years after that match, and in 2015, Kramnik stated in an interview that he did not respect Topalov as a person and would not shake hands with him in matches.
To understand the idea of the current scandal, let's start from the context of this match, which "Carlsen", the world champion, entered for more than a decade, with the highest rating in the history of the game, and an ability to play that reached the certainty of many experts that he is the best player in history. , Several years passed in which he was not defeated once in 53 matches.
Defeat to Neiman would cost Carlsen 7 PIR, a major setback in his attempt to get an Elo rating from 2865 to 2900. The Elo rating system (2) is a scale used to measure the strength of chess players.
As for "Neman", he entered the match and is less than "Carlsen" by more than 150 points, this is understandable, as he is still young (19 years) and aspires to progress with time, on the other hand he played in black, which is a little weaker in playing, add to this that " Carlsen is able to play almost any opening or position, and he is famous for his accuracy, sober style of play and strong opening options, especially with the white pieces, and then the closest possibility of this match was that “Carlsen” came out victorious, to get the championship trophy and a respectable amount (350,000 dollars), Everything continues as it is.
The next day, "Carlsen" took to Twitter to announce that he was withdrawing from the tournament entirely, in a reaction very rare in chess history and his personal history, with this response the world champion posted a video usually used as a "meme" of Jose Mourinho, the wide Portuguese football coach. Fame, in which he says: “I prefer not to speak, if I speak, I am in big trouble.” This was a comment during a press conference about a match in which his team might have lost due to poor refereeing, an indirect indication that “Carlsen” says that there is some kind of manipulation has Obtained by "Niman".
I've withdrawn from the tournament.
I've always enjoyed playing in the @STLChessClub, and hope to be back in the future https://t.co/YFSpl8er3u
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) September 5, 2022
At this moment, everything turns into an irreversible path.
On the seventh of September, "Neman" comes out in an interview broadcast on YouTube to say that he cheated previously, but that was only twice in his life, and they were on the Internet, when he was sixteen and twelve, meaning that he was still a teenager at the time. And aspires to more rapid assessment, "Neman" added that there is a campaign against him, as some are taking advantage of previous mistakes to question his current abilities on the board.
In particular, "Neman" means three parties, the first is "Carlsen", and the second is the American hero "Hikaru Nakamura" who hinted that "Neman" cheated previously, and the third is the "Chess.com" platform, which is the most important chess site on the Internet, Since for a long time Neiman has not played any prize money tournaments on the site, the site commented that it had "privately removed" Mr. Neiman's account from the site.
In a special tweet, the platform clarified that it had canceled the "Neman" account based on evidence of fraud.
pic.twitter.com/sFMrmocLcS
— Chess.com (@chesscom) September 8, 2022
Later, on the twenty-sixth of September, and after withdrawing after the first move from an electronic match with "Neman" on the 20th of the same month, "Carlsen" published a statement on Twitter indicating a suspicion of cheating by "Neman" in this match, and says Neiman may have cheated more than he admitted, and when Neiman was announced to be participating in the tournament, he seriously considered withdrawing, but retracted it.
My statement regarding the last few weeks.
pic.twitter.com/KY34DbcjLo
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) September 26, 2022
Chess cheat
At that point, let's stop a little and learn about cheating (3) in chess, and let's start with Deep Blue, the computer engine that in 1997 was an almost equal opponent to Garry Kasparov, now it's not just a competition, the computer can "easily" From defeating humans, regardless of the chess player’s abilities, “Stockfish” for example is the most powerful engine in the world currently, so that its ELO rating is 3500, so the best chess players in the world no longer bother to compete with the computer, but they have become Friends him instead.
Currently, professional players use computer engines to develop their abilities, they create a situation on the board and then ask the engine to move forward from that point and calculate dozens of future moves, this helps professional chess players, but of course it does not replace their intuition, and in matches the player applies what Learn it from the computer with intuition.
Chess engines can make very accurate calculations, store all chess games that have been played in history and play on their basis, but this particular difference between machine thinking, which depends on arithmetic and remembering, and human thinking that adds intuition, can be discovered with the study of the games by leaps and bounds, the methods of analysis differ between The human and the computer, as the ideal move suggested by the computer is not often done by a human, even expert players, and here it is possible -statistically- that the player whose movements match the movements of a computer chess engine, with a strange regularity, are cheaters.
As for how to do it, it's simple, just start the engine and transfer to it every move your opponent makes, the engine will respond, take the move and play it on the board.
Therefore, cheating in online chess is common, platforms such as "Chess.com" or "Lichess" or others ban hundreds of accounts daily because of the "help" that players received from chess engines, these sites compare human movements with computer movements in search of similarity as mentioned above .
Did Nieman cheat?
But there is an addition that complicates the matter. Here we are not talking about an online match. Neiman defeated “Carlsen” on the board and not in an electronic competition, so the accusations are more serious, because it relates to a case of direct cheating on the ground and in front of everyone’s eyes. The evidence currently available does not support this, players are screened before they enter the playing field, because of course it is forbidden to use headphones or phones.
But that doesn't mean Neiman didn't cheat, there are always interesting and clever ways for players to pass information on to them as they play.
Intervene, "Elon Musk" - the man who interferes with everything right now - to say that "Neman" may have cheated (4) by means of vibrating wireless beads placed in his anus!
These tiny spherical beads give off a Morse-like signal that passes information to Niemann.
Despite the wit that Musk is proposing, the idea itself is not new, someone studies the moves on the computer and then finds a way to transfer them to the player on the board is a method that was used before, in 2010, for example, during the establishment of the chess Olympiad (5), 3 of the The players of the French team cheat through a simple strategy. The first player analyzes the moves in a computer program, then passes them to a second player who is in the match hall. This person only moves to a specific position in the hall, and he has previously agreed with the main player who sits on the board that his sitting In this position or that means this or that shift, and so on.
However, we have not yet detected any evidence of cheating by "Neman". While some of his moves in the match were very ingenious and similar in part to computer moves, there are other moves he made were human and not computer;
What indicates that he may not have used the computer, and this is precisely what prompts the top players to take a skeptical position only without being sure of convicting Neiman of cheating, especially since there are already realistic justifications for Neiman's strong moves in the match.
Despite this, there is no doubt that Neiman's performance is an exceptional statistical anomaly (6), not only in this match, but over the entire past year, he has moved from one tournament to the next without stopping, and his rating rose above 2700 after winning On "Carlsen" from 2484 in January 2021, a sharp increase that many experts and analysts in this range do not believe is even possible.
Add to this that "Neman" has a sharp, self-centered personality, which referees and coaches find difficult to deal with, and he achieved all of the above without the presence of a coach.
Contemporary chess problem
In the background of this problem lies a greater crisis, which is that computer engines are developing day by day and simulating human playing, as artificial intelligence uses the pattern of self-learning neural networks, and here chess itself is in imminent danger, threatening the game to collapse completely one day.
Players engage with computers in relationships (7) that are evolving day by day, benefiting greatly from the proposals that these engines offer, but that in turn changes the way chess is played, which was once a model for the link of intelligence to creativity, to philosophy, to art and poetry, now everything is calculated. In advance, and then cooler, so that the game of chess, day after day, is like a game of psychological war only, and the moves are able to do it through "Stockfish" and his companions.
Besides, this constant affinity between players and computing engines makes cheat detection very complex over time.
In the current case, the evidence against "Neman" is strong, but not sufficient, based on previous, but electronic, incidents, and on the analysis of its performance, which escalated like a missile recently, which is already relevant because this game bears a strict statistical aspect, but we have not yet discovered direct evidence of Cheating, and possibly breaking the habit, is a very low possibility, but it is possible.
And here you find the danger to the future of chess, that the "Neman" / "Carlsen" problem may remain for a long time unresolved, and we may not reach any solution to it at all, whether it is or any other problem that appears in the future of the same type.
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Sources:
1- Silvio Danailov accuses Kramnik of using Fritz 9
2- Elo Rating System
3- If Hans Niemann cheated Magnus Carlsen at chess, this is how we would know
4- Elon Musk weighs in
5- A chess scandal brings fresh attention to computers' role in the game
6- The Chess World Isn't Ready for a Cheating Scandal
7- Chess Is Just Poker Now