An academic paper examining Kramnik's moonhowling concerning Nakamura

[Paul McKeown]

See: https://phys.org/news/2025-07-im-statis ... world.html

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Thanks, Paul. That is Rosenthal's blog for phys.org (dated 9 July 2025)

Actual paper (Havard Data Science Review from April 2025) is here:

https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/ex6vbavk/release/2

Rosenthal, J. S. (2025). An Investigation Into Probabilities of Streaks in Online Chess. Harvard Data Science Review, 7(2).

https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.6939122d

Pretty heavy going (as you would expect from a formally published academic statistics paper) but also not too technical and written at a level that is accessible to those with some knowledge of the mathematics and modelling.

What surprised me is that the actual published paper allows comments (presumably moderated) so that you can see the dispute between Kramnik and Rosenthal continuing in the comments down the bottom of the article...

That is either a robust review system or a slippery slope into chaos!

[Roger de Coverly]

Pretty heavy going (as you would expect from a formally published academic statistics paper) but also not too technical and written at a level that is accessible to those with some knowledge of the mathematics and modelling.

The author is presumably the equivalent of a GM in the field of statistics. What then is Kramnik's standard?

I would summarise the conclusion as being that if you play lots of players weaker than yourself, that long winning streaks are plausible enough when you play lots of games.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

And OMG the language Kramnik uses in those comments...