Carlsen resigns on move 2

[Matt Bridgeman]

The New York Times has run this piece by Greg Keener who 'is a FIDE arbiter and assistant manager at the Marshall Chess Club in New York.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/cros ... pdate.html

The final paragraph is quite a stunner.

If Mr. Niemann is not cheating, the magnitude of his achievement is astounding. At times, his play is so accurate that it leaves audiences and opponents alike in disbelief. He may already be the best player in the world. But if Mr. Niemann is cheating, the damage done to the game of chess may prove incalculable.

Keener may be a FIDE arbiter, but does not seem to have any chess rating whatsoever. In fact I can't find any evidence of him playing any games of competitive chess, like a football referee who has never kicked a ball in anger.

I would say that this must be the stupidest comment on the Carlsen - Niemann affair I have read so far, and that's in a very crowded field.

I give you the last OTB performance from the person who, 'may already be the best player in the world':

From Chess Results for the 2022 GCT Sinquefield Cup

Name Niemann Hans Moke
Title GM
Starting rank 6
Rating 2688
Rating national 0
Rating international 2688
Performance rating 2722
FIDE rtg +/- 3,5
Points 3,5
Rank 7

Oh, and in the FIDE live ratings Niemann, who, 'may already be the best player in the world' is at number 40.

There's definitely a chess CV on display here; https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregory-keener-b927559

[Alex McFarlane]

Keener may be a FIDE arbiter, but does not seem to have any chess rating whatsoever.

He has a USCF standard rating of 1735!

Many Americans, who are regular players, do not have FIDE ratings.

[Roger Lancaster]

Like Geoff, I've listened to Rowson but not yet Smerdon, and I'd really recommend it although I know it is a big time commitment

Too late in your case, but anyone looking for real information about the nuts and bolts rather than ( interesting ) psychological stuff really should go to Smerdon first.

Yes, Smerdon is definiteIy worth listening to. In passing, you'll note his reference to Bayesian principles as being relevant. I've mentioned Bayes' theorem elsewhere. The theorem helps to determine the probability of an event where some other event which has already occurred has a bearing on the matter - statisticians refer to 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' probabilities. Smerdon didn't say what follows, and I'm very rusty on probability theory, but one limitation on Bayes is that by definition it can't take account of previous relevant events of which it's unaware. So Ken Regan's analyses for example take into account previous games but can't take into account (and statisticians such as Regan and Smerdon are alive to this) pre-game preparation by a player if unaware of this. Pre-game preparation is an example of a known unknown but there's then the added complication, as per Rumsfeld, of unknown unknowns which may or may not exist.

[Roger de Coverly]

So Ken Regan's analyses for example take into account previous games but can't take into account (and statisticians such as Regan and Smerdon are alive to this) pre-game preparation by a player if unaware of this.

There's another way of looking at this. If the selection of the cut off for where book knowledge is deemed to expire is arbitrary and it seems that it is, then the methods may well be detecting engine influenced moves. What they cannot tell is whether the engines were consulted during the game or prior to it. If the engine analysis is in a book the player may have read and remembered, that's not going to be known either unless they build a massive database continually updated with all published theory.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34qz8/ ... mails-show"

I think Dlugy's heart-rending promise to never cheat again might mean more if it had been said the first time he was caught, rather than on a subsequent occasion. I realise it would be wrong to name the junior that fed him good moves, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were a name we might find rather familiar?

[Roger de Coverly]

I realise it would be wrong to name the junior that fed him good moves, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were a name we might find rather familiar?

The same thought ocurred to me. But what was he thinking when he played a tournament regarded as important as a consulation game? That would only be fine as a training exercise, assuming that was permitted by chess.com.

[Ian Thompson]

The same thought ocurred to me. But what was he thinking when he played a tournament regarded as important as a consulation game?

Presumably that a group of juniors with ratings between 1500 and 1950 were not going to improve the performance of a player rated just over 2500. In general that would be true, but it could still be of significant help if they spotted a tactic, without computer assistance, that he'd missed.

[JustinHorton]

Assuming that this event ever happened as described, of course.

[Gerard Killoran]

Keener may be a FIDE arbiter, but does not seem to have any chess rating whatsoever.

He has a USCF standard rating of 1735!

Many Americans, who are regular players, do not have FIDE ratings.

USCF 1735 translates to 1666 FIDE via https://beginchess.com/elo-calculator/r ... lator.html which may be on the generous side. 1666 FIDE is 129 in ECF old money. Would anyone think a member of your club rated 129 should be used by a national newspaper to comment on the relative strengths of SuperGMs?

I didn't think the New York Times could get things more wrong, since they claimed that Iraq had WMDs.

[JustinHorton]

The piece includes this (correct) recollection

In 2013, Borislav Ivanov, a FIDE master, was accused of cheating by using a device hidden in his shoes, and his refusal to remove his shoes at the request of an arbiter was taken as an admission of guilt

which reminds me that I was just musing the other day about a recent scandal in the south-west of England. We can't discuss it at length on here, but it involved not shoes but a cap, and I have often wondered whether the player concerned was ever required to play without it. (If not, I wonder why anybody was ever able or required to explain why not.)

[Paul Heaton]

The same thought ocurred to me. But what was he thinking when he played a tournament regarded as important as a consulation game?

Presumably that a group of juniors with ratings between 1500 and 1950 were not going to improve the performance of a player rated just over 2500. In general that would be true, but it could still be of significant help if they spotted a tactic, without computer assistance, that he'd missed.

The emails are interesting in conjunction with the video in Geoff’s post above. Real action starts 26 seconds in and showing Howell prompting Carlsen in an internet game vs Naroditsky (after looking at his phone, though I’d guess not at a chess program) On the face of it very similar to Dlugy’s description of events, except a 2700 helping a 2800 and makes me wonder if chessdotcom have themselves fallen into a trap and Dlugy was happy for these to be released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqNUdi0uCss

[NickFaulks]

The piece includes this (correct) recollection

In 2013, Borislav Ivanov, a FIDE master, was accused of cheating by using a device hidden in his shoes, and his refusal to remove his shoes at the request of an arbiter was taken as an admission of guilt

Correct but irrelevant. Carlsen does not need Niemann's permission to say anything, he can only be asking to be held harmless should anything he says turn out to be untrue.

[Matt Bridgeman]

The piece includes this (correct) recollection

In 2013, Borislav Ivanov, a FIDE master, was accused of cheating by using a device hidden in his shoes, and his refusal to remove his shoes at the request of an arbiter was taken as an admission of guilt

which reminds me that I was just musing the other day about a recent scandal in the south-west of England. We can't discuss it at length on here, but it involved not shoes but a cap, and I have often wondered whether the player concerned was ever required to play without it. (If not, I wonder why anybody was ever able or required to explain why not.)

I think they alluded to looking at the cap one time when he wasn’t playing, looked at the non-chess.com online site he was supposed to play on, declared him good to go, and he then went back to tonking ECF 200 club players for fun with his cap on. Before vanishing into the ether before the chess community threatened to come calling with scanners at the Dorset Rapidplay which eventually was won by Matthew Turner.

[JustinHorton]

It's not a great piece, but it's informative in its way: for instance the passage where Rensch talks about what they have or have not shown to outsiders (e.g. David Smerdon, who mentions it in his interview, other top players etc). Rensch's comments are on Reddit here and while it to some degree may clarify what this list actually is - presumably, from the context, a list of those players who have been identified as cheaters and agreed to confess in order to be reinstated (and not, presumably, players who have been disqualified but not accepted guilt).

OK, but surely Chessdotcom doesn't actually have any business sharing that information, which it aggreed to keep confidential, with other people, regardless of whether those other people have signed NDAs, does it?

I think they alluded to looking at the cap one time when he wasn’t playing, looked at the non-chess.com online site he was supposed to play on, declared him good to go, and he then went back to tonking ECF 200 club players for fun with his cap on.

This may strike some people as being on the negligent side, and maybe even on the culpably negligent side of that.

[JustinHorton]

The piece includes this (correct) recollection

In 2013, Borislav Ivanov, a FIDE master, was accused of cheating by using a device hidden in his shoes, and his refusal to remove his shoes at the request of an arbiter was taken as an admission of guilt

Correct but irrelevant. Carlsen does not need Niemann's permission to say anything, he can only be asking to be held harmless should anything he says turn out to be untrue.

Yes of course, but it wasn't the second part of that paragraph I was referring to. (I think the writer's linking of the two situations is specious, for the reason you give.)