The first mistake was still choosing to play when he had reservations once Hans was invited. The second mistake was quitting the tournament and messing up the standings once he lost. The third mistake was making an insinuation through a tweet. The fourth mistake was resigning in two moves his next game with Hans.
Even though Hans is suspicious and untrustworthy, Magnus is taking on himself the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. If he is concerned about cheating being an issue, proactively bring up the issue, don't do it re-actively.
"I was uncomfortable with how he played because he has a history of cheating so I quit"
Which is entirely reasonable, if you think that cheating is an "existential threat" to chess itself.
"His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do."
This isn't just "I got weird vibes" or something, this is the professional analysis of someone who has spent a lifetime analysing particular board states, the overall flow of the game, and the psychology of his opponents. He may have his hands tied in terms of what exactly he can say at this time, but the telegraph here is that he suspects cheating because of specific, observable factors in how the prior game(s) went down.
And those factors may ultimately be too subtle to be judged by anyone other than a jury of other top-tier professional chess players, but ultimately that doesn't matter, if it's enough to trigger a more thorough investigation then concrete evidence will emerge one way or the other and show Carlsen to be right or wrong on his hunch.
Who are all the other cheaters that Magnus has quit against?
Why is the only cheater he has publicly made a show of having a problem with in all these years the one who recently beat him OTB playing black?
As much as TV would make you think so that's mostly a myth. It was probably more so the case in the past but now it's at most a very minor part of the game, and most (typically all) of your edge comes from better card playing.
A huge river bluff is viewed in the lens of 'I've represented a range which includes strong hands, and I make money if I get a fold X% of the time while increasing the call chance by Y% when I do have a good hand in this spot' and not 'I'm going to unnerve him by throwing money to make a bad decision'.
Tennis players and Chess players are expected to be granted absolute silence.
Is that an inconsistency? I don't think so. It's part of the expectation of the sport. Sport is in general a weird type of impure competition. Sponsorships, TV contracts, etc, all contribute to mixed priorities.
So no, I don't think it's appropriate to equate Poker and Chess in this regard. Their best practices can be evaluated on their own measures.
Hans claimed he studied against Magnus' opening because Magnus had played it a few months ago. It turns out Magnus has never used that opening in a recorded game. The dialog has now changed to "well by move 20 the board state became identical to a previous Magnus game" but Hans didn't say he spotted the similarities at move 20, he said he studied that specific opening.
You think the players being uncertain whether or not their opponent is cheating is a good thing for chess? The game would crumble.
Sinquefield Cup arbiters already sent a press release saying they found no evidence of cheating.
Magnus' intuition is not evidence, full stop.
Hans' play itself is not evidence, full stop.
Only actual evidence of cheating , the means and methods used, the conspirators, are sufficient.
By all means, the court of public opinion is for all to own, but Magnus is already "flat out wrong" by the actual standards of competition.
The issue is that will he get that chance at all?
Also, Hans has won some great games in short time controls.
I think the unspoken truth but also the thing both chess.com and Magnus are hinting at is that Niemann has cheated a lot more than he lets on, perhaps his entire stream was built on cheating, who knows. But chess.com can't just start sharing information like that, and they are walking a fine line just with their public statement where they affirmatively assert that Niemann is underplaying the reality of his cheating. Magnus probably has insider information from chess.com but is bound by NDA and this is also why he's now challenging Niemann to give him permission to speak on the matter.
> So again:
>- MAGNUS has NOT seen chesscom cheat detection algorithms
>- MAGNUS was NOT given or told a list of “cheaters”
>- and he is and has completely acted 100% on his own knowledge (not sure where he got it!) and desires to this time
>I will also address a comment made to this post about Ben’s (Perp Chess) podcast and say that, yes, some top players (not Magnus!) have been invited at times, under NDA, to see what we do… and by extension, they also saw some reports of confessed cheaters (there were many more cheaters - but we only share those who confessed in writing, and only privately under the NDA). Magnus and the team from C24 are not on that list.
I would assume that I'd have absolutely no chance of winning against either even with a handicap.
