i dont have a horse in this race i just like thinking about things in terms of information theory since this is a remarkable applied case
another way to decide this - have them play blitz (where the moves are way too fast for info transmission to happen), and see if the skill level scales accordingly?
Not a fair contest. There are plenty of top classical chess players who are weaker in blitz and vice versa. It’s a different skillset. Classical is all about preparation for the opening followed by some deep thinking in the midgame. Blitz is all about pattern recognition and the ability to simplify down to an ending where you can blitz out the exact solution from a database.
magnus completely destroyed hans in two games, as black. I think the ease with which magnus took hans apart in these beach games, presumably added to his suspicion when hans played so much better in the Sinquefield cup.
I do think Hans is cheating, but I think the proof will lie in statistical analysis of his games and demonstrating that he has an unusual (>3200 rated) propensity to clutch out specific moves. I think everyone suspects at this point that if Hans is cheating, its only a handful of moves per game.
Blunders are exactly what a device like the one described would seriously help with. If the buzz means both "there is an only move here and it's not immediately obvious" and "at least one of the natural moves here is a blunder or very inaccurate" then you need to just send a buzz and you've probably cut inaccuracies significantly. That said, a very simple communication device like this is probably badly hurt by a 15 minute delay.
Interesting, I'm not sure if a computer has the ability to recognize something as a "natural move but also a blunder." It would require a very human-like way of thinking about moves, which computers don't generally have.
Probably the easiest case of "natural move but blunder" is anything that is a top 3 engine move when looking 3-5 moves deep, but losing significantly on deeper evaluation.
Also, this sort of categorization is at the heart of how chess puzzle collections are automatically assembled. A good chess puzzle contains an unnatural move that wins--the exact opposite of the natural but blunder. Chess sites scan their online play databases for these all the time, and serve them up as puzzles.
Perhaps a top-level player can jump to a higher level if they can stop worrying about coming up with brilliances in the macro strategy, and instead focus entirely on making their micro-level play spotless.
What does that even mean?
ELO gives you a statistical evaluation of how likely victory is for one of the player. Hans rating means he has non insignificant chance of winning against Magnus.
Hans can win without cheating as this last game proves. There is not a shred of evidence against him after all.
