Breaking News: Hans Niemann is suing!

Statistical methods to prove Niemann's cheating prove nothing but destroy his reputation. In blitz games he has 2630 Elo points... it's very similar to Gukesh (Standard and Blitz rating). Niemann's lawsuit is correct and, this way, we will see what a law court will state.

The statistical methods used in Silvers articles are to my opinion deeply inappropriate and only have the purpose of putting Magnus Carlsen in a bad light. He does not give a correct and nuanced picture of the situation. I have no idea why.

To my opinion the evidence are overwhelming. Hans Nieman consistently cheated over the board in his career, also in the game against Magnus Carlsen. He gets caught not only by solid statistical method but also by simple thing people with a dyssocial personality structure always overlooks in their blind selfcentred confidence. Namely that along the way he has received help from people he doesn't care about when they have given the help.

To all of you who wonder if the world stops with the Niemann trolls here.

Go read Akiva Cohens comments on twitter. Get som fresh air from the hate and destructive lies.

Everything is allowed here of personal attacks if they point towards critics of the world champion. No comments are allowed if the critise the inappropiate statistical methods of Albert Silver. Its pathetic.

Hello, accusing without evidence is not the right or correct way. Niemann is right to put this demand.

@tauno 50% < "likely" < 100%. The reason for this is that there is a qualitative leap from "almost sure" to "fact". As about the two instances when he was cheating, maybe it was really meant for time period, but surely it sounded like it was at two specific games.

An american angle, at last.

https://legaldictionary.net/defamation/#:~:text=American%20defamation%20law%20only%20allows%20a%20victim%20one,more%20lenient%20than%20others.%20Defamation%20in%20International%20Law

We need a chess piece that is able to sue. “The lawyer”, coloured green obviously.

@tauno

:-)

@Jacob woge: “What he said, what he meant, what is was.”

In some cases a parent is needed to find out, in others - a court.

To defend the defamation charge of Niemann, you need evidence of OtB cheating. That evidence may be statistical. He does not have to actually have been caught. I would call that proof. It doesn’t exist or we would have seen it by now.

I do not believe ref. to on-line cheating is going to cut it as defense, for the simple reason that the only thing that singles Niemann out in this respect is that the cheating has been made public. There are are multitude of undisclosed cases, according to chess.com around 100 GMs, a handful in top 100.

So it boils down to tournament history, and the possible difference in performance w/w-o live broadcast becomes very important. Unless Carlsen, and downstream indicted, if thats the proper word, has sth up their sleeves. This

(1) https://twitter.com/atl_kings/status/1568656197812891653

Indicates a very strong correlation. If it holds, my guess is this would constitute a defense, even if being 2-3 years back in time. But this

(2) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18vbjfO-xxeGvYAV3QPraunkJttCNQMOHV_UvhPtiHFU/htmlview#

Raises doubt. Same tournaments, different status wrt broadcast or not. The two do not agree.

Btw, the twitter discussion is civil throughout. What a relief.

I have sample checked (2) with FIDE. Found no errors, but there could be an issue with completeness. (2) reveals that not all entries are tournaments, some are just a couple of games. There is a 6-month hiatus (covid) which explains tables breaking off.

The discrepancy may be honest. There is: no broadcast, live broadcast, and delayed broadcast. There is broadcast of entire event, and just top boards. Who knows how this is dealt with. The tournament links given in (2) do not provide any intel on BC status.

This could be crucial to the lawsuit at hand. The data has to be reliable, and I wonder just how much research involved parties have put into this. A lot, I hope. Starting from scratch, not relying on SoMe published tables.

“@Jacob woge. Games of course. And probably every move in every game. ;-)”

That’s quite a discrepancy of terms. If “One time” can be a period of several months of systematic full-game and tournament/match cheating - and it can be a single occurrence, just one move.

Obviously we need different terms. Just look at the confusion this has brought about already. What he said, what he meant, what is was.

@everden

I was unaware of the Defamation Act of 2013, which abolishes Justification. It has been a while. i shall have to move on to US, with which I am totally unfamiliar, other than it originating from British. Without references to the upper crust, of course.

Please keep things civil. Personal attacks, off-topic extreme political views, or gratuitous insults, like

"all you halfwits continue with your ignorance......
....do you halfwits understand what that means?"

will either get removed -- or we will once again have to switch off the feedback, which would be :-(

@Jacob woge. Games of course. And probably every move in every game. ;-)

“If Hans has said that he has only cheated two times online, that is a lie. Or was it a misunderstanding due to careless wording? Maybe he just meant that he has cheated during two different time periods, ones aroud 12 and once around 16? I cannot judge.

I personally believe that Hans has cheated at least 300-400 times at Chess.com, but has been caught only 100 times. ”

There is ambiguity in “times” as well. Moves, or games?

@everden

Yes, the Justification defense is more likely.

Yes, american law, which in my impression gives more freedom of speech than British, - but in return, or perhaps as a consequence, has astronomical lawsuit. If you lose a lot of cases, the ones you win had better be big.

@eastyz, I'm not that familiar with algorithms, so thanks for the clarification.

I see some problems with the way Chess.com uses the word "likely" in the Nieman report: sometimes it seems that it can mean anything between "potential suspicion" and 99.99% sure. But maybe that's the point?

How likely is it that Chess.com banned Niemann on false grounds? Hard question. Perhaps it is best if the matter is settled in court.

@odeshog Not sure what "sob story" you are referring to. I believe the facts I mentioned are public knowledge; the opinions are my own but they seem reasonably well supported by the facts.

@Jacob woge I think you have misunderstood what 'honest opinion' means. This defence to a libel charge pertains to fair comment, and exists so as to allow valid criticism, such as 'This book is boring and poorly written', which is a matter of opinion. What the concept of 'honest opinion' does not do is facilitate a defence based on the defendant's 'honest opinion' regarding what the facts are, if the defendant has got the facts wrong. If you read the Wikipedia article you've linked to, you will find it states that '... fair comment and justification defences will fail if they are based on misstatements of fact'.
This is largely academic here, though, as English defamation law -- which you have referred to -- is different in various ways to defamation law in the US, which is what will apply in the lawsuit under discussion.

@odeshog - "Regan has not demonstrated that his method can detect Hans online cheating." That is not true. The Chess.com report specifically says they consulted Regan and his analysis agreed with theirs on the cheating. So not only did it catch it, but they consider his analysis authoritative enough to use in their own internal cases.

tauno 9 minutes ago
@odeshog. “However I also personally believe Hans has cheated much more than he has admitted to.”

If Hans has said that he has only cheated two times online, that is a lie. Or was it a misunderstanding due to careless wording? Maybe he just meant that he has cheated during two different time periods, ones aroud 12 and once around 16? I cannot judge.

I personally believe that Hans has cheated at least 300-400 times at Chess.com, but has been caught only 100 times.

If someone forwards all of Niemann's games to Regan and pays him for the job, he'd probably check them out. But who would do that and why? Or do you think he works for free?

It is human nature to play down something like cheating. However, it was done online. What is the issue here is whether Hans cheated OTB and there is no evidence of that. He played to his OTB rating in the US championships. That says something, that he is a strong OTB player.

Pro Tip: The more times you repeat that Hans cited a game that didn't exist, the less credibility you have.

If you don't understand transposition in the context of opening preparation, you shouldn't form a strong opinion about it.

Analysis has shown no less than three (3) (!) different opening lines that Magnus has played that reach the position in question. Including the game from 2018... When a position is reached from 3 different lines for an opponent, having that in your preparation isn't some sort of miracle, it is just good opening preparation done with a database.

As to Hans' memory, Jacob Aagaard said Hans has the best memory of anybody he worked with. It should be unsurprising for him to be a prodigy at opening preparation, even without a big team.

I'm only about 2000 rated, and my memory is only 85th percentile, which is lower than my chess level. So I don't even try to memorize lines, and I focus on systems. However, even for me, when I used to spend a lot of time on opening prep, I would expect myself to notice that sort of transposition. There was a time when I was able to transpose all aggressive 1.c4 and 1.Nf3 lines into lines normally reached by 1.d4, something that is surprisingly disconcerting to many Reti-system players.

@tauno, you have to be familiar with the algorithm to make comments like that. For example, if the algorithm identifies 20 possible instances of cheating and then one instance of likely cheating, it could review the other possible instances and rebrand them as likely. That is what humans do in real life. The algorithm could be set to work that way. Humans are not infallible. There is no such thing as an infallible algorithm either. That is why the algorithm finds "likely" cases of cheating.

Michael Jones: Professional reputation and earning ability is what matters.

He was getting invited to top tournaments before, so his reputation was great. Not really disputable.

@Albert Silver, do you mean the automated cheating detection is used at Chess.com servers too?

Can you say how many times you can usually cheat before you get caught and suspended, counting in the number of games? And how common is around 100, statistically speaking? If it is unusual, what could be the cause of the deviation?

Lawsuits in the US routinely quote ridiculous amounts in the full knowledge that even if they do win the case they're only going to be awarded a fraction of what they originally demanded - this one is relatively modest compared to some who have sued for more money than actually exists in the world. Carlsen and Nakamura both have a fair amount of money, but it's unlikely to be $100m in either case; Chess.com and the Play Magnus Group do have it but a court isn't going to award that much. *If* Niemann wins (and that's a big "if") the payout would probably be a few $m at most.

If Niemann had never cheated and Carlsen had accused him out of the blue, there would be no problem proving defamation, but the actual situation more complicated. To defame someone is to damage their reputation by false accusations. By cheating in the past, Niemann has already damaged his own reputation; does it damage his reputation any further for Carlsen to claim that he has cheated on other occasions, even if such a claim is false? That's a question which lawyers could spend a long time arguing over. The answer might well be "yes" because of Carlsen's public profile. If one patzer in a small local tournament falsely accuses another of cheating, there would be no harm to their reputation because word of it would barely spread beyond the tournament hall; when the world champion does it that becomes another matter entirely. Of course, if Carlsen has evidence that his accusations are true, he could bring the matter to a close very quickly by producing it. The fact that Niemann is taking this action suggests he's pretty sure that Carlsen cannot do so. Either he was confident that his cheating system was so sophisticated that the security measures in place could never detect it - or he wasn't cheating at all.

@A Alekhine you make it out like Hans was living on the street or something, what do you even mean by this sob story and what is the source of this information?

Niemann has a track record of bad behavior, and even though it may have been confined to online play--which I believe no one takes as seriously as over the board (OTB) play; even the world champion has been accused of a peccadillo in his online play--this track record has led to suspicions regarding Niemann's OTB games.

On the other hand...everyone agrees Carlsen played badly in his game against Niemann in St. Louis, and a good player would not have needed computer help to beat Carlsen in that game.

Clearly Carlsen's words and actions have impacted Niemann's ability to make a living at chess. People speak about Niemann having so far lost the opportunity to play a match vs. Keymer in Germany and also losing a tournament invitation. From this perspective, Niemann had little choice but to take some action against Carlsen, if only out of self-defense. He has chosen to “take arms against a sea of troubles,” in Hamlet’s words. Whether by doing this he will end his troubles, or possibly make them worse, I can't say.

Niemann's lawyers seem to have taken his case on a contingency basis: that is, if he wins the case, they get paid. Niemann is 19 years old with limited financial resources: most likely he could only engage a lawyer on this basis.

One could say, both Niemann and Carlsen are now reaping what they have sowed.

In the big picture, I have some sympathy for Niemann. He has been living alone, on his own, since age 16. In these unusual circumstances he has been trying to gain a foothold in chess to make a living at it. The past example of Bobby Fischer comes to mind: Fischer also was on his own from the age of 16. Niemann is still a teenager. How many of us would have done as well as he has?

I see much to admire in Niemann: he works hard, he is persistent, he is resilient, he is a fighter and does not give up. I wish for a good resolution to the current issues, not only for Niemann's sake but also for Carlsen and the rest of the chess world.

Absolute lunacy:

A hundredfold swindler gets to a hundred million and doesn't even have to work for it. It's all just a game between different parties.

From rags to riches - the USA makes it possible!

In the new Hans im Glück fairy tale, two resourceful lawyer brothers promise a bigger payoff than a nugget of gold big as your head. However, I wouldn't worry too much about the lawsuit filed, because apart from a lot of wind about nothing, nothing will come of it.

@tauno I am of course talking about Hans cheating online since that's what he has admitted to. Regan has not demonstrated that his method can detect Hans online cheating. He really should, or at least explain why he can not. Until he does I am respectfully going to dismiss his findings about this case.
for the record I think that Carlsen has acted inappropriatel,. essentially accusing Hans without evidence. However I also personally believe Hans has cheated much more than he has admitted to. I do not really care if it's online or not as long as it's tournament play.

@odeshog - The cheating detection is automated and goes for all players, no matter the name or rating. This is true of all the major servers.

The one thing I will agree with @science22 (i can't believe i actually agree with anything he says) is that the USA is indeed quite litigious. Everyone can sue anyone, for quite literally anything. But that is a conversation to be had on another day or another website. What is happening to Hans is not frivalous and is worthy of law suit. It doesn't matter how much of an online cheater he has been, everyone deserves to be innocent until PROVEN guilty in the court of law.

@odeshog. There is no evidence anywhere that Hans cheated OTB, ever. And according to Hans, he has never cheated OTB.

Sure, it would be nice to see the algorithms that Chess.com uses to detect cheating, but I think they are secret and would be a bit too complicated for a layman to understand.

I don't know about Niemann, but it would be interesting if Regan would analyze the known online games where Chess.com claims Dlugy has cheated while he claims he hasn't. But in order for Regan to do that, he also needs to know the time spent on each move, and I don't know if it's possible to find that out.

@Science22. Hey, don't be so pessimistic, we all know the American legal system is flawed. You can cry about it all you want, but it can't be changed now. And think, despite this, Magnus and company may still have a tiny little chance. Magnus might have a secret ace up his sleeve! So don't lose hope and keep your fingers crossed. Happy?

@tauno it would be very interesting to know how chess.com tests their cheat detection, if they for example have dedicated human testers for it. I suspect not as it would be expensive. It's interesting how we should consider statistical evidence of cheating and what the threshold should be. I noticed for example that Ken Regan when analyyzing Hans's games did not find any evidence for cheating in the last 2 years. That may bes so but Hans has admitted to cheating at least in the last five years so I would like to see Regan demonstrate the skill of his method in detecting cheating.

@Based : USA has given the world so much we should be grateful for. For me, with my age, it was the liberation of Europe in 1945. American soliders gave their lives so we could breath as free persons. We will never forget that in Denmark.

But they do have to adjust the law system. A Dane cannot sue a con man from USA in the Danish legal system with a claim for compensation. because no American can be extradited for prosecution outside the borders of the United States.

This strange law system apparently thinks that their lawyers can sit in their expensive leather chairs and sue all sorts of people around the world for huge sums of money, demanding that they come to the US and defend themselves. But we cant sue them back.

On top of that, the system allows the person who sue have no procedural risk. If he loses, he does not have to pay anything. They have taken the case as "no cure no pay."

This is why we see one nutcase lawsuit after the other in the US. People fall into a banana peel and demand 1 million US in compensation, where the lawyer gets 50% if succesful. It has become a nation that lives in courtrooms.

I want Hans Niemann to feel the same pain that he constantly inflicts on other people. I want him sued with the demand to meet in a courtroom outside USA. I want him to have a risk to lose big money if he lie in court. Then we get some fair play into this insane spectacle.

@odeshog. Thanks for the information. I need to test if it's possible to cheat several hundred times before they notice (I think it's possible if you do it smartly). I'm so excited.

@Based continued : Magnus Carlsen reacted like a human being to an inhumane situation. Nakamura is just so much more intelligent at chess than the two of us so he can see that the Niemann can't explain his own moves.

If you think for a moment that the other active top class players thinks differently, then wait until they testify in court.

Here are my personal predictions, which are not confirmed by anybody. But check them later...

01) HN has a collaboration with several companies that create chess programs.
02) In a video, HN admits to having cheated over the board. It will be known at the trial.
03) HN´s childhood will play a role in the case. The people he has cheated.
04) All HN's games over the board since 2018 are currently being reviewed very accurately for the most comprehensive comparison with computer programs.
05) FIDE rapport will be devastating for HN. He knows taht an try to put pressure on FIDE not to publish with the suing first. An honse person swould wait.
06) HN will no longer receive invitations to major international tournaments. It has nothing to do with Magnus Carlsen. The major tournaments depend on sponsors and no one wants their company linked to this disgusting con man.

In USA everbody can sue everybody because lawyers accept the crazy system : No cure no pay. HN does not need to pay them aything they just take a chance and the money after if possible. They bet on the exposure will hurt hones people so they pay something. They are con men too. I have no respect for the system.

@Based : With all respect, your so-called facts are just a long string of manipulations. Here are the facts that play a role in the case against Hans Niemann (HN). Yes, he will be sued back for abuse :

01) HN has played with ELO 2400 in over the board tournaments that were not broadcast live
02) HN has played with ELO 2600 in over the board tournaments which have been broadcast live
03) The difference is statistical significant and one can conclude cheating
04) HN has commented on numerous games before he became known. Many will be included in the lawsuit because skilled players can see they indicate cheating above in classical chess.
05) HN's games show statistically significantly that he plays like a computer in the decisive moves. He never, ever makes a blunder. It shows that he is cheating. A human cant play like this.
06) HN Told us that he has never cheated after he turned 16
07) Chessbase.com proves that it was lie. He has cheated in at least 100 games with cash prizes
08) HN explained in his own email( notice that) that he just wanted to test the control system. You cannot explain this away, it is written in black and white in his own emails and it does reveals his character.
09) HN explains that he had 20 moves on the board in the mornings before the match against Carlsen, who had played the variant before. Research shows it was a lie. He used a computer to play the game and every move will be part of this case.
10) The security at the Sinquefield Cup and the US Open was a joke. Anyone can study the videos online with the so-called thorough scans. There was to big American sponsor money at stake to have a scandal like the American Niemann use computer to play.

Niemann lies for personal gain. Continually. Its all about money and prestige. . Study his Trump videos ( the best in the world he claim) focused on how to cheat the opponent. Not to play chess well.

I cannot post a comment at the end of the article about the USA championship, so I put it here : I would expect of ChessBase NOT to say that an Armaggedon is thrilling : it is disgusting, it is ridiculous, is it outrageous, not thrilling, especially seeing the level of the game. And congratulations to Fabiano, the gentleman !