Chess cheating blog post

[Kirby]

I found the blog post here to be fun to read: https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/sockfish.html

The method of cheating isn't anything that surprising, but it was fun to read.

[kvasir]

Maybe interesting on the topic and of course today's drama.

"Aronian: All My Colleagues are Paranoid"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUoc1PgJgRA&t=267s

[jeromie]

I wasn’t aware of the drama until you posted about it, but these two posts make an interesting pair: the first recognizes that there are always new, very hard to detect forms of cheating, and the second describes the problem with a mindset where any newly strong player is assumed to be cheating. We are certain to face similar problems in the go world in the years to come.

I’m not sure what to think about Magnus’s role in all of this. He has generally been an outstanding representative of the chess community, and he hasn’t had a response like this after any of his previous losses. But his recent withdrawal from the World Championship to focus on his rating adds additional pressure for every loss he takes, so it’s hard to say how his response might change under those circumstances. Regardless of whether it’s warranted, his apparent lack of confidence in the event is a serious blow.

[mhlepore]

The theory with the most traction that I've seen regarding the Magnus-Hans scandal centers around leaked prep.

The theory is Magnus:
- suspected someone in his inner circle leaked his prep to Hans at a prior tournament
- decided to test his theory by preparing an obscure line he never (or rarely) played.

Apparently Hans had played in such a way that Magnus felt his suspicions were correct. So he withdrew to shine a light on everything.

And Hans has been caught cheating online multiple times in the past.

We don't have this kind of drama in go. I'm so happy I picked up chess during the pandemic.

[John Fairbairn]

And Hans has been caught cheating online multiple times in the past.

This begs a lot of questions. E.g. Why do they keep letting him get back online? Why would they invite such a person to the prestigious Sinquefield? What do they think he has come up with do cheating (so far unproven) off-line? What has this got to do with the price of fish?

[mhlepore]

What has this got to do with the price of fish?

I'm not saying we can use his online cheating to establish guilt in a completely different scenario. But cheaters don't normally compartmentalize, and his prior online history is at least a rationale to keep digging for more evidence in this scandal.

John if I remember some of your posts correctly, you are a baseball fan. Sammy Sosa is now known to have used steroids during the height of his career. He also was caught using a corked bat - the bat exploded after one hit and it was there for all to see. Do you think those two things (steroid use, corked bat use) are unrelated?

[kvasir]

I think it is something of a rumor mill. Hans, a 19 year old all-american chess player with a suspiciously German name, that recently picked up a speech pattern that sounds like an accent, rumored to have been timed-out by chess.com, is accused of either cheating or being fed secret prep while the World Champion forfeits a game against someone else who had to wait at the board with clocks running. I don't know who is at fault, because I don't think I know what happened, but I kind of share Aronian's observation that his colleagues are paranoid. It is as-if chess is now the game you cheat at, everyone expects it, but I think the OP's link shows that it is not that easy.

[John Fairbairn]

If you are paranoid it doesn’t mean they are not out to get you

[tundra]

This begs a lot of questions.

Going off topic: While I am not one of those who say that this usage is incorrect, I am still a little surprised by it. But if such a careful writer as John Fairbairn uses it, then I suppose it has now become part of standard English.

[John Fairbairn]

Going off topic: While I am not one of those who say that this usage is incorrect, I am still a little surprised by it. But if such a careful writer as John Fairbairn uses it, then I suppose it has now become part of standard English.

I'm not normally a fan of going off topic but a starving man will east even a McDonald's hamburger

First, as an allegedly careful writer, I'd point out that I did not say "beg the question", but as a journalist I also say that I don't consider myself a careful writer - that's what sub-editors are for.

But I am well aware of the controversy, at least as an historical item, simply because it was one of those things I came across at school. Even then, though (over 60 years ago), we were being taught not to worry about it, or about things like split infinitives or a/an in front of words like hotel. Then there were even more distinguished grammarians such as Ernest Gowers, whose book Plain words was strongly recommended reading when people of my generation started work (I think it may have even been required reading in the civil service), and they too took a common-sense approach to English, mocking especially grammatical rules that were based (ignorantly) on Latin grammar.

In those 60-odd years I don't think I have ever come across an example of the "classical" sense of beg the question outside of sterile discussions about the old usage, and young people now don't seem to even know (good split infinitive!) there was an old usage. Because of such lack of contact with the old usage (plus my objection to that ungrammatical "the") I have now totally forgotten the old meaning, and have not the slightest interest in looking it up. Nevertheless, because a writer should usually try not to irritate readers (especially Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, who seems mercifully to have passed away also), I do still feel a little prick of conscience when using the term, and so will alter it, to things like "beg questions" or "that begs an interesting question." I may even change it to "raise the question". However, that usually seems too defeatist to me, but I'm sure the existence of such alternatives is why the modern sense of beg the question has evolved. That plus the fact that it's a very useful phrase, whereas (from what I remember of it) the old usage is a useful as a fart in a perfume factory.

This evolution by analogy is constantly at work, anyway, but I was taken aback by a new one just last night. I was reading a travelogue by Robert Southey, who was Poet Laureate a couple of hundred years ago. We may safely assume he was a careful writer, and I did find his style old-fashioned but very attractive. But one phrase of his was new to me. He had to stay in inns of dubious reputation and several times says he had a nightmare. Except that the way he put it was " The Night Mare came again last night." I know the phrase has nothing to do with horses (mare is from an old Anglo-Saxon word for goblin), but I was interested that (a) he majusculed the goblin and (b) spoke of it as "coming." Since I think the old belief was that the goblin sat on your chest as you slept, Southey's usage seems more apt. But we have changed that into "have a nightmare" and I presume that's by analogy with "have a dream" (though, intgrestingly, we seem a little uncomfortable with "have a day dream" - we seem to prefer to make it a verb, to daydream).

Talking of sub-editors reminds me of two language arguments I have had in my working career.

One was the use of "billion" in the modern (American) sense. As an economics correspondent, I used to go to briefings with the Chancellor the Exchequer and hear him tell us how many billions he was going to spend on this and that. I wrote my story quoting him, only to find that when it had passed through the hands of the sub-editors, it had been changed into "thousand millions" (the British billion then being a million million. In those far-off days, such a vast sum didn't exist in real life and so there was no real risk of following the snappier American usage, as many people were already doing. And I wanted to do that, too, and eventually won the argument at work, but it took a couple of high-powered meetings.

The other argument I didn't win, in the sense that the minority refused to give way in this case, which was the meaning of decade. To me, a decade is ten years. But we had a chief sub-editor who believed it referred specifically and only to a period that commenced with the number zero. This was the era of the Swinging Sixties, and so he thought the period 1960-1969 was a decade, but 1961-to 1970 was not. But he went further. Since, in his view, a decade was defined by the -ty word, it didn't even have to have ten years in it. Which in a way I agreed with. Not being a numbers-obsessed guy, I would call the period 1965-1975 a decade, even though it spans 11 years. But the chief sub considered that to cover TWO decades, the sixties and the seventies. I believe the dictionaries give support to both sides, and so tends to avoid the word now.

To bring the topic back to go, if I do have a reputation for being careful (unwarranted, but "knowledgeable" I'll accept ), I suspect it stems from insisting here on proper understanding of Japanese terms. I have no real objection to people saying sabaki to mean light and flexible shape, if they find that sufficient or useful. But I do like them to be aware that the different Japanese meaning is alive and well, and is very different, more useful and has more associations.

Incidentally, in language discussions of this type, the differences between American and British English often come up (British English actually being more widespread globally, by the way). I have no problems with American usages (except modern slang) such "gotten", or "bring" instead of "take", because these came from Scots anyway, and I also like to stress to foreign speakers of English that they vastly overestimate the differences. But one amusing difference, new to me, came up earlier this week, in a local (British) supermarket. They were advertising their cafe, and encouraging parents to take their children along. Parents are often reluctant if they have to pay for a full meal which the little brats only peck at. So, the ad men came up with the idea of half-price meals for "Little Peckers".

[mart900]

The theory with the most traction that I've seen regarding the Magnus-Hans scandal centers around leaked prep.

The theory is Magnus:
- suspected someone in his inner circle leaked his prep to Hans at a prior tournament
- decided to test his theory by preparing an obscure line he never (or rarely) played.

Apparently Hans had played in such a way that Magnus felt his suspicions were correct. So he withdrew to shine a light on everything.

And Hans has been caught cheating online multiple times in the past.

We don't have this kind of drama in go. I'm so happy I picked up chess during the pandemic.

This is a wild theory and doesn't have much traction in the Chess community as far as I know.

Hans' explanation as to why he was more prepped for this line than Magnus expected (centered around transposition) seemed plausible. Then again I don't know enough about Chess, let alone that specific line, to speak to how plausible it really is.

All things considered, in my view this whole ordeal is quite embarrassing for Magnus. If he has something in the way of hard evidence, he needs to come out with it asap. Right now it looks like he played a bad game against someone worse than him, couldn't take the rating loss, and made some impulsive decisions. Of course Nakamura, drama queen that he is, escalated matters to a point Magnus may not have calculated.

[mhlepore]

Welp it was the theory folks were talking about a day and a half ago. I'm not going to make to make a scroll of who thought what and when, but such a scroll does exist on reddit. Hans' interview yesterday did provide clarity to a lot of people, but not all.

We'll see what Magnus does.

To be charged with a crime you did not commit is a horrible thing. I hope he's innocent. He seemed super cocky to me when first seeing him talk, but I now think he's more eccentric than cocky. He made some mistakes (online cheating) that will follow him around for a while.

[kvasir]

Chess is like soap opera now.

[Kirby]

I wonder what is going on...

[Javaness2]

It's a little bit like we went back to the days of Bobby Fischer. I think Magnus Carlsen is a rather more reasonable character though. He clearly feels the need to make a protest here, and I think that there are only two theories about what he's protesting about. He's in a position to make such a statement, financially he doesn't seem to be at all in the thrawl of FIDE, which is still as corrupt an organisation as ever judging by the recent BVI fiasco. The question really is, is he actually right about what he's protesting about here?