Of my google results for “Hans”, I’m going with the first of these being the more relevant here.
WSJ article, the source of the bomb news now
article has nothing past aug 2020 though and also a more interesting quote
four of the top 100 players in the world
Maybe offer Hans a deal to come clean, maybe give him an anti-cheat detective job like the guy in Catch Me if You Can. If he agrees to a ban he can still make a career for himself doing appearances, writing books and whatnot.
btw, some of those cheating games listed align with hans admitting it when he was 16 cheating HU against some of the best in the world (his 17th birthday was at the tail end of that)
others do not though of course
still all the chess.com allegations posted he wasn’t 18 so what the heck about that now
Will be interesting to see how the US chess championship goes for him. Also LOL at not opening up the engine on a different computer
Wasn’t he living alone in NYC by 16? Probably didn’t have another computer.
that age cheating is always the easiest not the brightest
Why was he living alone at that age?
Not sure. I just remember that was part of his justification for cheating, he needed to grow his twitch stream to pay rent.
Niemann at this point seems like one of those confabulators who kind of believe their own lies. Like it’s so insane and self-destructive to do a “come clean” interview and say “yeah I only cheated twice” when you have already admitted to chess.com that you cheated more than that. It looks like all the alleged cheating from chess.com is 2020 and before so there was no need to do this at all, just say “yes in the past I cheated, I was a young and stupid teenager, I want to apologise to the chess community, I’m an adult now and I’m putting that behind me”.
That’s the thing, if it was cheating as a minor he has a good shot that people could forgive and forget, instead he has now completely torched his credibility.
it was always hard to believe he only cheated twice. generally speaking cheaters only stop once they are caught - people who embezzle funds from their company sometimes do it for 20+ years before they are caught, Postle would 100% still be cheating Stones Live to this day if he hadn’t been stupid and gotten caught. So after Hans cheats for the first time, wins more money than he has ever won in his life, his ELO goes up 100 points, it was almost impossible for him to go back to being poor and to let his ELO go back to what it naturally was, the chances of him re-offending was like >99%
I agree it was difficult to believe he cheated only twice, I thought it was plausible that he had not cheated in paid events though, often people have these lines that they won’t cross. To continue your analogy, it’s like how some people would be willing to stretch the truth on expense claims to get some stuff paid for that really should be paid for personally, but would never straight up embezzle money.
Worth a read. They did a good job. It’s 72 pages but 50 pages of that are appendix so only 22 pages in reality.
“Only cheated twice” is something I’m betting the farm against every single time. I did too many years of service in the zoo and nvg. OTB isn’t clear to me yet, but I think that’s really just a matter of degree and how many feinting couches to prepare. The strangest line here is gonna be “He only cheated a lot online, never OTB.” I mean people are already saying that.
lol the report gives away too much information about the top-100 (2686 Elo) GM they banned and detectives on Reddit have immediately identified him (Ivan Cheparinov).
good theres no reason to protect cheaters anyways all bans should be public
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i cheated several times on chess.com. i can’t wait for them to release a report on cheating by elo ranges.
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eh, sometimes they just cheat once and stop, not everything is so black and white like that
I think when he said twice, one of those was alluding to all of the HU cheating in that report in june anyway.
Of course when he admitted cheating he did not admit to everything in that report.
first one on that report I’m pretty sure is the one he’s referencing when he was 12.
pulled the old, admit some but not all of it move.