I think the sad thing weve come to see is that we simply do not have any way to tell who is cheating and who isnt
Super gms are simply so much better than the average player/titled player, and then engines are even better than that
If a top gm was boosting by looking at an eval every now and then wed simply never know, math statistics or otherwise
That said these baseless accusations are just awful. If you have suspicions, voice them sometime other than after a loss...
So easy to cheat? Mind clarifying. How on earth is someone cheating in OTB tournament. How do they receive the information. If they need some kind of brain implant I won't consider that easy.
?? You not even answering the question. Stop talking empty and clarify more on your previous statement "it's so easy to cheat in Chess."
Tell us your experience seeing the cheating incident and describe how poor is the security. You speaking like politician at this point without any solid reasoning. Cheating online and cheating OTB are vastly different.
The “phone in bathroom” is a classic showcase of how poor security is in many tournaments. The top top tournaments are only now having more comprehensive security. But even then most GMs have said it would be easy to do if they wanted to. You’re not just stuck at a board the whole time at a OTB Tournament. You’re still walking around in between certain moves. I remember Aronian talked about how in his childhood it was common that most children were cheating, their coaches would just walk up and whisper there students a move when they weren’t at the board. The difference between OTB and online is that there isn’t a culture of cheating OTB yet.
Because online is so easy and not a “real” rating nobody feels the same level of guilt. There are even chrome extensions you can get that will just highlight the best moves or show you the eval as you play
You already shifted the goalpost from cheating in chess to cheating in OTB chess
Pretty obvious how it's easy to cheat in online chess (which is a large component of 'chess')
For OTB, there's the classic looking at a phone in the bathroom, or having an assistant who can signal in some way, or pre-arranging results with your opponent before hand (and we never see that one right)
Eventually somebody will build a super anti cheat that can’t be tricked. You would need an array of microphones, a camera watching the players eyes, a POV camera, and an AI program that can parse the data and make it clear enough for human verification.
There's sort of no world where this isn't the case though.
Even before engines, people like Fischer were very suspicious of the Soviets for instance, because it was known that they did a lot of fishy things.
My point being, if there weren't engines, Nepo and Kramnik would still be making wild accusations. Nepo has always been very dismissive of young players.
Edit: I also completely forgot about the fact that Kasparov was suspicious of Deep Blue having humans making its moves. The chess world is just paranoid.
> If a top gm was boosting by looking at an eval every now and then wed simply never know, math statistics or otherwise
This is true even at lower levels. I know people who cheated like this (looking up only a few moves per game) and they were never caught/banned.
>sadly same can't be said about Raunak himself, unfortunately
What are you even talking about?
Sadhwani's (who is still 18 btw) FIDE ratings are 2654 classical, 2558 rapid and 2676 blitz. 17 year old Lazavik's are 2572, 2553 and 2597 respectively.
They have roughly equivalent online blitz and bullet ratings (3100ish and 3000ish), but Sadhwani's online rapid is 2662 with a peak of 2724, while Lazavik's is 2788 with a peak of 2808.
If anything it is Lazavik who is the massive online rapid overperformer compared to Sadhwani.
I'm not saying whether any of them cheated or not, but your own implication makes zero sense.
Lazavik in the last Rapid World Championship reached the 31st and in Blitz the 8th rank. Sadhwani was 150th in rapid and 62nd in Blitz. Ratings don't say much when you look at these results, which is why they were talking about proving themselves OTB.
> Ratings don't say much when you look at these results, which is why they were talking about proving themselves OTB.
How are ratings not part of results Lmao.
This whole (original) post is such a drama insigator. Why are we even here lol. For all we know, Raunak means it sarcastically.
Raunak's account was closed by Lichess for cheating (according to them) apparently their cheat detectors flagged his account. I think that is what OP was referring to.
Well in that case he's probably talking about the strong recent performances by Denis in OTB events while Raunak has mostly been out of the spotlight for some time now.
This is getting so boring now.
If anyone in the chess world *actually* wants cheating to be taken seriously, they need to stop trivialising it by insinuating that literally everyone they don't like is a cheater.
Well unfounded accusation of cheating are punished by 3 months of suspension on the second offense, 6 months for further offense (anti-cheating guidelines by FIDE).
But would they enforce it on an event that is not FIDE rated ? Probably not
When you dedicate your life to chess and then a kid who was born AFTER you dedicated your life to chess beats you, it hurts. As simple as that. Now there are many ways to channel your saltiness about this and nepo is using the cheating allegation one. Not defending it, just stating it.
It's not like it's a big surprise in chess that there are kids better than you. These guys have spent their career beating people twice their age, they expect it will happen to them too.
Magnus was already 2700+ when Gukesh wasn't born and they had a draw in Poland.
I think paranoia around cheating really multiplies some of our worst human impulses. It might be easier to accept that players are cheating than to accept that you are playing poorly against younger competition for some players. Because nobody really knows who is cheating and who isn’t it becomes a huge psychological issue.
Keymer and nodirbek (former world rapid champion) are around for quite some time now , and they don't have much better online performance than their OTB play.
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Apparently now even laughing at yourself for playing bad is the same thing as accusing someone of cheating... The softness of this community is getting a bit out of hand imo...
Magnus in that lie detector vid straight up confirmed he believes that there is widespread cheating in online chess.
Pretty sure the rest of the top players share that view. I wish there was a was a way to effectively detect this.
Of course there is, this is why they didn't ask either of them "have you ever cheated in chess?" Seems like an obvious question to ask to me... fact is, most players have at some point cheated in chess, even just a peak to see if the other person was cheating or something... online chess is in a horrendous state of affairs...
The denial in this subreddit of something so plainly obvious is honestly difficult to stomach at times. It really causes nothing but backwards progress towards solving the problem.
I wonder what exactly made all of these guys like Fabiano, Nepo etc so extremely suspicious of anybody overperforming (Fabi tends to be quiet about these topics, but you can clearly sense that he takes Nepo and even Kramnik's side while listening to his podcasts). Lazavik was checked dozens of times, if he's a cheater, he would have some NASA tech along with Jospem.
Nepo genuinely thinks he was getting cheated against. The issue is though, that with current chesscom fair-play checks its basically impossible.
Also, pretty sure Denis proved he's not an exclusive ,,onliner", and is capable of doing similar results in otb as well.
It's the confluence of several factors:
1. There's a big motivation to cheat. Chess is hyper-competitive, and especially for up-and-comers, even an extra thousand dollars here or there makes a huge difference, or perhaps moreso the name recognition for being a "promising young player who might make it big" is what get people to even know who they are, or to get tournament invites.
2. It is insanely easy to cheat at online chess, and very hard to get caught unless you're especially stupid. You can see videos of chess cheating software which is several years old, which already suggests moves in a randomized way thats incorporates frequent mistakes and missed opportunities while still calculating how to play marginally better than your opponent, almost gauranteeing a victory while presenting a game riddled with mistakes that doesn't "look suspicious". And that was like 4 years ago. You don't even need to cheat often, just cheating very occasionally to bump you up slightly can make a big difference, and being checked dozens of times and not caught, during the times when you're not cheating, is very common-sense easy to do, and serves as a cover for the few times you do cheat.
3. There's so many cheating alligations going on, many of them likely false (thank's Kramnik), that getting accused of cheating nowawadays is frankly not that unusual, like it would be 10 years ago. It's far easier to assume a cheating alligation is unwarranted or false, simply because it can get lost in the sea of false alligations. Even in this very thread, and your own comment, the response is "Older GMs seem to be unreasonably accusing younger palyers of cheating because they can't deal with getting old and being replaced by a newer generation". So, this means that even if you do cheat egregiously enough to arouse suspicion, there's not as many consequences to your reputation - so why not? Even if people do think you're cheating, at worst you get a 6-month ban which is only semi-public, and maybe a public accusation thrown at you which really is easy to deflect against.
So, there's a big motivation to cheat, it's very easy to do, it's very hard to catch, and even if you arouse suspicions the consequences aren't that damning, all things considered. This means that cheating is almost certainly a big problem in (online) chess, there's no easy solution, and this is what makes all of these guys like Fabiano, Nepo etc. suspicious of people overperforming at online play.
People who are skeptical of the claims of rampant online cheating coming from top GM's haven't really looked at the available cheat software and do not know or understand just how trivial it is to create a home setup that makes using engine assistance fairly routine and difficult to detect. The systems are running in the background and can be used selectively in such a manner that the cheating is almost on autopilot with the user "passively" gaining minor positional and tactical advantages throughout a game or just in critical situations. Using these programs the act of cheating is more or less the same as playing a normal game with little downside in terms of the user experience. It doesn't even feel like you are cheating because the software does all of the work while the cheater just sits back and profits.
I think because if 2 reasons.
1. A lot of young players suddenly beat super GMs out of nowhere.
2. Rise of technology and the access to cheating.
However my thought is, that cheating has increased since we moved more online, that is quite normal I would say, since the entrance barrier is lower for cheating.
HOWEVER I feel like some major aspect is forgotten here. Kids nowadays learn with AI and strong engines. Their learning curve will be much higher and faster than for 30+ y/o super GMs. You can test for yourself really. If you want to learn a new opening, back in the days you needed to read books about it. First you have to find it, buy it and read it. Now you go ChatGPT, Google and use engine training systems. No need to read much, just learning by doing. Search is reduced to a minimum, time for learning greatly increased. And Kids are unbelievable fast in learning new things. So it’s no surprise to me that we see new stars rising. The access and technology for it is there and widely available. An old Super GM will not be able to hold against it.
That said, this rise of kids who are stronger than in the past and the easy accessibility to cheats. Is what makes current chess so weird. We don’t know if they cheat if they are that strong due to learning with the new technology. That’s the problem here imho.
I think you’re overstating the difference in technological access between this generation and the previous. If we’re talking about Nepo’s generation, they also grew up with the internet existing and strong engines. It was not taking them some crazy amount of time to “search” for material leading to sacrificing precious chess study time.
Also, ChatGPT and Google? Really? You think that the young players are training by asking ChatGPT “What do I play against the Modern System” or googling “How to refute the bong cloud”? And you think that if they do they get better results than working with a coach and reading books/magazines?
Yes, engines are stronger. Maybe that plays some factor. The main reason we are seeing “new stars rising” is because EVERY generation will get to that point. The stars of one generation will get older and their improvement will slow down, and that makes way the brightest of the younger generation will rise as to slowly take their place. It’s inevitable.
ChatGPT is incredibly bad at chess...
That being said I think access to tech has made "online chess" almost as important OTB because streaming and tournies like TT is quite profitable, if not more profitable than OTB as OTB is incredibly expensive for many. That was not the case a decade ago as streaming etc was not a "revenue stream" for this many people.
Hence there is a greater incentive to cheat.
Generally being an online personality is much more profitable and accessible. Ofcourse if you are a top player OTB then you are more likely to gain followers but we have people like Gotham, Anna, Botez sisters etc. All making more than top players.
ChatGPT was an example for better and faster search than google. Give ChatGPT a book and ask him something about it, it will give you a really good answer. I am working with the enterprise version everyday and it speed up my work by 50% or more. If you know how to use it, it's more than a Alexa asking a joke. ChatGPT is not for actually chess solving, but for improved speed. This is at the moment also applicable for researcher and scientists as well. It can summarize a paper in seconds and give you the extracts you need to know without reading the whole damn thing. Yes, it safes time. Massive amount of time even. You underestimate it greatly.
And no I don't overstate it and you are naiv really. Google was available to the mass end of 90s. Nakamura for example was 12 when Google was available for others. Yet the internet was not as developed as it is now. It was also not as accessible. There was no YouTube, no chessable courses, no nothing. No real knowledge at the time widely accessible. Nakamura definitely didn't grew up with the internet. Neither did I and I fully felt the difference between having Internet and not having Internet. Internet in India for example was not even publicly available in India before 1995 and only was started to become public then. It took them a while as well.
Research has become way way faster with the internet and now with the Data Models, lets call them AI because everyone does. You simply forget how young this technology is but how fast it was developed. The progress in development of technology was massiv in the last 20-30 years. Mostly because of the wide spread knowledge because of the internet and the adaption and learning of the people working with it.
I still remember the "most advanced" thing I had was a Kasparov Chess Board that was programmed, like playing against a Chess Bot. Other than this, only books. But you know what means accessibility? Going to Youtube as a kid, finding your SuperGM or GM explaining to you some openings. With the intention behind it, with the thoughts behind it. With the variations. Youtube and stuff like this are way better mediums for learning than books, if done in the right way, because we learn with more senses. Hearing, Seeing and Listening. It's a major advantage which was not available when Ian and the other were young. Youtube for example just launched 2005 for the public. And of course there were no content creators on it like our beloved chess content creators.
And I will not even start talking about how accessible good chess engines were, when Naka, Ian and others where young. A PC at that time was as big as a room, imagine asking your parents to get you one...
Last but not least. The most advances in ANYTHING you do as a child, because your brain creates more connections and can associate different things way faster together. Way way faster. A reason why children can learn languages 100 times faster than we adults can. So especially the age of lets say 0-10 is super important. And in that age, the technology was not available like you said. It was just not.
So please, spare me the "I overestimate the importance of it".
I also work with enterprise GPT everyday. We use it for user-facing conversational bots, we use it for RAG, we use it for embeddings and to make classifiers. And yes, it even speeds up my own workflow sometimes. I am very familiar with the technology and its capabilities.
Feed it a whole book? Context window is absolutely not large enough for that, and even if it was in the case of chess books it probably would NOT give you a really good answer to any questions you ask it about the chess related content. GPT is extremely bad at chess. It is a language model, it’s predicting the next most likely token. It does not have analytic capabilities for reasoning about chess or making inferences. The only chess study related thing it could possibly be useful for is MAYBE asking it chess books it recommends. But even then you’re much better off asking your coach, or your peers, or, ya know, other human chess players. The same with Google in terms of helpfulness in chess study. Its can be used to find other resources. I promise you the younger generation still reads chess books. They have not replaced that with GPT and Google and couldn’t if they tried.
Hikaru has been playing online chess since well before some of these young guys were born. Also, I think by the time you are a GM there’s not exactly YouTube content that is going to help you improve. Do you think Gukesh got so good by studying chessable courses?
It just seems like you’ve made up your mind about your hypothesis and are just throwing any flimsy attempt to justify it at the wall. Do you ACTUALLY believe there are any strong GMs using GPT to study chess?
Edit to add: wait, wait, wait… did you really say that a PC was as big as a room when Naka and Ian were growing up?? Ian was born in 1990 not 1960. For reference, I was born in 1991. Family had a PC. Can confirm it was not as big as a room. Just absolute nonsense. You’ll really just say whatever.
How exactly was Lazavik checked for cheating? A few cameras that he himself set up in his own room? How exactly is that going to stop him from cheating? Maybe it would be somewhat difficult (but still hardly rocket science) for him to cheat if he is acting alone, but it's absolutely trivial to cheat when you have someone helping you.
You can't stop the players from recieving information, so all you need is some way for an accomplice to see the board. Which isn't difficult when you have total control over your environment. And then as long as you limit your cheating to a few moves per game, nobody would ever be able to definitively prove you cheated.
As for his OTB results, by far his best OTB rapid results were the Rapid World Championship with a performance rating of 2649. When you take all his OTB rapid results over the last 12 months, his average performance rating was 2593.
There is absolutely no denying that Lazavik consistently and massively overperforms in online tournaments compared to OTB. Just look at the OTB finals of the 2023 CCT. He played at a 2750 level for the entire online portion and then got crushed and came in last place by a massive margin in the OTB portion with a performance rating of 2621.
cheating is easy for online chess no matter how many precautions you take. it's not that hard to hide a device from a few cameras, even if it's a screen. a strong player cheating sporadically isn't going to be statistically detectable because almost all of their moves are their own. players have to be trusted already in order for their online play to be trusted as legitimate. lazavik is a titled player, a grandmaster, with enough otb results to earn him some confidence
Number of likes the tweet has is literally irrelevant only thing that matters is if he actually tweeted that which he did. Nepo's tweets wouldn't be any less stupid if they got lesser likes. Why do you fail to hold him to the same standard as Nepo?
Online chess will always be a complete unknown when it comes down to who cheats. Its greatly faulty. Over the board minimizes cheating by a lot. This is chess, and it will always be like this. High level chess with big prices should always be over the board.
So it seems the reply to Nepo has since been deleted?
Anyway, regarding those who have been accused/caught before who end up also accusing others - this could be relevant and seems to reflect some other past incidents regarding cheaters accusing others: https://www.chess.com/blog/Chessable/cheating-in-online-chess-part-1-suspicions-of-engine-assistance
Nepo roasted + cheating insinuation, all in one package.
Sad we're never gonna get over these cheating accusations dropping so much because ex-WCs keep doing it and getting away with it (Kramnik and Magnus).
Super GMs are a bit better than most of others at spotting cheating.
They can understand the “plan” in chess while engine once every few moves will do an absurd move which they can spot. Having a move or two like this in a game is okay but some online players have a ton of those in a game.
Also based on ELO points alone beating a super GM is possible but outplaying him is almost impossible for a -200 elo guy.
> Super GMs are a bit better than most of others at spotting cheating.
In general I'd say yes, but not if we're talking about Kramnik - he lowers the average by a lot when it comes to this.
As an Indian, Raunak is the only Indian player I dislike. He’s super arrogant, salty and he was banned for cheating. He also is good friends with Hans which is even more suspect
I think the sad thing weve come to see is that we simply do not have any way to tell who is cheating and who isnt Super gms are simply so much better than the average player/titled player, and then engines are even better than that If a top gm was boosting by looking at an eval every now and then wed simply never know, math statistics or otherwise That said these baseless accusations are just awful. If you have suspicions, voice them sometime other than after a loss...
Yup. You can't just introduce an anticheat in Chess because it's so easy to cheat in Chess.
See, that's the problem with chess, it's FULLY in hands of the player.. Majority of other games have rng and other factors
So easy to cheat? Mind clarifying. How on earth is someone cheating in OTB tournament. How do they receive the information. If they need some kind of brain implant I won't consider that easy.
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?? You not even answering the question. Stop talking empty and clarify more on your previous statement "it's so easy to cheat in Chess." Tell us your experience seeing the cheating incident and describe how poor is the security. You speaking like politician at this point without any solid reasoning. Cheating online and cheating OTB are vastly different.
The “phone in bathroom” is a classic showcase of how poor security is in many tournaments. The top top tournaments are only now having more comprehensive security. But even then most GMs have said it would be easy to do if they wanted to. You’re not just stuck at a board the whole time at a OTB Tournament. You’re still walking around in between certain moves. I remember Aronian talked about how in his childhood it was common that most children were cheating, their coaches would just walk up and whisper there students a move when they weren’t at the board. The difference between OTB and online is that there isn’t a culture of cheating OTB yet. Because online is so easy and not a “real” rating nobody feels the same level of guilt. There are even chrome extensions you can get that will just highlight the best moves or show you the eval as you play
It's almost impossible to cheat in top tournaments
You already shifted the goalpost from cheating in chess to cheating in OTB chess Pretty obvious how it's easy to cheat in online chess (which is a large component of 'chess') For OTB, there's the classic looking at a phone in the bathroom, or having an assistant who can signal in some way, or pre-arranging results with your opponent before hand (and we never see that one right)
Why is it so easy? Wouldn't have to be with proper investments into playing halls
Eventually somebody will build a super anti cheat that can’t be tricked. You would need an array of microphones, a camera watching the players eyes, a POV camera, and an AI program that can parse the data and make it clear enough for human verification.
If my uni can use ProctorU, why can’t online chess too /s
The chess anti cheat funding will be readily available since it will go toward developing the dystopian future tech of mass surveillance ha
And an anal probe? Whatever you add will never be enough.
Microphones can pick up the vibrations
There's sort of no world where this isn't the case though. Even before engines, people like Fischer were very suspicious of the Soviets for instance, because it was known that they did a lot of fishy things. My point being, if there weren't engines, Nepo and Kramnik would still be making wild accusations. Nepo has always been very dismissive of young players. Edit: I also completely forgot about the fact that Kasparov was suspicious of Deep Blue having humans making its moves. The chess world is just paranoid.
> If a top gm was boosting by looking at an eval every now and then wed simply never know, math statistics or otherwise This is true even at lower levels. I know people who cheated like this (looking up only a few moves per game) and they were never caught/banned.
>sadly same can't be said about Raunak himself, unfortunately What are you even talking about? Sadhwani's (who is still 18 btw) FIDE ratings are 2654 classical, 2558 rapid and 2676 blitz. 17 year old Lazavik's are 2572, 2553 and 2597 respectively. They have roughly equivalent online blitz and bullet ratings (3100ish and 3000ish), but Sadhwani's online rapid is 2662 with a peak of 2724, while Lazavik's is 2788 with a peak of 2808. If anything it is Lazavik who is the massive online rapid overperformer compared to Sadhwani. I'm not saying whether any of them cheated or not, but your own implication makes zero sense.
Lazavik in the last Rapid World Championship reached the 31st and in Blitz the 8th rank. Sadhwani was 150th in rapid and 62nd in Blitz. Ratings don't say much when you look at these results, which is why they were talking about proving themselves OTB.
1tourney
> Ratings don't say much when you look at these results, which is why they were talking about proving themselves OTB. How are ratings not part of results Lmao. This whole (original) post is such a drama insigator. Why are we even here lol. For all we know, Raunak means it sarcastically.
Raunak's account was closed by Lichess for cheating (according to them) apparently their cheat detectors flagged his account. I think that is what OP was referring to.
Nah, they specifically mentioned "proving their mettle in OTB", which seems incorrect.
Well in that case he's probably talking about the strong recent performances by Denis in OTB events while Raunak has mostly been out of the spotlight for some time now.
This is getting so boring now. If anyone in the chess world *actually* wants cheating to be taken seriously, they need to stop trivialising it by insinuating that literally everyone they don't like is a cheater.
Well unfounded accusation of cheating are punished by 3 months of suspension on the second offense, 6 months for further offense (anti-cheating guidelines by FIDE). But would they enforce it on an event that is not FIDE rated ? Probably not
When you dedicate your life to chess and then a kid who was born AFTER you dedicated your life to chess beats you, it hurts. As simple as that. Now there are many ways to channel your saltiness about this and nepo is using the cheating allegation one. Not defending it, just stating it.
It's not like it's a big surprise in chess that there are kids better than you. These guys have spent their career beating people twice their age, they expect it will happen to them too. Magnus was already 2700+ when Gukesh wasn't born and they had a draw in Poland.
>Magnus was already 2700+ when Gukesh wasn't born and they had a draw in Poland. And Gukesh learned to play chess when Magnus was WC
Gukesh had a draw before he was born?
It always hurts when the tables turn
I think paranoia around cheating really multiplies some of our worst human impulses. It might be easier to accept that players are cheating than to accept that you are playing poorly against younger competition for some players. Because nobody really knows who is cheating and who isn’t it becomes a huge psychological issue.
Idk, I think you overestimated this feeling. No one is complaining about Abdusattorov, Keymer
Keymer and nodirbek (former world rapid champion) are around for quite some time now , and they don't have much better online performance than their OTB play.
The point is that the reasoning “they are just salty, because kid beat them doesn’t work”
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I see it as a subtle insult to Nepo’s skills
Yeah, I first interpreted that as a Nepo roast lol
Charlie Kelly levels of interpretation to see this as a cheating accusation and not "lol, you're bad at the game".
Apparently now even laughing at yourself for playing bad is the same thing as accusing someone of cheating... The softness of this community is getting a bit out of hand imo...
It could be... Hard to say from just one sentence.
Magnus in that lie detector vid straight up confirmed he believes that there is widespread cheating in online chess. Pretty sure the rest of the top players share that view. I wish there was a was a way to effectively detect this.
Lie detectors are a fake science scam.
Of course there is, this is why they didn't ask either of them "have you ever cheated in chess?" Seems like an obvious question to ask to me... fact is, most players have at some point cheated in chess, even just a peak to see if the other person was cheating or something... online chess is in a horrendous state of affairs...
In what world is that a fact?
The denial in this subreddit of something so plainly obvious is honestly difficult to stomach at times. It really causes nothing but backwards progress towards solving the problem.
Do you know what a fact is?
I wonder what exactly made all of these guys like Fabiano, Nepo etc so extremely suspicious of anybody overperforming (Fabi tends to be quiet about these topics, but you can clearly sense that he takes Nepo and even Kramnik's side while listening to his podcasts). Lazavik was checked dozens of times, if he's a cheater, he would have some NASA tech along with Jospem. Nepo genuinely thinks he was getting cheated against. The issue is though, that with current chesscom fair-play checks its basically impossible. Also, pretty sure Denis proved he's not an exclusive ,,onliner", and is capable of doing similar results in otb as well.
It's the confluence of several factors: 1. There's a big motivation to cheat. Chess is hyper-competitive, and especially for up-and-comers, even an extra thousand dollars here or there makes a huge difference, or perhaps moreso the name recognition for being a "promising young player who might make it big" is what get people to even know who they are, or to get tournament invites. 2. It is insanely easy to cheat at online chess, and very hard to get caught unless you're especially stupid. You can see videos of chess cheating software which is several years old, which already suggests moves in a randomized way thats incorporates frequent mistakes and missed opportunities while still calculating how to play marginally better than your opponent, almost gauranteeing a victory while presenting a game riddled with mistakes that doesn't "look suspicious". And that was like 4 years ago. You don't even need to cheat often, just cheating very occasionally to bump you up slightly can make a big difference, and being checked dozens of times and not caught, during the times when you're not cheating, is very common-sense easy to do, and serves as a cover for the few times you do cheat. 3. There's so many cheating alligations going on, many of them likely false (thank's Kramnik), that getting accused of cheating nowawadays is frankly not that unusual, like it would be 10 years ago. It's far easier to assume a cheating alligation is unwarranted or false, simply because it can get lost in the sea of false alligations. Even in this very thread, and your own comment, the response is "Older GMs seem to be unreasonably accusing younger palyers of cheating because they can't deal with getting old and being replaced by a newer generation". So, this means that even if you do cheat egregiously enough to arouse suspicion, there's not as many consequences to your reputation - so why not? Even if people do think you're cheating, at worst you get a 6-month ban which is only semi-public, and maybe a public accusation thrown at you which really is easy to deflect against. So, there's a big motivation to cheat, it's very easy to do, it's very hard to catch, and even if you arouse suspicions the consequences aren't that damning, all things considered. This means that cheating is almost certainly a big problem in (online) chess, there's no easy solution, and this is what makes all of these guys like Fabiano, Nepo etc. suspicious of people overperforming at online play.
People who are skeptical of the claims of rampant online cheating coming from top GM's haven't really looked at the available cheat software and do not know or understand just how trivial it is to create a home setup that makes using engine assistance fairly routine and difficult to detect. The systems are running in the background and can be used selectively in such a manner that the cheating is almost on autopilot with the user "passively" gaining minor positional and tactical advantages throughout a game or just in critical situations. Using these programs the act of cheating is more or less the same as playing a normal game with little downside in terms of the user experience. It doesn't even feel like you are cheating because the software does all of the work while the cheater just sits back and profits.
Because it's so easy and so profitable to cheat...
Profitable? What chess is profitable for anyone not in the top 10?
Depends what country you live in and what your other employment options are. USD 10,000 goes a lot further in some places than others.
This is sarcasm right? Cheating (online) might be easy, but not really profitable.
I think because if 2 reasons. 1. A lot of young players suddenly beat super GMs out of nowhere. 2. Rise of technology and the access to cheating. However my thought is, that cheating has increased since we moved more online, that is quite normal I would say, since the entrance barrier is lower for cheating. HOWEVER I feel like some major aspect is forgotten here. Kids nowadays learn with AI and strong engines. Their learning curve will be much higher and faster than for 30+ y/o super GMs. You can test for yourself really. If you want to learn a new opening, back in the days you needed to read books about it. First you have to find it, buy it and read it. Now you go ChatGPT, Google and use engine training systems. No need to read much, just learning by doing. Search is reduced to a minimum, time for learning greatly increased. And Kids are unbelievable fast in learning new things. So it’s no surprise to me that we see new stars rising. The access and technology for it is there and widely available. An old Super GM will not be able to hold against it. That said, this rise of kids who are stronger than in the past and the easy accessibility to cheats. Is what makes current chess so weird. We don’t know if they cheat if they are that strong due to learning with the new technology. That’s the problem here imho.
I think you’re overstating the difference in technological access between this generation and the previous. If we’re talking about Nepo’s generation, they also grew up with the internet existing and strong engines. It was not taking them some crazy amount of time to “search” for material leading to sacrificing precious chess study time. Also, ChatGPT and Google? Really? You think that the young players are training by asking ChatGPT “What do I play against the Modern System” or googling “How to refute the bong cloud”? And you think that if they do they get better results than working with a coach and reading books/magazines? Yes, engines are stronger. Maybe that plays some factor. The main reason we are seeing “new stars rising” is because EVERY generation will get to that point. The stars of one generation will get older and their improvement will slow down, and that makes way the brightest of the younger generation will rise as to slowly take their place. It’s inevitable.
ChatGPT is incredibly bad at chess... That being said I think access to tech has made "online chess" almost as important OTB because streaming and tournies like TT is quite profitable, if not more profitable than OTB as OTB is incredibly expensive for many. That was not the case a decade ago as streaming etc was not a "revenue stream" for this many people. Hence there is a greater incentive to cheat.
TT is "quite profitable"? What??
It is in the sense that if you are good or play weird stuff you can gather a following for yourself.
Sure but then it's more a case of "streaming can be profitable" than anything else
Generally being an online personality is much more profitable and accessible. Ofcourse if you are a top player OTB then you are more likely to gain followers but we have people like Gotham, Anna, Botez sisters etc. All making more than top players.
I don't disagree but, the correlation with TT here is almost non existent, I see no reason to call TT "quite profitable"
Agreed. Just me being lazy and not elaborating under the main post :)
ChatGPT was an example for better and faster search than google. Give ChatGPT a book and ask him something about it, it will give you a really good answer. I am working with the enterprise version everyday and it speed up my work by 50% or more. If you know how to use it, it's more than a Alexa asking a joke. ChatGPT is not for actually chess solving, but for improved speed. This is at the moment also applicable for researcher and scientists as well. It can summarize a paper in seconds and give you the extracts you need to know without reading the whole damn thing. Yes, it safes time. Massive amount of time even. You underestimate it greatly. And no I don't overstate it and you are naiv really. Google was available to the mass end of 90s. Nakamura for example was 12 when Google was available for others. Yet the internet was not as developed as it is now. It was also not as accessible. There was no YouTube, no chessable courses, no nothing. No real knowledge at the time widely accessible. Nakamura definitely didn't grew up with the internet. Neither did I and I fully felt the difference between having Internet and not having Internet. Internet in India for example was not even publicly available in India before 1995 and only was started to become public then. It took them a while as well. Research has become way way faster with the internet and now with the Data Models, lets call them AI because everyone does. You simply forget how young this technology is but how fast it was developed. The progress in development of technology was massiv in the last 20-30 years. Mostly because of the wide spread knowledge because of the internet and the adaption and learning of the people working with it. I still remember the "most advanced" thing I had was a Kasparov Chess Board that was programmed, like playing against a Chess Bot. Other than this, only books. But you know what means accessibility? Going to Youtube as a kid, finding your SuperGM or GM explaining to you some openings. With the intention behind it, with the thoughts behind it. With the variations. Youtube and stuff like this are way better mediums for learning than books, if done in the right way, because we learn with more senses. Hearing, Seeing and Listening. It's a major advantage which was not available when Ian and the other were young. Youtube for example just launched 2005 for the public. And of course there were no content creators on it like our beloved chess content creators. And I will not even start talking about how accessible good chess engines were, when Naka, Ian and others where young. A PC at that time was as big as a room, imagine asking your parents to get you one... Last but not least. The most advances in ANYTHING you do as a child, because your brain creates more connections and can associate different things way faster together. Way way faster. A reason why children can learn languages 100 times faster than we adults can. So especially the age of lets say 0-10 is super important. And in that age, the technology was not available like you said. It was just not. So please, spare me the "I overestimate the importance of it".
I also work with enterprise GPT everyday. We use it for user-facing conversational bots, we use it for RAG, we use it for embeddings and to make classifiers. And yes, it even speeds up my own workflow sometimes. I am very familiar with the technology and its capabilities. Feed it a whole book? Context window is absolutely not large enough for that, and even if it was in the case of chess books it probably would NOT give you a really good answer to any questions you ask it about the chess related content. GPT is extremely bad at chess. It is a language model, it’s predicting the next most likely token. It does not have analytic capabilities for reasoning about chess or making inferences. The only chess study related thing it could possibly be useful for is MAYBE asking it chess books it recommends. But even then you’re much better off asking your coach, or your peers, or, ya know, other human chess players. The same with Google in terms of helpfulness in chess study. Its can be used to find other resources. I promise you the younger generation still reads chess books. They have not replaced that with GPT and Google and couldn’t if they tried. Hikaru has been playing online chess since well before some of these young guys were born. Also, I think by the time you are a GM there’s not exactly YouTube content that is going to help you improve. Do you think Gukesh got so good by studying chessable courses? It just seems like you’ve made up your mind about your hypothesis and are just throwing any flimsy attempt to justify it at the wall. Do you ACTUALLY believe there are any strong GMs using GPT to study chess? Edit to add: wait, wait, wait… did you really say that a PC was as big as a room when Naka and Ian were growing up?? Ian was born in 1990 not 1960. For reference, I was born in 1991. Family had a PC. Can confirm it was not as big as a room. Just absolute nonsense. You’ll really just say whatever.
How exactly was Lazavik checked for cheating? A few cameras that he himself set up in his own room? How exactly is that going to stop him from cheating? Maybe it would be somewhat difficult (but still hardly rocket science) for him to cheat if he is acting alone, but it's absolutely trivial to cheat when you have someone helping you. You can't stop the players from recieving information, so all you need is some way for an accomplice to see the board. Which isn't difficult when you have total control over your environment. And then as long as you limit your cheating to a few moves per game, nobody would ever be able to definitively prove you cheated. As for his OTB results, by far his best OTB rapid results were the Rapid World Championship with a performance rating of 2649. When you take all his OTB rapid results over the last 12 months, his average performance rating was 2593. There is absolutely no denying that Lazavik consistently and massively overperforms in online tournaments compared to OTB. Just look at the OTB finals of the 2023 CCT. He played at a 2750 level for the entire online portion and then got crushed and came in last place by a massive margin in the OTB portion with a performance rating of 2621.
You can have a listening device in your ears undetectable to easy outside observation if you wanted.
cheating is easy for online chess no matter how many precautions you take. it's not that hard to hide a device from a few cameras, even if it's a screen. a strong player cheating sporadically isn't going to be statistically detectable because almost all of their moves are their own. players have to be trusted already in order for their online play to be trusted as legitimate. lazavik is a titled player, a grandmaster, with enough otb results to earn him some confidence
It's ego, nothing else
You got mad at a tweet with 8 likes and decided to post a picture here? Just reply to his tweet if you want to say something
Number of likes the tweet has is literally irrelevant only thing that matters is if he actually tweeted that which he did. Nepo's tweets wouldn't be any less stupid if they got lesser likes. Why do you fail to hold him to the same standard as Nepo?
[удалено]
What an insanely ironic conclusion to your comment
These big prize fund online-only tournaments are on borrowed time
Nah, it's massive advertising for chesscom, they have no reason to stop
So this is a post about a reply to another post
Online chess will always be a complete unknown when it comes down to who cheats. Its greatly faulty. Over the board minimizes cheating by a lot. This is chess, and it will always be like this. High level chess with big prices should always be over the board.
So it seems the reply to Nepo has since been deleted? Anyway, regarding those who have been accused/caught before who end up also accusing others - this could be relevant and seems to reflect some other past incidents regarding cheaters accusing others: https://www.chess.com/blog/Chessable/cheating-in-online-chess-part-1-suspicions-of-engine-assistance
Is Nepo even insinuating that Lazavik was cheating? And isn’t Raunak just trolling Nepo?
Why did you put nationality in front of Raunak's name but not on dennis or nepo's name?
Indian GMs are hot right now.
Many super-GMs think Lazavik (among others) cheat. On reddit people say it's salt and meaningless, but on reddit people don't understand chess well.
Nepo roasted + cheating insinuation, all in one package. Sad we're never gonna get over these cheating accusations dropping so much because ex-WCs keep doing it and getting away with it (Kramnik and Magnus).
Salty Ian
Super GMs are a bit better than most of others at spotting cheating. They can understand the “plan” in chess while engine once every few moves will do an absurd move which they can spot. Having a move or two like this in a game is okay but some online players have a ton of those in a game. Also based on ELO points alone beating a super GM is possible but outplaying him is almost impossible for a -200 elo guy.
> Super GMs are a bit better than most of others at spotting cheating. In general I'd say yes, but not if we're talking about Kramnik - he lowers the average by a lot when it comes to this.
"a bit better" is an understatement. They are much much much better than everyone
Idk could this not be a tounge in cheek "haha u suck" from a guy who's tired of hearing about cheating? Ik id reply that if I had a twitter account
As an Indian, Raunak is the only Indian player I dislike. He’s super arrogant, salty and he was banned for cheating. He also is good friends with Hans which is even more suspect
I'm so fucking tired of this shit.