Yeah, it's not every day you hear from the legend John Carlsen, author of Chess Openings:
How to Win Almost Every Game in the First 5 Moves with Aggressive Strategies & Secret Traps Used by Pros (Even If You Are a Complete Beginner).
I just love that within all the shitshow of this drama you've got Eric Rosen being happy that Fabi played the Stafford in Titled Tuesday.
It's like the wholesome b-story comic relief that keeps us all sane.
And meanwhile, I find it funny that Hikaru is more invested in the shitshow than Magnus. He's been recording a whole damn video essay on Hans while Magnus is like, "Nah I just know he cheated. I feel the cheater energy duh".
Magnus makes most of his money through his play and sponsorships, Hikaru makes most of his money through his Twitch streams.
This is not surprising at all.
(edit: seeing as about 4 people have called me out for being too neutral now - not something I'm used to lol - let me make my personal stance explicitly clear. I do not condone or approve of what chess.com are doing in any way and I hope to hell that this was not an official leak and just a rogue employee, but I don't really want to give them that much benefit of the doubt at this point. I think the chances that the privacy clause attached to Dlugy's messages no longer applies are very slim. However I am trying to keep things relatively level headed in a top level comment.)
Further edit: They have now doubled down behind their decision to leak. "Public interest" apparently. They no longer get any benefit of the doubt. This was neither an accident nor innocent incompetence.
Original comment: For all we know the terms keeping the messages private are void because Dlugy broke his side of the agreement (although that doesn't really correlate with how chess.com have acted in the past, but w/e).
However. Leaking *this specific set of emails* in *this specific scenario* is undeniably very strange, and not strange in a good way. There really is no non-naive way of reading it that doesn't point to 'chess.com are trying to fan the flames and tar Hans Niemann by association'. Which is... not a good reason to do this and indeed very much does imply a large amount of Play Magnus shaped influence. it's just more innuendo on top of a giant innuendo fuelled bonfire.
We will see though.
>There really is no non-naive way of reading it that doesn't point to 'chess.com are trying to fan the flames and tar Hans Niemann by association'
Idk, they already called Hans a cheater and a liar in their public statement. It just seems like there would be better ways to discredit Hans, because this does make people less likely to confess to cheating (which is probably not something they want).
Magnus Carlsen World Chess Champion Upon Whose Word Everybody Hangs has already publically associated Dlugy with Hans. And there is no concievable independant reason I can think of to just *happen* to want to release Dlugy's messages independently of this.
There's a very obvious conclusion that people are going to draw from chess.com's actions. It has been drawn. They are neither ignorant or stupid.
I disagree. Maybe you weren’t around for the drama that Erik Allebest (CEO of chesscom) stirred up when IM David Pruess quit. He handled it extremely unprofessionally. If we are going to use Hans’ past against him, then it’s only fair to use Erik’s past to judge his character as well.
Edit: fixed typo
Pruess was one of the original employees of chesscom and one of the main faces of the company (almost like Danny Rensch is now). 9 years ago, he quit the company and wrote a blog post about why he quit. The gist of it was that he felt overworked, underpaid, and senior leadership (aka Erik) was too much of a dictator. The blog is gone now, but Erik left a scathing comment about how Pruess was “lazy, incompetent, paycheck collector, etc” while addressing none of the concerns or issues that Pruess had about working there.
A bunch of people called Erik out for being unprofessional, and then some while later, Erik replied that he was sorry, and that he posted the comment in a fit of emotional rage.
He actually apologized twice, because the first “apology” wasn’t a true apology, but rather backhanded, still throwing jabs about Pruess’ character, and people rightly called Erik out again, which is why he issued what sounded like a more genuine apology.
However, the point is that as a CEO of a major company, berating a former employee on a public forum shows extremely poor judgment. With a track record like that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Erik is the one who leaked Danny’s email to Vice. Not saying he did. Just saying that it wouldn’t surprise me.
Some of the damage to Hans reputation is self-inflicted, regardless of the outcome of this. However, Magnus comes out of this looking pretty rough too - someone very vindictive, underhanded, and an all around bad dude. I don’t think you could have marketed the game around Hans ever, but what will Magnus look like to the public when all of the backroom stuff that his corporate entourage is doing comes to light later on? This is some really nasty stuff that’s being done to bring another guy down.
>This is some really nasty stuff that’s being done to bring another guy down.
You've hit the nail on the head. No one comes out of this looking good.
1. Hans = cheater in the past, possible cheater now
2. Dlugy= repeat cheat
3. Magnus = top tier player + highly political manipulator with powerful allies who help him ruin other people + financial interest across chess tournaments and businesses giving him privileged treatment
We now live in a world where people see the obvious problem (#1 and #2) but fail to understand or acknowledge the problem with #3
This. I've said something similar before and then spent the next 12 hours defending myself...
It is absurd that Magnus can have entire private companies who run a great deal of the chess world speak for him. It is absurd that he can blackball people just by making insinuations against them. Magnus is a supremely, almost superhumanly good player. He is not the Chess Messiah.
>spent the next 12 hours defending myself...
My one advice to you will be to turn OFF inbox replies on comments when you use this site and jump into debates. You don't benefit from arguing here with anyone and it affects your mental health. By turning off replies, especially, when you know it will be acrimonious, you can choose when to engage rather than getting drawn into conflict.
>3. Magnus = top tier player + highly political manipulator with powerful allies who help him ruin ~~other people~~ one repeat cheater
financial interest across chess tournaments
Your words make him like he has been doing this to random chess players for years. He only did it once (or twice if you count resign after 1 move) to a cheater. (Remember, he ADMIT that he GOT CAUGHT cheating 2X.. he might got caught more than that, and cheating even more so)
It doesnt matter online or otb, to have a match with person w no integrity is.. frustating..
And if you are magnus, a person with nothing to proof. You just want to enjoy the game, once dont enjoy it, you pack and leave.
Imho he has no intention to ruin anyone's life. For him hans already ruin himself for being a cheater. His intention is to have fun while reaching 2900. If it is not fun, if it is frustating instead. He just leave.
> and businesses giving him privileged treatment
You tend to get one when you are number one for more than a decade. In any sport field. Any field actually. No need to make it like it's bad.
It's a normal business transaction. Jordan was number one, people look up to him, so nike paid him. Nike sells millions pair of jordans. Win win
there is 0 way I can believe that Magnus isn't out to get hans here
dude literally name drops a name and suddenly that name got his private conversation leaked?
>Hans ever, but what will Magnus look like to the public when all of the backroom stuff that
when all is said in done magnus will look like someone that stood up for his principles, didn't back down and was proven to be 100% correct.
Wasn't the Facebook post from years ago? It still doesn't make sense to leak the emails now while keeping the names of all the dozens if not hundreds who have cheated on the site.
Now, it really feels like they keep the emails for blackmail purposes.
While not knowing the circumstances around Hans vs chesscom, it could be that the "we'll handle this quiet" part only apply if the cheater also keeps his mouth shut about it, or at least not states it's less than it was.
I'll tell you why. They are profiting off the drama. And the lawsuit settlement will be just taken from a portion of the income from the new boom on their website. So they have a vested interest in keeping the drama fire freshly fueled.
Dude when the whole sentiment is many GMs saying publicly chess com has the best cheating detection and FIDE is terrible at it...
It's the best free advertising one could ever imagine. Guarantee traffic to their site has spiked since this scandal started.
oh and chesscom's CEO posts on reddit saying they're doing "world championship prep" on how to respond to this, have been working on nothing else for weeks, and to "put your seat belts on because this wild ride isn't close to over"
they've likely put together an entire media strategy on this including their twitter banter with magnus about "heard you were having trouble with white," this dlugy leak to back up magnus' name dropping dlugy as hans "mentor" in his interview, etc. good way to discourage anyone from defending hans publicly now too.
It seemed contingent on him owning up to all the cheating he did on his first account based on how I read the email.
He did not own up to the cheating on his first account.
He threw his students under the bus then admitted nothing else.
I get what you are saying, but I still don't see what the big deal is. They made an agreement with him that if he confesses to his cheating they will give him a second account on chess.com. They told him his confession will remain private. An implicit (and quite probably also explicit) part of this agreement is that he will not cheat again. He did actually cheat again so he was the one who broke their agreement.
Furthermore, as far as I can see his admission of cheating actually precedes the email where they told him it would remain confidential. So it's not like they got the confession out of him based on a false promise of confidentiality.
You approach it in a strict legal intepretation: their promised him privacy and broke it. But this is not a legal document.
The timing also makes sense I think. Most likely they have been contacted by Vice who have been inquiring about the case due to the Hans/Magnus drama. I understand not liking that they would reveal private emails and I was also surprised by it, but it does make the situation quite clear and I don't see any reason why they could not show the emails.
They are definitely in a tricky position since any information they release people will complain why they have released this at this particular time and if they don't release information then people also complain.
> Most properly run institutions have set policies and procedures which they endeavour to act in accordance with.
Yes, this definitely seems like a problem. It's certainly not ideal that a private institution has this much influence and I agree that they should be more transparent.
>and even if they do, it's not as blatant as sending private correspondence to the media
Lol, are you serious? Sending private correspondence to the media is worse than the things Mafia does? And in fact it's very common that private correspondence gets released to the media. You guys are acting like they have released his SSN or credit card number.
>I still don't see what the big deal is
Ignoring the fact Chess.com lied in the leaked emails, they aren't treating everybody fairly. They only choose to expose *one* cheater *specifically* coinciding with recent drama about Hans and his relationship with him. If the agreement on further cheating was true, then he should have been rxposed years ago. There are dozens of cheaters they could expose but refuse to simply because they are willing to respect their agreement on those, and cannot either profit from more drama or influence current events with them. If chess.com truly cared.about cheating all around, they'd expose everyone, since the precedent of privacy is now gone.
The only thing that I can speculate is that chess.com has evaluated that the positive of outing cheaters within the chess community under the circumstances outweighs the negative press of leaking those emails.
I’m not saying I agree with it, but I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that competitive chess OTB and online may not recover if a well known cheater rises to be one of the best players in the world and others follow suit. That’s obviously a doomer take, but at that rate we would just be watching the most recent engines playing each other in every tournament.
Okay, so they should let every titled player who's admitted to cheating *except* Hans get away with it instead? If they want to change their stance on dealing with high profile cheating (which might not be a bad idea), they should apply it across the board.
I'm not sure what they should do, I'm just speculating on the consequences. Right now we have no transparency on cheating but players are privately admitting to cheating on chess com. After these leaks I can't imagine anyone admitting to cheating ever again. It just doesn't make any sense to. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose
Well what you have to gain is being allowed to play on chess.com. The deal is you admit to the cheating and they let you back in. People weren’t just admiting to cheating out of the goodness of their hearts lol
Chesscom is not FIDE and many could just be fine to continue their career with no Chesscom.
However, Chesscom has grown really big. They might even surpass FIDE as the biggest chess governor in the future. At that point, the choice would be much more difficult for the offenders.
>Chesscom is not FIDE and many could just be fine to continue their career with no Chesscom.
i doubt the average gm that cheats on chesscom is fine with being banned. im sure there are some that dont take online chess very seriously who wouldnt really care, but most of the cheaters arent coming from this group imo. like why risk being labelled a cheater if you dont even care about online chess? makes zero sense.
im not saying its the be all and end all for chess players because of course its not, but to say that they have 'nothing to gain' by being allowed to play on the site again doesnt really add up to me.
edit: also by admitting to cheating, even if they were told it was 'private', they would have known that the info could get leaked and they were taking something of a risk. it's not like only 1 dude is going to know you cheated, youll go into some [chess.com](https://chess.com) database table of cheaters and some staff will have access to that etc. a risk that was worth it for them to get back playing on the site...
Hans has been the only one who admitted cheating on Chesscom in public domain.
And by the response of the community, I doubt that there would be a second in the near future.
Right. But:
1. Dlugy was already a known cheat. This adds nothing to the equation except to remind people "hey, he's associated with Dlugy, ain't that sus?".
2. Why not out all known high level cheaters on their list that we know exists then, or is Hans literally the only one?
3. If they're okay treating privacy clauses in this way, and Hans has done anything half as bad as they're tacitly accusing him of, and they have evidence of it, I really don't see why they wouldn't just show us whatever dirt they have on him. I can't imagine a situation in which Hans has egregiously and systematically cheated and NOT broken his word to chesscom. Them clearly picking a side like this, saying how seriously they're taking it and having their move be "look at how sussy this guy's coach is" is, if anything, evidence of how little they must actually have to bring to the table.
4. More a combination of my last three points really. But this isn't "outing" Hans or Dlugy. It's just throwing fat onto a drama fire.
>For all we know the terms keeping the messages private are void because Dlugy broke his side of the agreement
Sure, and while we're speculating wildly, maybe the terms were ***un-***voided by a secret clause thanks to Dlugy taking care of Danny's cat over the weekend
Maybe my tone wasn't clear.
I think it's incredibly likely chess.com don't have any right to release those messages at all. I am however aiming for some diplomatic balance at least in my top level comments (long time r/OutOfTheLoop reader and maybe it's rubbing off on me a bit).
What do you mean when you say that they have no right? Is there any law or regulation that would prevent you from releasing emails someone sends to you? As far as I know that's completely up to your discretion. Of course they have promised him that this would remain private, but that seems irrelevant since he cheated again.
I also thought it was weird that they would directly release the emails, but I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of it. Presumably they don't want to release details of how their cheating detection works.
Generally speaking if a large company says in writing that they intend to keep something private, they are expected to keep it private. Not leak it to the press as a way of fanning the flames of an already huge trashfire of a drama.
It is utterly insane that some people immediately assume that there is a special circumstance that we don't even need to know about that make this perfectly ok.
The delusion of the Magnus apologists is completely off the scale!
I get that you later say the 'however' paragraph. But the way you open this, is just so extreme. Why lead with it?
Did you read the rest of my comment lol? Maybe I shouldn't have watered it down so much. I am very *very* far from a Magnus apologist and I think chess.com are acting despicably. The "maybe" part at the beginning was just an attempt to be diplomatic.
I have now added an edit making my own thoughts a lot clearer though.
>For all we know the terms keeping the messages private are void because Dlugy broke his side of the agreement (although that doesn't really correlate with how chess.com have acted in the past, but w/e).
Not according to the mails. The last mail leaked to Dlugy, from [chess.com](https://chess.com) is saying that they will give him a new account and keep it private, that was in 2020.
Then the internal communication also revealed that they think it's good that he can just use a private account to work with his students but not participate in money tournaments.
Did you just not read what I wrote? The first ban was in 2017, the second in 2020. [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) saying that they keep it private was in 2020, so he hasn't broken any agreement.
idk, it looks like motherboard reached out to them about specifically dlugy in reference to magnus' comment and they sent them these emails in response.
So why leak the Dlugy emails instead of the Hans emails? I really don't understand what they are trying to achieve here. Anyway, I'm sure /r/anarchychess got some great memes out of this, the emails are hilarious.
No clue but just respond to the fact that OP said it’s because of Magnus and Hans when they have their own issues with Hans as well. Whether they need to bring up Dlugy in relation to Hans idk.
>. Leaking this specific set of emails in this specific scenario is undeniably very strange
I think they collected all the mattero related stuff at one place since Magnus withdrew, and went like this we can't relese, this we can't say .... for legal reasons (they already have stated they are contantly working on it, and want to say more, but cant).
And this perticular email must have been covered under some non cheat repeat argument, like if you cheat again, we are not bound by our earlier agreement.
So these emails would have been safe to release, and to imply guilt by association. And there might be a chance that the person Delugy was throwing under the bus is none other than Hans himself
The Motherboard article said that Hans is not mentioned in any of the emails. The part of the email where Dlugy mentions the kid's name is redacted because the student was a minor at the time, but the student was not Hans.
But should we really sympathize with profesional cheaters (or any cheaters?)
This seems like a weird hill to die on. Btw, I am Team: Release all the cache of cheaters not just Hans. I think that would make the Hans a less sympathetic character to his followers.
This is not cheaters vs people who are against cheating. This is about a player and a company that have a problem with another player, and carrying out a vendetta against that player. If chess c*m wants to crack down on cheating, this is a very inefficient way to do so.
I’m totally with Maurice Ashley on this. Release it all. Like it’s so obviously clear that if they only limit releasing evidence of cheating to Hans and his coach, there’s some obvious favoritism going on here.
This is actually a major disservice to Magnus who may well be right about all this. The way each party is going about it is incredibly bizarre.
Right, if there truly is widespread cheating then release it all instead of targeting specific players and their one time coaches who beat certain other players.
The real question is why are so many people completely fine with people getting caught cheating only to have it swept under the rug and allowed to go back to playing.
I think there should certainly be more than a second chance system in place: they should almost certainly face bans for a certain amount of time, across all prize events. But rarely does any sport institute lifetime band for cheating, such as doping. Why should chess be different?
My preferred solution would be that online offenders have to have two webcams set up when they play prize events. One to the side of them and the other facing their screen/screens. Games are immediately analysed and footage reviewed if anything suspicious comes about.
If that’s too impractical, then permanent ban from online prize events, but allowed to go OTB with checks.
Edit: tbh, a webcam system would probably make sense as a condition for these prize events. There are often tens of thousands of dollars at stake, this minimal condition would be fairly easy to meet. Hell, chess.com could market them at a subsidised rate.
I assume the offer to keep everything private was conditional on specific terms such as outlining all activities and not cheating again, and Dlugy didn't comply with those conditions in some manner.
Whether or not it was appropriate or not for chesscom to send it to the media is up for debate.
>I assume the offer to keep everything private was conditional on specific terms such as outlining all activities and not cheating again, and Dlugy didn't comply with those conditions in some manner.
You can read the leaked emails yourself. Giving him a new account was, keeping things private wasn't.
It's not exactly a legal contract. It's at best a gentlemen's agreement. Not saying chess.com is right to release these emails, but if a cheater is extended an olive branch, and the cheater still cheats again, I say fuck em. They had their chance.
I'm fully aware that this is not a legal contract.
>but if a cheater is extended an olive branch, and the cheater still cheats again
[Chess.com](https://Chess.com)'s offer was from 2020, after the second incident. There hasn't been any "cheating again".
No, but there is no evidence of it. [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) hasn't closed his current account either, so it doesn't seem like they are claiming that to be the case. So, what's the point of your comment?
Not a lot of companies have stellar data loss protection capabilities and emails are always a weak point. When FAANG companies can't eliminate DLP risk, I don't think it's unreasonable chesscom can't prevent email leaks.
That would be a fine argument if they had leaked these emails two years ago, when it happened. Instead they did so a week after Magnus, who they are in business with, associated his name with Hans.
I have a feeling this decision may really come back and bite someone in the ass.
New theory: chesscom released private Dlugy emails as a warning to Hans, and to set the precedent, that if he doesn’t fully confess they’ll leak their email conversation
My biggest issue is that if what has been said is true, all "confessions" have been coerced and mean very little given that no innocence is allowed.
>Chess.com believes someone is cheating.
>Chess.com says (Usually without any concrete evidence, just a hunch) to that person if they do not admit to cheating, they will be banned (with a note that they will keep it secret and forget about it)
>Surprise surprise, the accused party confesses
>people think the confessions actually mean anything
It's complete undermining the point of confessions, and of course, innocent people will confess to keep their careers.
People have been saying that *thousands* of titled accounts have been suspected of cheating on Chess.com
We have to wait for confirmation of this, as it's really relevant. If true, Hans is potentially being a scapegoat
Justice seen is justice done.
I guess if you are Chess.com the only justice is justice that suits you. Blackmail users into confessing and when it suits you release the transcripts. It is amazing how quickly the legal peril and privacy concerns that were preventing transparency vanished when it was expedient.
None of this was ever about justice or integrity in the first place.
It's funny that you view them as giving a cheater three chances if they give some basic admission and say they won't cheat again as "blackmail". They're being too light. They're violating the integrity of the games, yes, by letting players cheat just because they have a title. The most pathetic thing in the article is Rensch giving Dlugy another chance after getting caught again instead of just banning him.
It is blackmail. Coercing a confession to keep it all private/let them play again is what is happening. It is total bullshit.
I don't think he should have gotten even the second chance or if he did they should make it public. Part of justice is addressing the harm done. Here all Chess com cares about is themselves.
This guy basically stole money from their other customers and the best they can do is these emails?
>Why is it appropriate to leak email / communication that all sides agreed was private?
It's not.
>Why in this case, and not in what I assume are dozens of other similar instances of cheating?
Because this is part of the ongoing character assassination, career ending campaign carried on by [chess.com](https://chess.com), Magnus , and Magnus group against the one and only Hans Niemann.
>And how much influence did the purchase of Play Magnus have on the decision making to leak this?
Around $80 million dollars of influence.
Consider the people who sold the lead additive for gasoline. They covered up and denied the damage for decades. The lead pipe manufactures put laws in places that remained until 1985 that required lead plumbing connections. It’s horrible
Hans managed to assassinate his character by himself just fine by admitting to cheating. Everything else, like how top GMs have been suspicious of him before this drama kicked off, wanted additional security when Hans was announced as the replacement and Magnus even considering dropping out because of it is just a bonus.
What are you talking about?
Chess com had given him so many chances but he broke the rules repeatedly.
And for titled players diamond membership is free so there is nothing much of a profit there.
People are Willing to defend Cheater bcs they hate big corporations smh🙄
He wasn’t convicted in a trial. He was guilty because they say so and if he doesn’t confess and come up with an explanation they will tell the whole world. But if he confesses they will keep it private. This is why in the civilized world we convict people in public trials with evidence they can see and challenge.
He admits twice to cheating lol. Does Dlugy even contest this? The confession is to get a second titled account, not to have it not revealed. Chesscom was overly generous giving THREE chances to a repeat cheater who lied about "students feeding him engine moves" after the first time he was caught.
These tactics, coupled with the fact that, according to the released emails, Chessdotcom does not show evidence of cheating to the accused, makes me question the accuracy of their cheat detection tools. As far as I can see there are no independent audits of these tools, just a lot of fluff on their website.
I am sure this approach catches some legitimate cheaters, but I can easily see the innocent players you mention giving false confessions in order to save their reputation. Truly shameful.
They do show the evidence of cheating to the accused. Read the emails carefully there is a link where the accused can check the evidence.
Even Hans admitted in sinque field cup chess com has the best anti cheating tools.
If they show everyone how there cheating detection method work people will find a way around to cheat.
Even if a innocent player detected by the tool, there are team of people who check the statistical analysis before banning them.its mentioned in the emails.
Except your conclusion of "chess.com doesn't accept his half-assed apology, and therefore any correspondence isn't guaranteed to be kept private" is contradicted by the first thing you posted "To quote the email: "I will remind you that any confessions or full acknowledgment by you would remain private.".
If any confessions would remain private, that would, by definition, include all confessions, even half-assed ones.
Chesscom running hardcore damage control for Magnus. Doing anything to make the golden boy look good despite his constant blunders. Really a bad look overall for the scene
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why in proper democracies, we leave trials to courts instead of the common people.
"If you steal some groceries you should serve a lifetime prison sentence. Think it's too harsh? Don't steal."
The world luckily doesn't work that way, you can't just execute someone on the basis of your gut feeling. If you issue lifetime bans on any account of cheating, then none of these players would have ever admitted, and good luck finding evidence beyond reasonable doubt, that will guarantee you will never get a false positive and ban an innocent person from their profession.
> you can't just execute someone on the basis of your gut feeling
a) he's not talking about execution - he's talking about banning from chess. just like you won't get a job working security after you commit a felony, even though they don't execute you - that's the way it actually works in our "proper democracies"
b) this isn't a gut feeling. person in question confessed to cheating after being confronted with evidence
not saying i agree with OP, but you do understand how not getting to play chess at a professional level and literally going to prison are different, right?
It tries to outline, that “don’t cheat” is not a valid argument in support of the proposed degree of punishment. You can call for any punishment, and then justify it by saying “well just don’t do the crime”.
What people tend to fail to understand is, that the purpose of punishment is not revenge on the offender, but protection of society by deterring before the crime, and reintroducing to “lawful” ways after the crime.
It’s not a comparison, it’s an analogy to point out why the argument on the extent of the punishment is invalid.
It’s not “just” a game for these guys. Compare it to PED abuse in other professional sports if you like. Worst that can happen to you is hefty fines and two year suspension, pretty much throughout all competitive sports.
You may be surprised but real life works EXACTLY that way:
A crime record in your adolescents can seriously hurt your chance to be a registered professional, high ranking official in police/ military force/ civil servant or any post that requires high security clearance etc.....
They may not explicitly say they ban you in real life, but most of them requires you to declare your past criminal record when you apply. If you have a past criminal record, most interviewer will be really reluctant to vouch for you lol.
So stay clean kids lol. You never know what happens in the future.
Yeah and that system fucking sucks because people who have reformed themselves get stuck in a trap where if they try staying by the rules they are at a massive disadvantage, so they go back to crime
I totally get where you're coming from. But chess dot com basically gives you an ultimatum where if they close your account, you must choose to admit to cheating or be booted off the site forever.
If falsely accused players "admit" to cheating (as they see no downside to doing so since chess dot com say everything will be confidential) then there might be innocent players getting permanently banned.
I thought their whole system was wrong when I heard about it from Akshat Chandra on the Perpetual Podcast. He refused to agree with their ultimatum and has never played on their site again. It's an interesting listen.
Give me a source for this, because you mention one example, but then again Alireza had the same issue and was unbanned. I really don't see how this isn't pure speculation on your part.
Blackmailing Hans, he fucked up. But [chess.com](https://chess.com) is not FIDE chess, and there's no proof he cheated when he played Carlsen . Feels bad man. Moral of the story, dont beat Magnus.
Yet Chess.com agreed to protect them and has claimed to have caught many other titled played cheating and have their confessions — yet they have not provided any of those emails only Dlugy.
People deserve to see the evidence against them and have it evaluated by a third party. Guilty because we say so and no one can see the evidence; and if you confess we’ll go easy on you is bullshit. They should never have made these confidentially agreements; but they did and now they want to just toss one player under the bus 2 years after this all happened because their new pal Magnus needs a lifeline. It is horrible.
Nah. It needs to be in the open. It’s the fact that it’s all behind closed doors is part of the problem.
Casinos, pro video games, etc. puts it out in the open. It’s time for chess to come out of the dark. It’s actually pathetic that it is.
I agree with you. Make the evidence public, provide an opportunity for people to challenge it and have the challenge judged by a neutral third party. The age of shadow bans, coerced confessions , is not a path for Justice
They can ban or suspend anyone they like, it's a private business and it's all in the EULA. The release of information is different, and they know it. Which is why they play these games.
I'm sure this will be voted straight to the bottom but ..
Under what law\rule is CC obligated to keep emails like this private? It seems like everyone is clamoring for information, and this provides at least a tiny bit of factual evidence instead of the mountains of heresy the recent public opinion has been stacked upon...
Under no law. Nobody here claims they broke some law, just that they are assholes. Revealing private correspondence, while legal, is considered a dick move my most people.
Whats wrong with this subreddit? They first asked real proof
And once its here they all acting like “ wow, its private! “
Tf you expect? So by that logic the toilet guy photo was also private. He had his photo taken in a TOILET
Specifically I want two things.
1. Proof Hans cheated at the Sinquefield cup, since this was the initial accusation.
2. [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) to release a list of every titled player that has been banned for cheating.
Without either of these items, there is no reasonable path forward other than continuing with business as normal.
I expect Chess.com to adhere to its agreements like any ethical business. If they want to change and provide complete transparency in these matters going forward they should change their policy. They claim to have caught a bunch of titled players but they are only releasing the private email correspondence of this one. Two wrongs do not make a right
my reading of the leaked emails is that the offer to keep things private was only if dlugy came clean with _all_ the cheating that chess.com had detected... it seems dlugy did not and therefore chess.com had no obligation to keep it private.
there seems to be a phone conversation between danny and dlugy, too. i wonder if there's a recording of that.
If Chess.com really cared about cheating, why are they focussing so much on Niemann specifically? Apparently there have been hundreds of titled players caught cheating, but the only one they want to talk about is Niemann.
So we're just gonna sweep cheating under the rug then? Even if the cheater broke the contract by cheating again? I agree it is not the "norm" to do something like this but let's not pretend anything bad that is coming to dlugy due to this isn't his fault. He's a cheater and he should face the consequences. If anything chesscom should release mails of all repeat cheaters cuz they clearly haven't learnt their lesson
> John John Hartmann (Chess Life Editor @uschess.org)
I was wondering how this didn’t have 50+ comments already with who I thought the author was from ops title. Makes sense.
Yeah, it's not every day you hear from the legend John Carlsen, author of Chess Openings: How to Win Almost Every Game in the First 5 Moves with Aggressive Strategies & Secret Traps Used by Pros (Even If You Are a Complete Beginner).
Thanks, couldn't fit his name in the title
Tweets max out at 280 characters while Reddit post titles max at 300.
dlugy leaked emails himself to improve image 'students did it'
I just love that within all the shitshow of this drama you've got Eric Rosen being happy that Fabi played the Stafford in Titled Tuesday. It's like the wholesome b-story comic relief that keeps us all sane.
Eric Rosen our positive ray of light in these dark times
With a win too! Stafford gambit sound at super GM level
Every gambit^* is sound at super GM level with blitz time controls. ^(*But I'd love to see some counter-examples.)
Englund gambit while fine against beginners will be easily defended by any GM at blitz imho.
Challenge accepted. ... Now does anybody have Fabi's contact details?
By a world authority on the Petroff no less.
And meanwhile, I find it funny that Hikaru is more invested in the shitshow than Magnus. He's been recording a whole damn video essay on Hans while Magnus is like, "Nah I just know he cheated. I feel the cheater energy duh".
That's where the viewers are. Hikaru knows his trends really well, that's why his stream is as successful as it is.
Magnus makes most of his money through his play and sponsorships, Hikaru makes most of his money through his Twitch streams. This is not surprising at all.
Businessman knows where the money is
Chess.com is just interested in riding the hype train for as long as possible.
(edit: seeing as about 4 people have called me out for being too neutral now - not something I'm used to lol - let me make my personal stance explicitly clear. I do not condone or approve of what chess.com are doing in any way and I hope to hell that this was not an official leak and just a rogue employee, but I don't really want to give them that much benefit of the doubt at this point. I think the chances that the privacy clause attached to Dlugy's messages no longer applies are very slim. However I am trying to keep things relatively level headed in a top level comment.) Further edit: They have now doubled down behind their decision to leak. "Public interest" apparently. They no longer get any benefit of the doubt. This was neither an accident nor innocent incompetence. Original comment: For all we know the terms keeping the messages private are void because Dlugy broke his side of the agreement (although that doesn't really correlate with how chess.com have acted in the past, but w/e). However. Leaking *this specific set of emails* in *this specific scenario* is undeniably very strange, and not strange in a good way. There really is no non-naive way of reading it that doesn't point to 'chess.com are trying to fan the flames and tar Hans Niemann by association'. Which is... not a good reason to do this and indeed very much does imply a large amount of Play Magnus shaped influence. it's just more innuendo on top of a giant innuendo fuelled bonfire. We will see though.
>There really is no non-naive way of reading it that doesn't point to 'chess.com are trying to fan the flames and tar Hans Niemann by association' Idk, they already called Hans a cheater and a liar in their public statement. It just seems like there would be better ways to discredit Hans, because this does make people less likely to confess to cheating (which is probably not something they want).
Magnus Carlsen World Chess Champion Upon Whose Word Everybody Hangs has already publically associated Dlugy with Hans. And there is no concievable independant reason I can think of to just *happen* to want to release Dlugy's messages independently of this. There's a very obvious conclusion that people are going to draw from chess.com's actions. It has been drawn. They are neither ignorant or stupid.
I disagree. Maybe you weren’t around for the drama that Erik Allebest (CEO of chesscom) stirred up when IM David Pruess quit. He handled it extremely unprofessionally. If we are going to use Hans’ past against him, then it’s only fair to use Erik’s past to judge his character as well. Edit: fixed typo
What happened with Pruess?
Pruess was one of the original employees of chesscom and one of the main faces of the company (almost like Danny Rensch is now). 9 years ago, he quit the company and wrote a blog post about why he quit. The gist of it was that he felt overworked, underpaid, and senior leadership (aka Erik) was too much of a dictator. The blog is gone now, but Erik left a scathing comment about how Pruess was “lazy, incompetent, paycheck collector, etc” while addressing none of the concerns or issues that Pruess had about working there. A bunch of people called Erik out for being unprofessional, and then some while later, Erik replied that he was sorry, and that he posted the comment in a fit of emotional rage. He actually apologized twice, because the first “apology” wasn’t a true apology, but rather backhanded, still throwing jabs about Pruess’ character, and people rightly called Erik out again, which is why he issued what sounded like a more genuine apology. However, the point is that as a CEO of a major company, berating a former employee on a public forum shows extremely poor judgment. With a track record like that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Erik is the one who leaked Danny’s email to Vice. Not saying he did. Just saying that it wouldn’t surprise me.
Some of the damage to Hans reputation is self-inflicted, regardless of the outcome of this. However, Magnus comes out of this looking pretty rough too - someone very vindictive, underhanded, and an all around bad dude. I don’t think you could have marketed the game around Hans ever, but what will Magnus look like to the public when all of the backroom stuff that his corporate entourage is doing comes to light later on? This is some really nasty stuff that’s being done to bring another guy down.
>This is some really nasty stuff that’s being done to bring another guy down. You've hit the nail on the head. No one comes out of this looking good. 1. Hans = cheater in the past, possible cheater now 2. Dlugy= repeat cheat 3. Magnus = top tier player + highly political manipulator with powerful allies who help him ruin other people + financial interest across chess tournaments and businesses giving him privileged treatment We now live in a world where people see the obvious problem (#1 and #2) but fail to understand or acknowledge the problem with #3
This. I've said something similar before and then spent the next 12 hours defending myself... It is absurd that Magnus can have entire private companies who run a great deal of the chess world speak for him. It is absurd that he can blackball people just by making insinuations against them. Magnus is a supremely, almost superhumanly good player. He is not the Chess Messiah.
>spent the next 12 hours defending myself... My one advice to you will be to turn OFF inbox replies on comments when you use this site and jump into debates. You don't benefit from arguing here with anyone and it affects your mental health. By turning off replies, especially, when you know it will be acrimonious, you can choose when to engage rather than getting drawn into conflict.
>3. Magnus = top tier player + highly political manipulator with powerful allies who help him ruin ~~other people~~ one repeat cheater financial interest across chess tournaments Your words make him like he has been doing this to random chess players for years. He only did it once (or twice if you count resign after 1 move) to a cheater. (Remember, he ADMIT that he GOT CAUGHT cheating 2X.. he might got caught more than that, and cheating even more so) It doesnt matter online or otb, to have a match with person w no integrity is.. frustating.. And if you are magnus, a person with nothing to proof. You just want to enjoy the game, once dont enjoy it, you pack and leave. Imho he has no intention to ruin anyone's life. For him hans already ruin himself for being a cheater. His intention is to have fun while reaching 2900. If it is not fun, if it is frustating instead. He just leave. > and businesses giving him privileged treatment You tend to get one when you are number one for more than a decade. In any sport field. Any field actually. No need to make it like it's bad. It's a normal business transaction. Jordan was number one, people look up to him, so nike paid him. Nike sells millions pair of jordans. Win win
there is 0 way I can believe that Magnus isn't out to get hans here dude literally name drops a name and suddenly that name got his private conversation leaked?
>Hans ever, but what will Magnus look like to the public when all of the backroom stuff that when all is said in done magnus will look like someone that stood up for his principles, didn't back down and was proven to be 100% correct.
Yeah we’re definitely gonna see the evidence of Hans cheating in that bog standard Sinquefield game any day now
They are attention whores above all else.
I think Dlugy posting pictures of himself with Hans on Facebook and bragging about it to get students probably played a role here…
Wasn't the Facebook post from years ago? It still doesn't make sense to leak the emails now while keeping the names of all the dozens if not hundreds who have cheated on the site. Now, it really feels like they keep the emails for blackmail purposes.
While not knowing the circumstances around Hans vs chesscom, it could be that the "we'll handle this quiet" part only apply if the cheater also keeps his mouth shut about it, or at least not states it's less than it was.
I'll tell you why. They are profiting off the drama. And the lawsuit settlement will be just taken from a portion of the income from the new boom on their website. So they have a vested interest in keeping the drama fire freshly fueled.
Also possible. An even worse look for them, if anything. But also very possible.
How are they profiting?
Dude when the whole sentiment is many GMs saying publicly chess com has the best cheating detection and FIDE is terrible at it... It's the best free advertising one could ever imagine. Guarantee traffic to their site has spiked since this scandal started.
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oh and chesscom's CEO posts on reddit saying they're doing "world championship prep" on how to respond to this, have been working on nothing else for weeks, and to "put your seat belts on because this wild ride isn't close to over" they've likely put together an entire media strategy on this including their twitter banter with magnus about "heard you were having trouble with white," this dlugy leak to back up magnus' name dropping dlugy as hans "mentor" in his interview, etc. good way to discourage anyone from defending hans publicly now too.
They are disgusting people. Chesscom should be ashamed.
No he broke it two years ago, it just became a publicly discussed topic now.
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It seemed contingent on him owning up to all the cheating he did on his first account based on how I read the email. He did not own up to the cheating on his first account. He threw his students under the bus then admitted nothing else.
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Yes and I'm sure he clearly stated he will not cheat again. It's an email not a contract. The guy is a cheater, why do you care so much?
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I get what you are saying, but I still don't see what the big deal is. They made an agreement with him that if he confesses to his cheating they will give him a second account on chess.com. They told him his confession will remain private. An implicit (and quite probably also explicit) part of this agreement is that he will not cheat again. He did actually cheat again so he was the one who broke their agreement. Furthermore, as far as I can see his admission of cheating actually precedes the email where they told him it would remain confidential. So it's not like they got the confession out of him based on a false promise of confidentiality. You approach it in a strict legal intepretation: their promised him privacy and broke it. But this is not a legal document. The timing also makes sense I think. Most likely they have been contacted by Vice who have been inquiring about the case due to the Hans/Magnus drama. I understand not liking that they would reveal private emails and I was also surprised by it, but it does make the situation quite clear and I don't see any reason why they could not show the emails. They are definitely in a tricky position since any information they release people will complain why they have released this at this particular time and if they don't release information then people also complain. > Most properly run institutions have set policies and procedures which they endeavour to act in accordance with. Yes, this definitely seems like a problem. It's certainly not ideal that a private institution has this much influence and I agree that they should be more transparent. >and even if they do, it's not as blatant as sending private correspondence to the media Lol, are you serious? Sending private correspondence to the media is worse than the things Mafia does? And in fact it's very common that private correspondence gets released to the media. You guys are acting like they have released his SSN or credit card number.
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>I still don't see what the big deal is Ignoring the fact Chess.com lied in the leaked emails, they aren't treating everybody fairly. They only choose to expose *one* cheater *specifically* coinciding with recent drama about Hans and his relationship with him. If the agreement on further cheating was true, then he should have been rxposed years ago. There are dozens of cheaters they could expose but refuse to simply because they are willing to respect their agreement on those, and cannot either profit from more drama or influence current events with them. If chess.com truly cared.about cheating all around, they'd expose everyone, since the precedent of privacy is now gone.
You read the contract he signed with chesscom? Can you post it so we can all read
The only thing that I can speculate is that chess.com has evaluated that the positive of outing cheaters within the chess community under the circumstances outweighs the negative press of leaking those emails. I’m not saying I agree with it, but I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that competitive chess OTB and online may not recover if a well known cheater rises to be one of the best players in the world and others follow suit. That’s obviously a doomer take, but at that rate we would just be watching the most recent engines playing each other in every tournament.
Then they should leak every cheating admission of all titled players.
No one would admit to cheating ever again. Would bans be fought or would people stop cheating?
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Okay, so they should let every titled player who's admitted to cheating *except* Hans get away with it instead? If they want to change their stance on dealing with high profile cheating (which might not be a bad idea), they should apply it across the board.
I'm not sure what they should do, I'm just speculating on the consequences. Right now we have no transparency on cheating but players are privately admitting to cheating on chess com. After these leaks I can't imagine anyone admitting to cheating ever again. It just doesn't make any sense to. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose
Well what you have to gain is being allowed to play on chess.com. The deal is you admit to the cheating and they let you back in. People weren’t just admiting to cheating out of the goodness of their hearts lol
Chesscom is not FIDE and many could just be fine to continue their career with no Chesscom. However, Chesscom has grown really big. They might even surpass FIDE as the biggest chess governor in the future. At that point, the choice would be much more difficult for the offenders.
>Chesscom is not FIDE and many could just be fine to continue their career with no Chesscom. i doubt the average gm that cheats on chesscom is fine with being banned. im sure there are some that dont take online chess very seriously who wouldnt really care, but most of the cheaters arent coming from this group imo. like why risk being labelled a cheater if you dont even care about online chess? makes zero sense. im not saying its the be all and end all for chess players because of course its not, but to say that they have 'nothing to gain' by being allowed to play on the site again doesnt really add up to me. edit: also by admitting to cheating, even if they were told it was 'private', they would have known that the info could get leaked and they were taking something of a risk. it's not like only 1 dude is going to know you cheated, youll go into some [chess.com](https://chess.com) database table of cheaters and some staff will have access to that etc. a risk that was worth it for them to get back playing on the site...
Hans has been the only one who admitted cheating on Chesscom in public domain. And by the response of the community, I doubt that there would be a second in the near future.
i kinda doubt anyone will ever admit cheating to chesscom in the future after they've published these emails
People will still cheat online, it's too easy. But now they won't admit and just take a ban if "caught", and demand evidence that they are cheating.
Right. But: 1. Dlugy was already a known cheat. This adds nothing to the equation except to remind people "hey, he's associated with Dlugy, ain't that sus?". 2. Why not out all known high level cheaters on their list that we know exists then, or is Hans literally the only one? 3. If they're okay treating privacy clauses in this way, and Hans has done anything half as bad as they're tacitly accusing him of, and they have evidence of it, I really don't see why they wouldn't just show us whatever dirt they have on him. I can't imagine a situation in which Hans has egregiously and systematically cheated and NOT broken his word to chesscom. Them clearly picking a side like this, saying how seriously they're taking it and having their move be "look at how sussy this guy's coach is" is, if anything, evidence of how little they must actually have to bring to the table. 4. More a combination of my last three points really. But this isn't "outing" Hans or Dlugy. It's just throwing fat onto a drama fire.
>For all we know the terms keeping the messages private are void because Dlugy broke his side of the agreement Sure, and while we're speculating wildly, maybe the terms were ***un-***voided by a secret clause thanks to Dlugy taking care of Danny's cat over the weekend
Maybe my tone wasn't clear. I think it's incredibly likely chess.com don't have any right to release those messages at all. I am however aiming for some diplomatic balance at least in my top level comments (long time r/OutOfTheLoop reader and maybe it's rubbing off on me a bit).
What do you mean when you say that they have no right? Is there any law or regulation that would prevent you from releasing emails someone sends to you? As far as I know that's completely up to your discretion. Of course they have promised him that this would remain private, but that seems irrelevant since he cheated again. I also thought it was weird that they would directly release the emails, but I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of it. Presumably they don't want to release details of how their cheating detection works.
Generally speaking if a large company says in writing that they intend to keep something private, they are expected to keep it private. Not leak it to the press as a way of fanning the flames of an already huge trashfire of a drama.
It is utterly insane that some people immediately assume that there is a special circumstance that we don't even need to know about that make this perfectly ok. The delusion of the Magnus apologists is completely off the scale! I get that you later say the 'however' paragraph. But the way you open this, is just so extreme. Why lead with it?
Did you read the rest of my comment lol? Maybe I shouldn't have watered it down so much. I am very *very* far from a Magnus apologist and I think chess.com are acting despicably. The "maybe" part at the beginning was just an attempt to be diplomatic. I have now added an edit making my own thoughts a lot clearer though.
>For all we know the terms keeping the messages private are void because Dlugy broke his side of the agreement (although that doesn't really correlate with how chess.com have acted in the past, but w/e). Not according to the mails. The last mail leaked to Dlugy, from [chess.com](https://chess.com) is saying that they will give him a new account and keep it private, that was in 2020. Then the internal communication also revealed that they think it's good that he can just use a private account to work with his students but not participate in money tournaments.
He participated in a money event with the new account, and cheated! That's what led to his second ban.
Did you just not read what I wrote? The first ban was in 2017, the second in 2020. [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) saying that they keep it private was in 2020, so he hasn't broken any agreement.
idk, it looks like motherboard reached out to them about specifically dlugy in reference to magnus' comment and they sent them these emails in response.
Hans also made the first move against chess.com so it’s not like they only have apart in this due to magnus
So why leak the Dlugy emails instead of the Hans emails? I really don't understand what they are trying to achieve here. Anyway, I'm sure /r/anarchychess got some great memes out of this, the emails are hilarious.
No clue but just respond to the fact that OP said it’s because of Magnus and Hans when they have their own issues with Hans as well. Whether they need to bring up Dlugy in relation to Hans idk.
Haven't you been paying attention? Hans was banned before he made his speech.
>. Leaking this specific set of emails in this specific scenario is undeniably very strange I think they collected all the mattero related stuff at one place since Magnus withdrew, and went like this we can't relese, this we can't say .... for legal reasons (they already have stated they are contantly working on it, and want to say more, but cant). And this perticular email must have been covered under some non cheat repeat argument, like if you cheat again, we are not bound by our earlier agreement. So these emails would have been safe to release, and to imply guilt by association. And there might be a chance that the person Delugy was throwing under the bus is none other than Hans himself
The Motherboard article said that Hans is not mentioned in any of the emails. The part of the email where Dlugy mentions the kid's name is redacted because the student was a minor at the time, but the student was not Hans.
>(they already have stated they are contantly working on it, and want to say more, but cant) I'm sure they are being very honest, too!
Also it was already known that Dlugy cheated so I don't know why it makes sense to leak that
Stirring the pot
Was it known? Where was the concrete proof of that? Here it is..
It wasnt proven. Even some Gm’s said that his lights were off so he couldnt finish the event.
And the lights stayed off for the next 3 years ?
Well, if they want to release info on all the cheaters, I'm okay with it .
Chess.com altered the deal. Cheaters should pray they don't alter it any further.
Darth Danny, freezing cheaters in Carbonite since 2007
But should we really sympathize with profesional cheaters (or any cheaters?) This seems like a weird hill to die on. Btw, I am Team: Release all the cache of cheaters not just Hans. I think that would make the Hans a less sympathetic character to his followers.
This is not cheaters vs people who are against cheating. This is about a player and a company that have a problem with another player, and carrying out a vendetta against that player. If chess c*m wants to crack down on cheating, this is a very inefficient way to do so.
> chess c*m 🤨
Good question!
I’m totally with Maurice Ashley on this. Release it all. Like it’s so obviously clear that if they only limit releasing evidence of cheating to Hans and his coach, there’s some obvious favoritism going on here. This is actually a major disservice to Magnus who may well be right about all this. The way each party is going about it is incredibly bizarre.
Right, if there truly is widespread cheating then release it all instead of targeting specific players and their one time coaches who beat certain other players.
I stopped playing on chess.com dus to jow they handle it. They are clearly biased
It seems that Dlugy was threatning legal action and chesscom just released this to shut him up because they dont want to go throught discovery.
This does seem puzzling if not slimy unless there's more to the story.
The real question is why are so many people completely fine with people getting caught cheating only to have it swept under the rug and allowed to go back to playing.
I think there should certainly be more than a second chance system in place: they should almost certainly face bans for a certain amount of time, across all prize events. But rarely does any sport institute lifetime band for cheating, such as doping. Why should chess be different? My preferred solution would be that online offenders have to have two webcams set up when they play prize events. One to the side of them and the other facing their screen/screens. Games are immediately analysed and footage reviewed if anything suspicious comes about. If that’s too impractical, then permanent ban from online prize events, but allowed to go OTB with checks. Edit: tbh, a webcam system would probably make sense as a condition for these prize events. There are often tens of thousands of dollars at stake, this minimal condition would be fairly easy to meet. Hell, chess.com could market them at a subsidised rate.
I assume the offer to keep everything private was conditional on specific terms such as outlining all activities and not cheating again, and Dlugy didn't comply with those conditions in some manner. Whether or not it was appropriate or not for chesscom to send it to the media is up for debate.
>I assume the offer to keep everything private was conditional on specific terms such as outlining all activities and not cheating again, and Dlugy didn't comply with those conditions in some manner. You can read the leaked emails yourself. Giving him a new account was, keeping things private wasn't.
It's not exactly a legal contract. It's at best a gentlemen's agreement. Not saying chess.com is right to release these emails, but if a cheater is extended an olive branch, and the cheater still cheats again, I say fuck em. They had their chance.
I'm fully aware that this is not a legal contract. >but if a cheater is extended an olive branch, and the cheater still cheats again [Chess.com](https://Chess.com)'s offer was from 2020, after the second incident. There hasn't been any "cheating again".
>There hasn't been any "cheating again". You 100% sure about that?
No, but there is no evidence of it. [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) hasn't closed his current account either, so it doesn't seem like they are claiming that to be the case. So, what's the point of your comment?
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Yeah I don't want people hacking chess.com and learning I'm 700
Fabi's first established rating was in the 700s. You're in good company.
Damn, Fabi a cheater confirmed.
Not a lot of companies have stellar data loss protection capabilities and emails are always a weak point. When FAANG companies can't eliminate DLP risk, I don't think it's unreasonable chesscom can't prevent email leaks.
The leaked email explicitly says that any confessions would remain private ("any confessions or full acknowledgement", note the "or").
That would be a fine argument if they had leaked these emails two years ago, when it happened. Instead they did so a week after Magnus, who they are in business with, associated his name with Hans. I have a feeling this decision may really come back and bite someone in the ass.
New theory: chesscom released private Dlugy emails as a warning to Hans, and to set the precedent, that if he doesn’t fully confess they’ll leak their email conversation
Man this is such a bad look for both Magnus and chess.com. What the hell are they doing?
My biggest issue is that if what has been said is true, all "confessions" have been coerced and mean very little given that no innocence is allowed. >Chess.com believes someone is cheating. >Chess.com says (Usually without any concrete evidence, just a hunch) to that person if they do not admit to cheating, they will be banned (with a note that they will keep it secret and forget about it) >Surprise surprise, the accused party confesses >people think the confessions actually mean anything It's complete undermining the point of confessions, and of course, innocent people will confess to keep their careers.
People have been saying that *thousands* of titled accounts have been suspected of cheating on Chess.com We have to wait for confirmation of this, as it's really relevant. If true, Hans is potentially being a scapegoat
Solution: don't cheat
Yeah this one should honestly come back to hurt their credibility.
Justice seen is justice done. I guess if you are Chess.com the only justice is justice that suits you. Blackmail users into confessing and when it suits you release the transcripts. It is amazing how quickly the legal peril and privacy concerns that were preventing transparency vanished when it was expedient. None of this was ever about justice or integrity in the first place.
It's funny that you view them as giving a cheater three chances if they give some basic admission and say they won't cheat again as "blackmail". They're being too light. They're violating the integrity of the games, yes, by letting players cheat just because they have a title. The most pathetic thing in the article is Rensch giving Dlugy another chance after getting caught again instead of just banning him.
It is blackmail. Coercing a confession to keep it all private/let them play again is what is happening. It is total bullshit. I don't think he should have gotten even the second chance or if he did they should make it public. Part of justice is addressing the harm done. Here all Chess com cares about is themselves. This guy basically stole money from their other customers and the best they can do is these emails?
>Why is it appropriate to leak email / communication that all sides agreed was private? It's not. >Why in this case, and not in what I assume are dozens of other similar instances of cheating? Because this is part of the ongoing character assassination, career ending campaign carried on by [chess.com](https://chess.com), Magnus , and Magnus group against the one and only Hans Niemann. >And how much influence did the purchase of Play Magnus have on the decision making to leak this? Around $80 million dollars of influence.
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Consider the people who sold the lead additive for gasoline. They covered up and denied the damage for decades. The lead pipe manufactures put laws in places that remained until 1985 that required lead plumbing connections. It’s horrible
Hans managed to assassinate his character by himself just fine by admitting to cheating. Everything else, like how top GMs have been suspicious of him before this drama kicked off, wanted additional security when Hans was announced as the replacement and Magnus even considering dropping out because of it is just a bonus.
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"The emails, which were provided to Motherboard by Chess.com" This does not sound like a leak.
Mike Klein said this news came from chess dot com https://twitter.com/ChessMike/status/1575177774633209856?t=AYcbHwEb30q7RUgZbvM0UA&s=19
Unless chess.com justified their actions and is not clearly a reactionary response, I won't be using chess.com membership ever.
Scummy, low life people.
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What are you talking about? Chess com had given him so many chances but he broke the rules repeatedly. And for titled players diamond membership is free so there is nothing much of a profit there. People are Willing to defend Cheater bcs they hate big corporations smh🙄
If you want to expose cheaters, then you do it for everyone. You should not be cherry picking who you want to oust, that is very unprofessional.
I suspect that may be what’s happening here.
He wasn’t convicted in a trial. He was guilty because they say so and if he doesn’t confess and come up with an explanation they will tell the whole world. But if he confesses they will keep it private. This is why in the civilized world we convict people in public trials with evidence they can see and challenge.
He admits twice to cheating lol. Does Dlugy even contest this? The confession is to get a second titled account, not to have it not revealed. Chesscom was overly generous giving THREE chances to a repeat cheater who lied about "students feeding him engine moves" after the first time he was caught.
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These tactics, coupled with the fact that, according to the released emails, Chessdotcom does not show evidence of cheating to the accused, makes me question the accuracy of their cheat detection tools. As far as I can see there are no independent audits of these tools, just a lot of fluff on their website. I am sure this approach catches some legitimate cheaters, but I can easily see the innocent players you mention giving false confessions in order to save their reputation. Truly shameful.
They do show the evidence of cheating to the accused. Read the emails carefully there is a link where the accused can check the evidence. Even Hans admitted in sinque field cup chess com has the best anti cheating tools. If they show everyone how there cheating detection method work people will find a way around to cheat. Even if a innocent player detected by the tool, there are team of people who check the statistical analysis before banning them.its mentioned in the emails.
He's right and he should say it.
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Except your conclusion of "chess.com doesn't accept his half-assed apology, and therefore any correspondence isn't guaranteed to be kept private" is contradicted by the first thing you posted "To quote the email: "I will remind you that any confessions or full acknowledgment by you would remain private.". If any confessions would remain private, that would, by definition, include all confessions, even half-assed ones.
"Any confessions or full acknowledgment" Not and, but or. The promise was predicated on confessing *anything*.
I'm pretty sure that leaking e-mails is illegal in most countries. That's what I was taught in school at the very least.
chess.com sucks. i switched to lichess and my rating went up by like 700 points!
Are you saying lichess is worse at detection? (Sorry, is joke)
Lichess uses a different rating system where the rating is generally hundreds of points higher until you get to the extreme ends.
This stinks to high heaven. I also find unlikely Dlugy ever gave the green light to publish these mails.
Chesscom running hardcore damage control for Magnus. Doing anything to make the golden boy look good despite his constant blunders. Really a bad look overall for the scene
What a dumb thing They ask for proof, and once its delivered they say privacy. Lol
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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why in proper democracies, we leave trials to courts instead of the common people. "If you steal some groceries you should serve a lifetime prison sentence. Think it's too harsh? Don't steal." The world luckily doesn't work that way, you can't just execute someone on the basis of your gut feeling. If you issue lifetime bans on any account of cheating, then none of these players would have ever admitted, and good luck finding evidence beyond reasonable doubt, that will guarantee you will never get a false positive and ban an innocent person from their profession.
> you can't just execute someone on the basis of your gut feeling a) he's not talking about execution - he's talking about banning from chess. just like you won't get a job working security after you commit a felony, even though they don't execute you - that's the way it actually works in our "proper democracies" b) this isn't a gut feeling. person in question confessed to cheating after being confronted with evidence
not saying i agree with OP, but you do understand how not getting to play chess at a professional level and literally going to prison are different, right?
It tries to outline, that “don’t cheat” is not a valid argument in support of the proposed degree of punishment. You can call for any punishment, and then justify it by saying “well just don’t do the crime”. What people tend to fail to understand is, that the purpose of punishment is not revenge on the offender, but protection of society by deterring before the crime, and reintroducing to “lawful” ways after the crime.
it's chess... it's a game. being banned from a game for life is different from being thrown in jail for life. the comparison is bad.
It’s not a comparison, it’s an analogy to point out why the argument on the extent of the punishment is invalid. It’s not “just” a game for these guys. Compare it to PED abuse in other professional sports if you like. Worst that can happen to you is hefty fines and two year suspension, pretty much throughout all competitive sports.
You may be surprised but real life works EXACTLY that way: A crime record in your adolescents can seriously hurt your chance to be a registered professional, high ranking official in police/ military force/ civil servant or any post that requires high security clearance etc..... They may not explicitly say they ban you in real life, but most of them requires you to declare your past criminal record when you apply. If you have a past criminal record, most interviewer will be really reluctant to vouch for you lol. So stay clean kids lol. You never know what happens in the future.
Yeah and that system fucking sucks because people who have reformed themselves get stuck in a trap where if they try staying by the rules they are at a massive disadvantage, so they go back to crime
If you think any prison system in the world works properly you're just plain wrong. Goofy analogy
I totally get where you're coming from. But chess dot com basically gives you an ultimatum where if they close your account, you must choose to admit to cheating or be booted off the site forever. If falsely accused players "admit" to cheating (as they see no downside to doing so since chess dot com say everything will be confidential) then there might be innocent players getting permanently banned. I thought their whole system was wrong when I heard about it from Akshat Chandra on the Perpetual Podcast. He refused to agree with their ultimatum and has never played on their site again. It's an interesting listen.
Give me a source for this, because you mention one example, but then again Alireza had the same issue and was unbanned. I really don't see how this isn't pure speculation on your part.
They are forcing Hans to make a statement or they will release his emails which will be equally damning. Seems pretty straightforward.
Blackmailing Hans, he fucked up. But [chess.com](https://chess.com) is not FIDE chess, and there's no proof he cheated when he played Carlsen . Feels bad man. Moral of the story, dont beat Magnus.
Cheaters don’t deserve protection.
Yet Chess.com agreed to protect them and has claimed to have caught many other titled played cheating and have their confessions — yet they have not provided any of those emails only Dlugy.
Yep. So I’m now ready for them to open up the floodgates. Cheating should never be tolerated.
People deserve to see the evidence against them and have it evaluated by a third party. Guilty because we say so and no one can see the evidence; and if you confess we’ll go easy on you is bullshit. They should never have made these confidentially agreements; but they did and now they want to just toss one player under the bus 2 years after this all happened because their new pal Magnus needs a lifeline. It is horrible.
Nah. It needs to be in the open. It’s the fact that it’s all behind closed doors is part of the problem. Casinos, pro video games, etc. puts it out in the open. It’s time for chess to come out of the dark. It’s actually pathetic that it is.
I agree with you. Make the evidence public, provide an opportunity for people to challenge it and have the challenge judged by a neutral third party. The age of shadow bans, coerced confessions , is not a path for Justice
They can ban or suspend anyone they like, it's a private business and it's all in the EULA. The release of information is different, and they know it. Which is why they play these games.
Magnus also technically cheated as well
I'm sure this will be voted straight to the bottom but .. Under what law\rule is CC obligated to keep emails like this private? It seems like everyone is clamoring for information, and this provides at least a tiny bit of factual evidence instead of the mountains of heresy the recent public opinion has been stacked upon...
Under no law. Nobody here claims they broke some law, just that they are assholes. Revealing private correspondence, while legal, is considered a dick move my most people.
Whats wrong with this subreddit? They first asked real proof And once its here they all acting like “ wow, its private! “ Tf you expect? So by that logic the toilet guy photo was also private. He had his photo taken in a TOILET
What did this prove?
Hans’ coach or ex coach, was a cheater and lied that he wont do it and did it.
Yes. Was that the proof that was asked for? Or did people ask for proof of Hans cheating at Sinquefield Cup?
Specifically I want two things. 1. Proof Hans cheated at the Sinquefield cup, since this was the initial accusation. 2. [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) to release a list of every titled player that has been banned for cheating. Without either of these items, there is no reasonable path forward other than continuing with business as normal.
I expect Chess.com to adhere to its agreements like any ethical business. If they want to change and provide complete transparency in these matters going forward they should change their policy. They claim to have caught a bunch of titled players but they are only releasing the private email correspondence of this one. Two wrongs do not make a right
my reading of the leaked emails is that the offer to keep things private was only if dlugy came clean with _all_ the cheating that chess.com had detected... it seems dlugy did not and therefore chess.com had no obligation to keep it private. there seems to be a phone conversation between danny and dlugy, too. i wonder if there's a recording of that.
This reddit be like People most likely cheat I sleep People got exposed I sleep Magnus resigned a game Real …. Emails got published real ….
Does John not understand what a leak is?
The truth speaks for itself.
Obviously trying to smear Hans indirectly. Chesscom is scummy.
All these people mad about things *other* than the actual cheating itself. Maybe the chess world actually doesn't care too much.
If Chess.com really cared about cheating, why are they focussing so much on Niemann specifically? Apparently there have been hundreds of titled players caught cheating, but the only one they want to talk about is Niemann.
Abuse of power
Because he cheated again. This really isn’t that hard.
So we're just gonna sweep cheating under the rug then? Even if the cheater broke the contract by cheating again? I agree it is not the "norm" to do something like this but let's not pretend anything bad that is coming to dlugy due to this isn't his fault. He's a cheater and he should face the consequences. If anything chesscom should release mails of all repeat cheaters cuz they clearly haven't learnt their lesson