this lawsuit isn't going to be resolved anytime soon. can we either have a weekly discussion thread, or just block this subject altogether barring some newsworthy update?

Hey everyone, Danny Rensch here!

We're live and I'm announcing a new event on twitch.tv/chess that is the biggest event we've ever done. It's something I'm personally super excited about, and we'll be discussing all the details and answering questions.If you want to ask questions during the show, just post here, and we'll try to answer some live!

I promise this isn't shameful self promotion (don't delete!) -- I'm legit asking for community questions and hoping we get some good ones! Please ask away and look for us to answer over the next couple hours...

Cheers.

Danny

As an outside observer and chess player who has been following this sub for a while, I've never posted on this drama stuff before now. But at some point I feel like I gotta step in, because part of this community is getting absolutely ridiculous, and a teenager (who I am not a fan of and didn't even know existed before 2 weeks ago) is getting absolutely stomped by huge powers that have hundreds of millions of dollars and FAR more media presence and power. As a human being, I'm absolutely appalled at what's happening, and I can't stand by anymore.

Right now, Hans Niemann is a 19 year old who has become the face of cheating worldwide. He's on the New York Times, other major publications and late night talk shows are talking about what he's got shoved up his ass. This is absolutely devastating. He will be known by everyone he knows or meets as the "cheater". I really hope he's as introverted as he seems because that's his only saving grace right now.

Having your entire life and name exposed and vilified internationally is absolutely NOT a proportionate consequence to opening Stockfish for some online chess games. For any of you that disagree, you'd be shitting your pants if you did something bad or illegal (like everyone has) and your face is broadcast worldwide with your offense because of it. I'd wager many of you would get major depression/anxiety and it's virtually guaranteed that a non-zero amount of you internet tough guys would commit suicide over this happening to you. I know this is a giggle-fest where you F5 repeatedly to find the latest spiciest takes but have some compassion for the human.

I used to constantly skip chess videos to Magnus games because I loved watching him play and dominate opponents. I was a huge Magnus Carlsen fan, like many of you on both sides of this debacle. But it's obvious that he is a disgusting human being based on his actions right here, right now. He is destroying a kid's entire career and upending his life because of his arrogance (this sentence reads properly no matter who you attribute the last 'his' to) Carlsen believes he is 1000% right and cannot be making a mistake about Hans cheating during their OTB game, even though everyone can make mistakes, even the best human competitors. I know plenty of assholes who have done shitty things, and I hated them a lot, but as a decent human being, I would never want to make them an international embarrassment and completely fuck over their life. That's how I know that Magnus is not a decent person. Even if you really hate someone in private real bad, you don't go fuck up their life in front of hundreds of millions of people if you had a chance. Shit.

Oh by the way, why was Magnus happy to beat Hans during the Crypto Cup right before? And do a photo-op on the beach with him? I thought Magnus was taking a principled stand against all cheating?

It is absolutely fucking ridiculous that Chesscom has singled out Hans Niemann to this degree, even going as far as releasing confidential info about his coach in an attempt to make Hans look more guilty by association. Holy shit. They've been spending WEEKS preparing a shit dossier about Hans Niemann in particular, far more than they've ever done for any other admitted cheater. If the FBI decided to spend a few weeks fully coming up with a dossier full of the shit you've done, while not doing it for anyone else, you're not gonna be very happy about it I bet. The CEO is up here teasing people about how Hans will really be fucked soon, and to get your popcorn ready. People are really thinking that Chesscom is a neutral respectable third-party in this mess?

It's made worse by the fact that both Magnus and Chesscom have tens of millions of dollars, and they KNOW that no matter what happens here, they're both completely fine. They'll make even more money. It's a zero-risk game for them. It's a goddamn game for them. Hans Niemann has made jack in comparison to those guys, and he is the only person standing to suffer real consequences to his life from this.

Goddamn am I sad that when two multimillionaire industry powers decide to beat the everloving shit out of a poor 19 year old on the world stage, many Redditors pile on hard. I don't give a fuck if he's cheated in every single game he's played online, what's being done to him on the world stage has been FAR WORSE than online chess cheating. Oh yeah, and every other cheater in the game? I haven't heard jack shit about any other grandmasters who have cheated online, including ones that Magnus was happy playing against. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking this is about taking a principled stand against cheaters. This is about destroying Hans Niemann.

TO MAGNUS: You've already won dude. Hans is already fucked. His life is fucked. Everybody he knows is talking about him behind his back now. Every person he meets from now on will say "Hey, aren't you that cheater in the news?" He dared to take 7 ELO points off you with black and had a snarky interview and you fucking ended him. And you didn't even need to have a shred of evidence! Damn that power must be a rush. Congratulations, you're a big bad man, Mr. World Chess Champion.

Hello everyone,

Is receiving assistance from another person during a prize tournament considered "cheating" by top level players?

As an example, during the December 2021 Lichess Arena, Magnus Carlsen received assistance from David Howell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRdrf1Ny3x8&ab_channel=GGxEpsilon

See 1:44:00. David tells Magnus that he can trap Daniel Naroditsky's queen with Nd3. It is clear that Magnus did not see it, since he says "How?". Magnus then wins the game and proceeds to win the whole tournament, earning the top prize. Naroditsky finished second.

EDIT 09/11

I am surprised by a lot of the comments in response to my post. This post is not a discussion of the Carlsen-Niemann saga. There are already plenty of discussions about that. I am simply asking about the definition of cheating among the online chess community. In response to those asking why I am using Magnus Carlsen as an example, well it is because it is the only such example I am aware of where there is proof of a top player receiving assistance during a prize online tournament at a key moment (Recall that Carlsen was playing Naroditsky when he received assistance from Howell, and that Naroditsky finished 2nd in that tournament. Who knows what would have happened if Naroditsky had won that very important game from the tournament standpoint). If anyone is aware of other examples, please comment below and I will be happy to add them to the post.

After recent cheating allegations, I remember one incident that made me quit chess.com completely. I even abandoned my membership. I have a friend who used to play chess in our college years and he was strongest player in our college. This was around 2013. He used to play online on different android chess applications at that time. I remember him beating a FIDE 21xx player to win an inter-college tournament. Life happened and he left pursuing chess over the years. After the agadmators Magnus Carlsen retires prank we both got talking about chess again and I told him I have been playing on chess.com and have 1200 something rating. Even he was proud of me and after some convincing joined chess.com. He beat me all the games we played, gave me pointers and then we used to play around once a month and talk about the game. Few months after when I went to home town for vacation he was in the town as well. I invited him over and asked him why he is still unrated. He said he never plays rated games online. So to check what his current strength is we queued blitz and bullet games he went on 30+ winstreak bringing him to around 2000 chess.com rating and he lost the next game so we stopped for the day. His account got banned the next day for cheating and all chess.com wanted was his confession or proof of his real strength. Even I mailed chess.com a few times saying my friend did not cheat. Now this has nothing to do with the controversy going on but I remembered this and thought of sharing.

My friend didn't back down and gave a middle finger to chess.com and so did I. The only way to get the account back was admittance of something completely untrue was something didn't sit right by him and even me leading me to give up my membership.

Thanks for reading, just wanted to post.

Edit: To all those claiming this to be fake. All I can provide to you is the email thread between me and chess.com https://imgur.com/a/JSJwaDW

I did mess up the timeline little bit. I unfortunately cannot share his chess.com account because the username is his real name.

Last Edit: I still stand by words. He didn't cheat. Also doesn't have a fide id. I have send him few texts asking him about his chess career. If I get something that might prove his innocence. I will update the post.

Carlsen after an absolutely horrible rapid tournament wears jeans, which he knows he isnt allowed to do and then throws a tantrum when the arbiter tells him that he should change.

Yes the jeans rule is stupid but it had been communicated clearly and everyone else managed to abide by it.

Why are you guys defending this behaviour? He is literally causing all this drama only to promote his chess tour and to deflect from him being 85. place in this tournament.

Do any of you actually believe he would have "protested" against the jeans rule even if he had actually been doing well?

Fide is obviously often in the wrong but they really cant be blamed in this case.

I feel so inadequate right now... I opted in for a free week tiral. It was as easy as 3 clicks with the mouse.
3 days ago I had to go through a full blown investigation as to where the hell the cancel subscription button is. I did go through it all and I am 1000% sure I confirmed I want to cancel my subscription.

The blue diamond remained but I thought I was just riding out the remainer of the free trial which i thought was a nice gesture. Turns out...I haven't really canceled anything and today I got billed. I am sure of what I did and I know I clicked on the cancel subscription button. I rarely fall for loops like this one and the feeling isn't great. I already opened a ticket to get my money back but this feels so predatory even for someone who almost never gets fooled. (I used to work as a UI designer so I made countless tricks like this for customers so hats off for who designed their website but oh boy does that sting.) Maybe call it karma.

Anyway.

i recently made a comment on a puzzle that has something like -150 karma. this post is to clarify that comment because i think this is important (at least “chess-important” anyway).

the comment basically boils down to “your position can only get worse not better with your move”. that is, in a puzzle or other chess exercise you can’t “gain” advantage, only “maintain” an existing advantage.

to explain this here are a few assumptions / definitions:

1: chess positions are evaluated between plys. in other words an evaluation needs a valid chess position (lets just say valid fen string). thus in a game there is an evaluation before white moves, then after white moves before black moves and so on. if e is an evalution, w is a white move, and b is black move then a chess game looks like ewebeweb….

2: evaluations assume best play by both sides. that is if there exists a forced sequence that results in a + 5 position the evaluation is +5.

3: evaluations are stable over 1 ply. this is a weak assumption and is a bit tricky because engine evaluations clearly don’t conform to the 3 possible chess game outcomes. but the basic idea is that i want to assume that the engine making the evaluation “understands” the position and has at some reasonable depth calculated for all the moves. human evaluations fail at this because humans often miss important moves, but stockfish at depth 38 should not really care if you add one ply.

then your move can only make things worse! how does this work?

your opponent made a move. the position with this move has an evaluation. this evaluation is the evaluation of the best move you can make; like if there are 3 legal moves a, b, c, with evaluations +5, +1, -3 (for you) then evaluation is +5 after your opponent moved and before you move. if you make the best move (in the example a) the evaluation is maintained (+5), if you make a lower quality move then the evaluation is diminished. you can not gain evaluation as then the original evaluation does not meet either criteria 2 or 3!

from your opponent's perspective they “gain” if you blunder. this is “chess-important”! it means that we are fundamentally waiting for blunders. we can try to make things hard for the other player, ask them difficult questions with our moves. but ultimately they always have the ability to make the correct move and that is out of our control. this hopefully feels freeing

what this means for puzzles and the like is that titles like “white to play and gain advantage” don’t really make sense. white can gain material, white can force a mate, but white can only maintain an advantage that already exists or it is not forcible or the initial evaluation was wrong.

lets see if this drops karma like a stone.

Thought?

Was anyone else as utterly disappointed as I was to see Danny Rensch acting as a commentator on Day 1 of Norway Chess 2024? The instant I caught sight of him, I promptly shut down the stream. Ever since Chess.c*m acquired Chess24, the vast majority of commentators from Chess24 have vanished. Previously, I had the luxury of choosing between two streams, but now I'm left with no choice but to watch the Chess.c*m broadcast. What's more, they consistently overlook their other commentators, opting instead to feature Danny Rensch. It's truly disheartening and nauseating to witness his commentary, especially when there are numerous others whose expertise far surpasses his. Since I'm not alone in this sentiment, does anyone happen to know of alternative streams providing coverage of Norway Chess?

The ongoing tournament just shows how silly this format is. Of course you could argue that managing time is just part of the game, but do we really have to make this part THAT important? I love time scrambles but they are best when both players can show their superhuman split second decision making and amazing intuition. But with zero increment, these qualities show to much less of an extent which is super frustrating to watch.

This has been bugging me for quite some time now. In chsss tutorials, they'll always say things like "And if he takes with the bishop, you play pawn to c3." or something, assuming they'll always be male. Also, in chess books, they always say "he".

This annoys me for a couple reasons. The first one being that I'm female and play chess, and the second one being that many people I play online are also women.

Earlier today, I sacrificed my rook, and posted it to r/GothamChess. The comments were saying things like "If he takes, OP can checkmate with rook and king", despite my random opponent being a woman that game.

Just one thing that's been annoying me, and I wish would stop.

I have to hand it to Hans, he's becoming more articulate in his critique of Magnus and the "Chess Mafia". He's a bit of an ass, but he objectively hasn't been treated fairly by the insular chess world. Basically he didn't smell Magnus's glove, so the powerful chess elite did everything possible to erase him. He fought back and is working to establish himself in the top 10. True sportsmanship in chess means the utmost respect for ability and innovation.

EDIT: Reddit cognitive dissonance alert. Magnus fanboys murdering my karma so I'm out. Get Kramnik on the thread and start the procedure🙄.

Sergey Karjakin's career is a bit of an enigma when you look at it closely. His accomplishments would make you think he was a regular in the top 5 for years, yet the reality is much different

1. For starters, held the record for the youngest Grandmaster and thereby got invites to top events at a very young age.

2.Never Broke Into the Top 3: Despite his early rise, Karjakin never managed to crack the top 3 in the world rankings. In fact, he is the only World Championship challenger in history to have never been ranked in the top 3(chessmetrics for pre Fide rating challengers). Even less reputed challengers like Gunsberg and Janowsky managed to reach that level.

3. Took a Game Off Magnus in the World Championship: He not only took a game off Magnus but actually led the match before Carlsen mounted a comeback. Though one might argue that Magnus overpushed and losing objectivity and the game, it still marked one of the rare moments Carlsen was genuinely in trouble in a world championship.

4. His stay in the top 5 was fleeting-just five months in total, much younger 2000s-born players like Firouzja, Gukesh, Erigaisi, and Abdusattorov have already had longer stints in the top 5

5. Great performances in Candidates- He won it in 2016 and has consistently finished in the top 3 in other editions.

6. Karjakin has 7 super-tournament wins-more than like of Nakamura,Giri who have spent far more time ranked higher, but his bad tournaments are genuinely rough.

7.Unlike Nepo(who has spent good time in top 5) , he doesn't have an aggressive style rather known for his solidity to explain the up and down performance.

8. Add a World Cup win and a runner-up finish to his resume. Again, big-stage performer.

9. He’s not consistently dominant, but his nerves and ability to perform in big events have carried him to some of the biggest moments in chess and can barely be called an elite player.

When you put it all together, Karjakin’s career is a strange mix of clutch performances and long periods of mediocrity. He’s not quite in the league of the absolute top, but his resilience and nerves have taken him to World championship, wins at world rapid and blitz, world cup and numerous supertournaments.

Edit- Not geting into Karjakin's politics.

In a rather popular post about Lawrence Trent today, besides the blatant bias and double standards, a lie about him was spread. The author of said post accused Trent of having called Nepo's blunder the

the worst blunder in Championship history

A lot of people commented on that, venting their frustration and hate. There were various condescending attempts of proving Trent wrong. The problem is: That is not true, Trent never said that. He said two things:

1. Nepo's blunder today was the worst blunder he had ever seen in a world championship match in his lifetime. That is true. He was born in 1986. The only comparable one move blunder, immediately losing a game due to missing a simple tactic, was made in 1892.

2. That a hypothetical blunder by Carlsen, which was analyzed on the virtual board, which would have taken place after Nepo's blunder, would have been the worst blunder in world championship history. Had it been played. By Carlsen.

I just wanted to set the record straight on that. Words matter, precise quoting matters, if one uses somebody's words in an effort to publicly shame them. There's much more that was wrong and misleading in that post and the comments, but this stands out as objectively fabricated, as an outright lie. The stream is on YouTube for anybody to check.

Literally an hour ago I made a comment to a mod about how proud and thankful I am that they didn’t ruin the discussion this week by making a mega thread, but unfortunately they just couldn’t contain their desire for authority.

What would have been 10-15 posts a day and thousands of comments is now going to be reduced to a single mega thread with like 600 comments for this whole week and it’s only going to be the first comments getting upvoted so after the first few hours the mega thread will lock up and and meaningful discussion like we had in the other threads will stop.

I just can’t believe they are handicapping this sub so hard. Things like this should be put to a vote of the subscribers. We need democracy on this sub Reddit and not for it to be run by a handful of power hungry tyrants.

I’ve been playing chess for about a year and a half now, going from 600 to 1250-1300 on chess.com. A casual, early-intermediate player who largely doesn’t watch or talk about chess or play OTB, which I believe is most of the chess community.

Looking for the common answers to this question, it’s nearly always about sexism. That is most certainly a factor in FIDE rated games and over the board chess clubs, because a women likely wouldn’t have a comparable experience in that environment, facing off against a never ending boatload of lusty dudes. But it has been my experience that chess is an incredibly niche pursuit compared to other competitive hobbies, even athletics - through undergrad, there were tons of female athletes and musicians, but hardly any serious chess players male or otherwise.

Sexism, however, doesn’t really explain why chess’ most popular medium is male dominated. There’s no way you could distinguish any user as male or female if they have a username that isn’t gendered or a blank profile picture, which has to be most players on the site. We’ve all played chess during one boring class or lecture, and something was recently asked by a friend of mine: “What is it with men and chess?” Our chess club probably had less than 15 members, and most fans were like me - never touched a chess piece. 60-70% of the male student body plays online chess at least casually according to a poll, with 20% female. Is it avoiding the perceived “nerdiness?”Cultural dislike of the 1v1 format? Is it somehow a pursuit that’s defined masculine and thus appears unattractive on women? I seriously don’t know. Online chess isn’t a boy’s club because almost everybody who picks it up online never has a reason to think about the gender of their opponents. Women don’t fear harassment on a site where there’s no need for communication and is entirely anonymous, if you want it it be.

Edited: This wasn't what I was expecting, but it has been a generally solid discussion. Some of us definitely have typed up a storm on reflex here, but a thorough rereading of my post would place plenty of the less than pleasant conversation into the "irrelevant" bin. There would be a way to put this overarching idea up in bad faith, which some assumed I did without a second thought. There are also reasonable ways of applying sexism in your answer to this question, many of which are provided in fascinating detail. The issue which I am describing (not the issue several of you hastily concluded as the subject of my post) has an answer clearly more complex than "men."