[nonethewiser]

> (or Niemann, if concrete evidence against him emerges)

This window seems closed though. Carlsen seems to have no evidence. Where else could the evidence come from? All we have is character attacks. Even if justified, they can't prove that he cheated.

All we know for sure is that Carlsen accused him of cheating with no evidence.

[hn_throwaway_99]

All this talk of "Carlsen accused him of cheating with no evidence" reminds me of the blowback against some athletes in the 70s and 80s who accused rivals of taking PEDs "with no evidence".

Sometimes the evidence of someone doing monstrously better than can be expected by their history is sufficient IMO. I mean, look at this article about swimmer Shirley Babashoff [1], dubbed "Surly Shirley" at the time by the media, for suggesting the East German women were on PEDs in the 70s. Nowadays we look back on those images of the East German women, looking more manly than any dude I've ever seen, and wonder how we considered with a straight face that they weren't on a boatload of drugs. Similarly, it completely baffles me how any sane person can think that Flo Jo wasn't on PEDs in the runup to the 1988 Olympics - her 100m dash record still stands today.

I'm not saying Carlsen went about it in the right way, because now Niemann is basically in an indefensible position, but I'm also not willing to quickly dismiss it because Carlsen has "no evidence".

1. https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/exclusive-shirley...

[pseudo0]

Usain Bolt is another interesting case. Commentators have made a pretty compelling case based on the circumstantial evidence that he was doping, but due to weaknesses in Jamaica's anti-doping program it's likely impossible to prove one way or the other.

https://tomnew.medium.com/usain-bolt-lance-armstrong-and-the...

[AmericanChopper]

A huge number of (male) athletes across all sports are doping now. Testosterone deficiency is a medical condition, and taking “testosterone replacement therapy” is explicitly allowed by many sports. Even if it’s not allowed, it’s not really possible to robustly test for, because in some forms at least it’s simply increasing the levels of the same hormones that your body is naturally producing. Same goes for human growth hormone. Just take enough to put your levels at a very high, but plausibly natural level and you essentially can’t fail a drug test.

It’s only called “testosterone replacement therapy” when it’s prescribed by a doctor btw. Taking exactly the same course of medication in any other circumstances is called “taking steroids”.

[runnerup]

Is trivially Easy to test for TRT. Taking testosterone shuts off your body’s LH and FSH production and those can be tested. These can be biologically mimicked with hCG and HMG but those don’t chemically show up on LH and FSH tests.

[AmericanChopper]

LH ratios aren’t a robust test, aren’t accepted by any governing body alone as far as I’m aware, and are only a very weak indicator if you’re only testing urine. Testosterone to epitestosterone ratio is still the gold standard, and to fail that test you need a ratio about 3x above normal. The efficacy of these tests are also highly impacted by when the PEDs were last taken, and that’s true for all classes of PEDs, not just the bio identical ones.

There are also faaaaaar more PEDs than the labs test for. The state of PED testing is completely unreliable, and you really have to be an idiot to get caught. But that’s only if your PEDs are actually prohibited, which they often aren’t.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Which sports is TRT specifically allowed? The only one I know of is MMA, but I'd consider that marginal as a "sport". Are there others?

[AmericanChopper]

FIFA call it a “therapeutic use exemption”, which basically anybody can get with a note from a doctor. A lot of other sports have similar exemption processes. I know the NFL does too.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> FIFA call it a “therapeutic use exemption”, which basically anybody can get with a note from a doctor.

In my quick research on this, the TUE process appeared to be quite strict, and definitely not an easy "you just need a note from a doctor" kind of thing. For example, in the NFL, the only example I could find where they'd give a testosterone exemption is if you had testicular cancer and had removal of 1 or both testes, which seems reasonable. I also found examples where both the NFL and FIFA had recently suspended players for testosterone use.

If you have any other examples or sources that counter this info, I'd be very interested to see it.

[stouset]

What hard evidence—exactly—do you expect Carlsen to be able to produce? Alternatively, imagine anyone in a similar position. What hard evidence can anyone produce in situations such as this?

100% serious question.

[roflyear]

I don't expect him to produce evidence, but I expect him to say more than "I suspect he cheated"

If he saw something unusual, like "Hans was messing with his shoe" or "I heard several vibrations coming from Hans during the game" etc.. that would be at least something.

It would be something. Magnus has given nothing.

[stouset]

Magnus has produced what he can given the situation and has staked something of extreme personal value—his legendary near-2900 ELO—on it with his move-1 resignation.

If he'd heard the guy's damn shoe buzzing he would have insisted on a search.

[FreakLegion]

FIDE doesn't rate the Champions Chess Tour, but even if it did the format isn't classical, so his quest for 2900 is doubly unaffected.

[stouset]

I appreciate the correction, thank you.

[roflyear]

Blah. Magnus has given nothing. Could have still insisted he was searched. He didn't. Magnus has anxiety.

[jamespo]

Playing cheats can do that

[roflyear]

I don't disagree, but it doesn't mean he cheated or continues to cheat.

[Aeolun]

Entirely possible, but a hell of a thing to throw away your reputation over.

[Taek]

I believe you could have an engine look at the historical games of a player and identify the "strength" of each move. How strong (in terms of elo) does a player have to be before they find a certain move? How often do the top players find moves that greatly exceed their own elo? Does Hans find top moves more frequently than his opponents?

The challenge with this appoach of course is identifying a players strengths and adjusting for their preparation. Making 20 top engine moves in a row is not odd if both players studied that exact line before the match.

What's odd is making 20 top moves in a row on a bizzare line that nobody has ever played before that Magnus specifically prepared because he knew it was unusual (and engine disadvantaged) and unlikely to be in anyone's prep.

[andrepd]

Doesn't than line of thinking mean that anybody can accuse somebody of cheating when they unexpectedly beat them?

[stouset]

No, it means that the reality of catching cheaters in chess is fundamentally heuristic if you don't manage to catch them red-handed.

This accusation hits many of the heuristic high notes.

That doesn't mean he definitively cheated. But to me, with ~15 years of chess under my belt, it does make this accusation credible.

[yesseri]

Niemann have admitted cheating before when playing online, so Carlsen is just not making this up about any random player. There is a history of cheating.

[diehunde]

Also Carlsen didn't accuse other players of cheating the other times he's lost

[lupire]

The sample size for that is absurdly small. (Carlsen only takes single classical losses seriously, since rapid/blitz is too random.)

[ddalex]

There is no smoking gun, but there is a lot of smoke. The ease with which Niemann pulled out of the hand a couple of brilliant moves, without spending too much time thinking about it, on an unusual line, is highly suspicious.

[bnralt]

Questioning him at the tournament would have at least given Niemann a chance to prove his innocence.

[runarberg]

That probably would have been even worse of a shit-storm. You think you are rational and will ask good questions, but if you are not a trained journalist, and you haven’t prepared, you will most likely only ask really dumb question that do nothing except cause more drama.

[lupire]

Innocence is never proven, only presumed.

[lmm]

I expect people to hold off the public allegations if they can't prove anything.

I could name specific players who I'm pretty sure were cheating in my own game. I've sometimes had a quiet word with a ref and asked them to watch a particular player closely. I've occasionally had a louder word with a ref and asked them to enforce the rules that are in place to make cheating harder. But you can't pull something like this based off of nothing but your own feelings.

[sva_]

I don't know much about chess, but it seems like Niemann now has to either maintain his performance in Chess without cheating, or cheat to maintain it if he can't without - in which case he could still be caught.

[John23832]

That's not true. Both he and Chess.com both say that they have evidence to the extent of Hans' cheating. Both have asked Neimann for the ability to speak freely without threat of libel.

Ball is in Han's court.

[kweingar]

This doesn’t make sense.

If they tell the truth, there is no libel, and they don’t need anybody’s permission to speak.

[eyegouging]

Apparently this (the idea that telling the truth is necessarily not libelous) is untrue in some jurisdictions? Or perhaps they fear that they are not 100% correct?

[runarberg]

Not quite. There is still a possibility that Niemann will admit cheating. If he actually cheated there may be a time—in years or decades rather then months—that he fills with remorse and admits it (hopefully with a detailed description on how he did it so we can verify). If however he didn’t cheat, we will probably never actually know the truth.