Fun little Evans Gambit from a past US Open. Imperfect play by Black a couple times at the end there, but if our opponents didn't make mistakes we'd never win!

A bit late but I think there's a really good chance it was using the GNU Chess engine. GNU is free and open source software so it's a likely option and like you said has three difficulty levels of easy,medium,hard. I used to open it and play a few times a year and get completely destroyed on the easy level. I attributed this to just being naturally bad at chess and felt really stupid. Eventually I had enough and started reading up on chess strategy and it took me a few weeks to start beating it on easy. Like another poster said, the difficulty may have something to do with cpu improvements over the years. Reminds me of a flight simulator program my dad had for our DOS computer in the 90s that ran at 100x speed when we got a new computer.

Just a note, as there may be a few people here who are interested, I launched a Discord Server for Chess by the Numbers, hoping to build a community that discusses chess a little more analytically with less of the... let's politely say "noise"... found in a lot of chess discussions around the net. https://discord.gg/KtAsSRhG6G if anyone wants to join

OMG just saw that last round is Alireza vs Caruana!

Fabi has white, oohhhhh that would be amazing if it came down to that game ftw.

The Shankland mistaken pre-move loss costing the USA the match win vs Armenia in the Olympiad is the kind of thing that in theory I'd enjoy because he's kind of a jerk, but in reality is so painful I can't even really like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdx_b5fOixU

I enjoy it just fine, not because I have anything against Shankland, but just because the U.S. team is so silly.

What a game.

Interesting! I've always been curious about that video. What famous game does it draw from?

Had a hard time identifying it, with the non-Staunton pieces and quick glimpses of the board at odd angles, but I eventually got it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Game

So did Hans cheat or not? Does Magnus even think he did?

Part of me wants to feel that somehow Hans infiltrated Magnus' secret circle and got his opening plans, but it's probably way more likely he knew the line (contrary to the interview he gave - since when did people start believing tv interviews like they were fact, especially during a 'sporting event' for money), Magnus went on Oreo tilt with g3-g4 and "gave dat man his maney" after getting subdued in a pretty straightforward losing endgame, went on monkey tilt after the Hans interview and withdrew in the typical Magnus troll fashion while everyone hopped on board for clicks and viewers.

Hikaru video content lean towards cheating from hans
It smell fishy how badly he analyses after the game and other GM opinions like nepo .

That implies he's not even a strong player and cheats in every game, which is absurd. How would he cheat in live chess, while on stage, and being checked with metal detectors and radio frequency detectors?

Paranoia and insanity – by Jacob Aagaard

MVL comments:



Hans Niemann interview (can skip to 8:15):

I think it’s very poor by Magnus and the onus is on him to come out and make a definitive statement soon.

I like Hans, his interviews this week have been awesome. I’ll only believe he cheated if someone provides some proof.

Fwiw , a video with stock fish analyses show that Hans made 33 best move with black while Magnus with white only made 23 best moves .
And Hans played almost to perfection the endgame vs one of the best virtuoso ever in endings .
Rating was 83 white vs black 93 .

Many flaws were apparent on Hans postgame analysis on his next game with white and in his last game with black he just played and couldn’t see a clear losing endgame transition vs a player that was similar strength to him ….

To me there is some massive red light shrug .

I just find striking ressemblance with Hans and fisher was use to speak in interview .
Similar voice , pause , way to express himself , etc .

how u came to that conclusion ?
fwiw there is a disctinction between a 2650 and a 2750-2800 clearly.
seem hikaru saw right through it the commentators too and other strong players are very suspicious too.





now tal wasnt accurate on many games so we can use that excuses but lets just say many suspicious are opened for a reason.
i rather trust a guy like magnus one of the clear top 5 players ever vs an unknown player with history of cheating shrug.
Or he got lucky , yeah that can happen, lets see how it goes from there.

Think it's clear Magnus believes something underhanded went on but has no proof. Given that scenario, he obviously can't make a public accusation or risk a lawsuit.

Nor does he need to make any public statement; he's getting the point across just fine.

Magnus should have played out the tournament

I haven't seen any real source make an argument that Hans cheated based on his moves in that game - the "fishy" part is catching Magnus in an opening where Magnus is the one who played a move he's never played before.

However, there is a normal explanation for it - he prepped for facing the Catalan and ended up there by transposition. Hans got very lucky he had looked in depth into the Nc3 variation (or whatever) and then played a slightly shaky game where Magnus played poorly and won.

Gustaffson and Fressinet discuss this and Hans pointed it out in his interview.

This just seems dreadful from Magnus' side. Posting that clip and telegraphing that he believes Neimann is cheating, without providing any explanation (no hard evidence, which admittedly is difficult to have - but not even any circumstantial evidence or anything) is not just being a really poor sport, it's one of the worst things he could do to any up-and-coming chess player.

I really hope there are repercussions for Magnus. This was one of the worst possible ways for him to handle this. Even if cheating in general was a concern that was brewing and Neimann just happens to be the one to be accused without formally being accused - there certainly is a better way to address cheating in OTB chess. You're/were the world champ FFS - just demand tournaments take more precautions before you show up. I'm sure they would incorporate whatever measures he wanted.

Nothing suspicious about those stats. They are easily achievable in a single game, and are too dependent on the type of positions (sharp or quiet, etc.). If anything, Magnus just played poorly compared to his usual standard. Nothing suspicious about those videos. Firouzja looks even worse in them. Hikaru is loving the controversy and fanning the flames, for the sake of his channel. That's literally his job these days.

Yes, it's not like he would have to face Niemann again. But by withdrawing he sent Niemann from leading to middle of the pack. Interesting way to punish Hans for beating him.

it isnt just the magnus game, u seen how badly he analysed the game afterwards vs firouzja ?

and how badly he misjudged the ending in a more "realistic" game in his last ?

how u can u play so great an ending vs magnus and be so shitty afterwards with big holes postmortem game ?
if u put so many hours in a game shouldnt he be more apt to clearly stated his ideas instead of wondering not being sure what he was thinking ?

anyway i guess will see later on in his career how great he will be ...

Well I will say reaching those stats vs a 2800+ is certainly not the same vs a 2300+….

Have you watched many post-mortems? There can often be big holes depending on how fatigued the player is after a game, how much of a F they give, and whether they want to actually provide any real thoughts on anything. Most interviews have almost no content - the player mentions a couple of simple lines that reveal almost nothing about what they were thinking during the game, talks about how chess is always a draw with best play, and then says they have a tough matchup the next day.

In his commentary of the Firouzja game one of the big criticisms was him not explaining his Qg3 move. He did pretty clearly without holding anything back in his monologue interview. He didn't feel the need to calculate b/c he knew Firouzja wouldn't take the piece b/c Firouzja is scared of being attacked and would be "scared shitless". Tbh I don't even think he should have revealed this even in his defense. If you have such a read on someone there's no value in broadcasting it for everyone to hear.

Have you watched any of Kramnik's post-game interviews of the last 10 years? It's him basically going on and on about how every move in every position he's ever had is basically winning while his opponent sitting next to him rolls their eyes during the entire post-mortem...

Your comments make it seem like you are going off of other incorrect interpretations of game statistics and post-mortems.

Hans' interviews are almost all a bit awkward and "weird" compared to everyone else's. That's part of the Hans experience. You also need to take into account that players lie constantly in post-mortems. It's completely standard to make up bullshit comments whenever you don't want to reveal your prep (e.g. Neimann didn't want to talk about how he was prepping against the Catalan so he made up some weird digression about why he was able to trap Magnus in an opening move order Magnus had never played).

If any of what your saying are signs of cheating then Hans and other players should be suspicious of cheating in many, many games.

So far there simply isn't any real evidence against Hans or even circumstantial evidence against him. The circumstantial "evidence" is all easily explained by very normal explanations. The chess community can't go witch hunting every time some rare upset occurs.