A recent chess controversy

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Headline & Article Framing

  • Many see the headline (“Did a US Chess Champion Cheat?”) as Betteridge-style clickbait: the article’s analysis concludes cheating is unlikely, yet the title suggests scandal.
  • Some readers say the title misled them into expecting a concrete cheating case, not a statistics explainer.
  • Others argue the headline is consistent with the piece and common media practice, just using a high-profile accusation as a hook for Bayesian reasoning.

Reputation of the Accuser and Accused

  • The accuser is described as repeatedly and baselessly accusing many top players, to the point some think his accusations reduce the posterior probability of cheating.
  • A few speculate he may be psychologically unwell; others say he’s sincere but “salty.”
  • The accused is seen as extremely well-documented: thousands of games, often streamed with real-time verbal analysis. Many say this transparency makes actual engine cheating in those games implausible.
  • Some recall earlier incidents where the accused himself made questionable cheating accusations, but most still sharply distinguish him from the accuser.

How Chess Cheating Works (Online and OTB)

  • Over-the-board: phones in bathrooms, hidden devices, audience confederates, or even just “1 bit” signals (“there is a winning move here”) can give a huge edge. Jokes about Faraday cages, SCIFs, and anal probes highlight how hard perfect enforcement is.
  • Historical issues: collusion, pre-arranged results, and strategic draws in tournaments blur the line between strategy and cheating.
  • Online: easiest is running a chess engine on another device or via extensions; platforms use engine-correlation stats and invasive proctoring tools (screen, mic, cameras) but high-level, intermittent cheating can still slip through.

Statistical / Bayesian Debate

  • Core point of the article (per many): you can’t just notice an impressive streak after the fact and infer cheating from its rarity; this is akin to marveling at a specific license plate or random number after you see it.
  • Others push back that the paper misapplies the likelihood principle and underplays the “look-elsewhere effect” and cherry-picking: selecting one streak out of a huge game history is not equivalent to pre-specifying it.
  • Disagreement over priors: using a very low cheating rate (e.g., 1 in 10,000 games) heavily drives the conclusion; some find this arbitrary or optimistic.
  • Several note Elo and performance are context-dependent (fatigue, motivation, online casualness), making long hot streaks more plausible than a naïve model suggests.

Overall Sentiment

  • Broad consensus in the thread: this particular streak is not good evidence of cheating.
  • Mixed views on the paper’s Bayesian rigor, but most see it as at least a useful illustration of how not to over-interpret surprising events.