I remember when I first heard the rumours and I immediately thought of how sensitive one's anal linings would be to perceive Morse code via a butt plug. Then pondered upon the max possible bandwidth of buttplug-mediated information transfer. Finally, I thought about how to send back information via rythmic anal clenching.
Only then did I conclude that it's probably easier to get better at chess.
A YouTuber tested it and confirmed it's not that difficult to detect messages. They didn't use Morse code but rather a simplified set of signals for move notation
: reset
: 3 in from the left
: shift to upwards
: 2 up from the bottom
: change to destination
: 2 up from the bottom
: shift to upwards
: 4 up from the bottom
There you go, I’ve actually spent 10 minutes of my life pondering an anal-bead-chess-communication protocol. I think it’s time for bed.
Best joke about that I saw was a video of Hans playing someone and looking confident up until a blunder or something. Then he realizes what happened and puts his face in his hands and closes his eyes.
The comment on the YouTube video was: "when the computer gives up and then switches to pleasure mode"
Yeah that's what I meant. It's not that it's not real, but the origin of the meme was Hans saying something to the effect of "I'll play Magnus naked to prove I'm not cheating" to which everyone responded that the anal beads technique would be how he did it. Of course the corollary of that is that there are numerous ways for him to cheat while fully clothed.
For those who haven't seen it- even if you don't have a background in data science or chess, this report is extremely damning. He's an unapologetic, manipulative, pernicious cheater.
The basic measure is “accuracy”: the percentage of moves that are the best move for that position. Computers are, as you would expect, inhumanly good on this measure. Better than the best human players, who will have “inaccuracies” even in their best-played games. It makes spotting cheaters pretty reliable and easy. Niemann has been busted for cheating online repeatedly, and analysis of his in-person play bears the same hallmarks.
I'm not convinced by that report. Their cheating detection method is inconclusive and if Hans had the ability to perform the "best" move in every circumstance due to cheating but didn't, that to me points to it being less likely. There are a lot of statistics in that report that seem extremely circumstantial like the "plateaus" in strength rating. If he was really cheating in the tournaments, I think there would be a whole lot more evidence.
This is "a whole lot of evidence". If he had, for example, a 10% chance to show up suspicious in any one of those charts that's one thing. But to be highlighted as the most suspicious in each is extraordinary evidence. How do you explain a greater than 10% drop in skill when a 15 minute TV delay was put in place? Or his ability to make incredibly complex, perfect moves in seconds? Or his continual, nearly unstoppable strength rating growth, you know, except for the two natural plateaus in rating where most players never continue to grow firmly in the middle of his growth curve?
If that report doesn't convince you, I doubt anything will.
If he always did what the engine tells him to do then the evidence would be overwhelming, yes. Hans is surely aware of this and avoids doing so because he wants to get away with it.
Uhhhmmm, I don’t want to be intrusive, but how exactly does one use small beads to cheat at chess? I’m trying to figure this out, …but I keep losing anyway.
It's important to remember that he is certainly still very good at chess, even if he cheated in some games. He wouldn't need to have every move given to him, it might even be enough to give him a single signal that there is a non-obvious great move in a current position. Even just knowing that would probably be enough for him to find it by himself.
Morgan continued: "To be clear, on the specific allegation - have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?"
The 20-year-old replied: "Well, your curiosity is a bit concerning, you know - maybe you're personally interested, but I can tell you, no.
I don't know about you but when I appear in a very serious interview and talk about the multimillion dollar damage an unfounded allegations has done to my career, I really want to make sure that I include some weird kink shaming right there in my defense. That will surely make me seem like a serious person that sponsors can trust.
I think it was rather commenting on the interviewer's inappropriate intrusiveness into an intimate topic rather than kinkshaming. Understandable that Niemann got defensive there, IMO.
He would respond professionally and be honest about how serious those rumors are. He sued several big organizations over that claim and should take it seriously rather than going "lol, why are you so interested in vibrators, do you like that sort of thing" to the interviewer when everyone in the room knows why the question is being asked.