Magnus Controversy! Recap and Game Analysis 

Like literally wear a friendship bracelet. He'll be like "Monica? Monica?? What does that mean?"

Someone should wear like a handmade decoration watch out of cardboard but Magnus wont be allowed to see what is inside to grow his suspicion.

I'll just retie my shoe like 30 times during the game and easily crush the highest rated player of all time.

Anish giri said something similar, magnus loses confidence when you start playing like an engine(in your prep) that's why he loves to get people into unknown territory as much as possible.

If a chess player is troubled by the presence of a mechanical watch then a visit to a psychologist or a psychiatrist is in order. The bottom line is that Kramnik and Carlssen are trying to justify every loss with cheating claims. They are losing their credibility pretty fast.

Found Larry David

Why so?

@@afonsolopes9677 Well, Hikaru is extraordinarily smart, and on top of it, he has about as much knowledge about chess / competing in chess as is possible. So when Hikaru misleads his audience just for clicks/$, it comes off as really scummy. You know, the Hans stuff where he pretended not to understand top 50 players in the entire world play quite accurate games due to preparing with an engine / memorizing engine lines. He legit spent 20+ minutes looking at a random Excel file by an FM, pretending to be freaked out about the data in it, knowing fully well there was nothing to freak out about. It's just not morally good to be that way when you are the middleman between a ton of casual chess players and news taking place in the chess realm. He could stress the truth and say what is in his mind, or he can present stuff in a way he knows will excite his audience (despite it being disinformation / putting strain on real people [like if his audience chose to harass Hans]). Similarly, par for the Hikaru course, GM Finegold pointed out yet another time when Hikaru prioritized sensationalism over being a good person -- misleading people rather than taking his role as a leader of many as something serious with moral obligations. It just isn't cool to lie to 10,000 people when you know better. I personally used to watch Hikaru until the Hans situation when I saw how he can be just for $$$, and the fact that he's financially well off makes him doing that even more deplorable. And back during the Hans situation, Finegold pointed out the sensationalism over at team Hikaru just like he did here. "I don't know guys, this Excel sheet is kinda weird [but I do know since I've been top 5 in the world during the engine era of preparation and I'm lying right now!]" - Hikaru. Last thing I ever heard him say on stream. It was really too much.

Lol 🐴

There will be clocks on the wall. Why does anyone need a watch? Just ban any metallic object except things like pacemakers.

@@marcrob100 Ban pacemakers also. lol

It was also the size of a small moon ... and that could be seen either way (like why draw attention to it - on the other hand with something so big it's easier to fit 'extra' things in it...). People are saying there video evidence of him fiddling/fidgeting with it and pushing buttons, which isn't going to do him any favours either.

considering a 5 second stream delay, and taking phones at the door during play would totally solve the problem, it's weird.

Whats the drama here anyhow?

@@ludomirsteinbruck9376some guy wore a mechanical watch. Unacceptable!

70% of registered GMs are below 2500. Of course many aren't active but it tells you how difficult it is to get to 2600+ let alone staying at 2500.

And Magnus hasn't lost to a

@@ABCurry30 Well a 2500 would beat Magnus about 10% of the statistically, which isn't that crazy at all. It really depends how often Magnus plays people 2500, which is almost never, which Ben alluded to in this video.

well draws are net 0 so they dont really inflate their elo with that. and 2800 against 2500 even 9.5/10 would lose elo.

Yup, things need to change. Artificially keeping elo by staying in a little club of top players is ridiculous.

@@fintan9218 it's every top spots of elo ladder. Especially when they are not many games played. Once you are there you rather wanna play unrated or not at all and if you play cutting your losses as much as possible, that's usually with draws. The lower rated players on the other hand are incentivised to take those draws because they actually getting good elo out of it. The good thing if you wanna get there you will be able to get there if you have the skills, so it's not like they gate keeping anyone out of their top 10 club.

@@mauer1 Yes. It is rating inflation because every game they draw against each other is a game they are not playing against lower rated players. And to your other point, so what. Grandmasters in the past played all comers. If you are a 2800 player there really is not an excuse to lose against a 2500. Well, I guess there is if he was wearing a watch. LOL.

@@nickadt you can just have another reason to have a bad day. Its not inflating the elo they had to get their in the first hand. Winning against lower elo players is more of elo inflating than drawing each other.

New versions of Stockfish also use NNs for evaluation

I find it biased that people say ope he didn't play an engine move its not cheating. Only a bad cheater would do every move. The mating attack was quite complicated. Only one or two moves are needed from an engine to win as well as maybe some ok's on human moves to give the ok that they are still winning. It's not rocket science.

Something I was thinking too!

Incredible.

kek, whats the original?

This is either the result of way too much free time…or it’s genius. Also @tophbbq huge fan of your melee content. Always excited for your videos to drop.

true

very true

very very true

very very very true

The truth hurts

Yeah but they aren’t in this tournament, and it isn’t Carlsen’s prerogative to dictate how organisers run their events, if he wasn’t happy why play it? And again the point remains that Carlsen only took issue with it after a bad day OTB. I mean he WON this tournament, right (?) so he must of been aware of the playing environment. And to be fair the organisers clamped down on the playing area crowds after the first round. Is there a name for horological phobias? I think Carlsen was right to raise his issues with the arbiters but tweeting about it was in bad form, a simple congratulations to his opponent might have been the classier move in public. He does come off, again, as a sore loser.

@@carlkligerman1981 So is this a tournament or not? Are you stupid?

Sure, but it would have been better to voice these complaints discretely to the tournament organizer, or if he ha done it after he had won in round 1. The way he did it know is disrespectful towards his opponent.

@@carlkligerman1981 No it's not prerogative 😂

​@@carlkligerman1981 I agree, event organisers should run their events incredibly poorly.

a 2500 GM is not a bad person to do cheat detection (on a 2500ish player). With a sample size of a single game gut instinct is as good as any other method. It a very small sample. Every GM would say there's only 3-4 moves in the game that are even interesting and given most of those 3-4 moves all fit together with a plan that a human can understand then we should probably believe GMs who say they think there's no reason to be suspicious. IF most GMs think there's no reason to think there's suspicious because there's never going to be 100% one way or the other.

@@ribbonsofnight did you watch the video? He was like "this is a sus move, this move too... but he didn't play that really sus move". My point is that when cheaters cheat consistently, their cheating is veeeery easy to detect. I know that GM Ben indeed is a GM but he made a very weak point here, discrediting himself. But as long as the audience is happy, I am kinda happy for him. Just seeing him more and more as a comediam rather than a serious chess person.

@@ribbonsofnight Like GM Ben himself I can't stress enough to his tough students that I don't say that white cheated in that game. Carlsen played horribly and mustn't lose so fast even against some engine. But GM Ben seems to only address the really bad cheaters who barely can read chess notation and just pick the first line the engine spits out. These guys are formidable cheating detection targets.

lol@@paulgoogol2652

Just because Magnus didn't say his opponent cheated doesn't mean that they didn't. They could still have cheated, hence why it was worth looking at the game to see.

It's same like playing ranking games, e.g. on Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat if u get matched up with someone 100s of ranking points below u, are u gonna play em again? Knowing u might lose up to 100 ranking points!!!!! U don't 're match and block em, especially if u lost to em 🤣😂

Yeah, he blundered in the worst possible way that allowed his opponent end the game tactically, and quickly.

lots of moves are "fine" because an engine assumes you'll start playing perfect any moment now. Remember at some point a pawn down for nothing can become a dead draw. every mediocre move brings you closer to being in a losing position according to the engine even if it says all zeros.

U are stupid. Magnus did complain about it before or during the game also...but the arbiter said it was fine since it's not a smartwatch

He complained before he lost.

Definitely seemed like Alisher got his prep, a good position, and converted his advantage quickly and tactically. It happens, we would probably see it happen a fair bit if top players were at open tournaments often. Preparation is a powerful equalizer nowadays.

But he did complain about it during the game to the arbiter but...since it wasn't a "smartwatch", it's fine 😂

He also said that only the combination of the two knight moves are really unusual for a GM. That's a very small sample size.

Wow, I know for his fans Magnus is always right, but this is one hell of a reach

Timestamp?

​@@zeni2432minute 16.58 - Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of Sound and Fury, signifing Nothing"

And drop out of a round robin tournament after 2 rounds, ruining the whole event with 0 evidence of anything.

Acting like a smartass is easy lol . Say some bull and think you a genius . Of course people can cheat but they have their jobs and careers on the line . They have respect for the game they have played since young . Not everyone is living life in hypothetical scenarios like you are .Fucking magnus fanboys always defending him when he goes crying .

You have to be a good cheater though. If you just start winning every game playing tons of engine moves no ones going to play you just on suspicion alone, but I wouldn't be shocked if some people at high level chess are cheating in a careful manner.

@@billj4525 exactly. It could be as simple as binary indicators indicating things like "this is a critical move" / "there is a winning fancy tactic here."

On behalf of Ben -- Thank you for your reaction

That's an important point too, playstyle comes into question way more against lower rated players, and it's possible that magnus didn't have intel on the guy and took a wrong strategy from the start xD

first you have to be a 2500 GM

lots of things are bad according to engines. If you want to maintain your rating against booked up 2500s you need to avoid draws and that can mean playing interesting moves that the engine says are bad.

Huh?

@@captain_britain What part of that is confusing? The truth is it's almost impossible for him to gain much rating.

@@captain_britainHe means Magnus has won 12 more games than he lost but has only gained 3 rating points because his rating is too high.

Well, it's always hard when you're 2840, and that's exactly why he has no chance of ever hitting 2900. It's also why he prefers playing higher rated players like Ben mentioned.

The thing is that the rating systems will mean that top GMs playing players much lower rated will have a big risk losing ratings points(like Ben said, even if you have 9W1L you lose points), and for chess players rating is really an important part of their life...

@@bolinsun9565 the top players playing amongst themselves creates a false economy, if in reality they are scared of the possibility of losing to a lower GM. Also the top guys having to play the lower guys gives the opportunity to the lower GMs to pit themselves against the top, and maybe demystify the gap between the top and mere GM status

@@Socrates... They just think it's not worth it and that's understandable, although for sure it leads to us spectators missing some potentially brilliant encounters like this one.

@@Socrates... Plus, although some much lower-rated GMs can play well as in this particular game, there are way too many games where those "underdog" players just make you feel like "wtf how can you not see this coming" so tbh I don't think we miss out too much

If you do it randomly with no feel for the position. This doesn't really describe Ben's analysis.

he found ideal squares for all his pieces

it was like linares 91 with gary's pieces all squished in the corner

gotdayum

He said Magnus called Hikaru out for it he didn’t call him out for it himself

a modified analog watch used for cheating isn't an analog watch

I mean wearing a watch is lit against the rules lol so I doubt it

Hans be like watch out magzy I'm watching you lol

Or rather is just called highest level of chess 😂

@@bolinsun9565 then why are they worried about playing lower rated players like they used to?

@@fintan9218 Because even 9W1L loses rating points, which they deem not worth it