The Full Chess Cheating Report of Hans Neiman
So page 9 from the last paragraph is interesting.  Chess.com basically indicate that apart from Hans, a number of highly rated players (including higher than Hans) have been caught and admitted to cheating.<p>I haven&#x27;t gone over the report thoroughly, but it&#x27;s clearly focused on Hans&#x27;s conduct and not so much on the state of play regarding online cheating, which is, even by Magnus&#x27;s statement, the chief focus of all of this.<p>As an outsider to the chess world, this revelation of rampant online cheating is the main story.<p>First, not surprising, right?  Using a computer engine is part of learning and preparing in chess (AFAICT).  What other sport has a similar issue where an extremely useful and essential and highly available tool in the sport is considered cheating based entirely on using it within the narrow window of a game?  Of course it was going to leak into play in online games where you only have the data feed of moves and nothing else connecting the players.<p>Second, that it&#x27;s common amongst the elite of the sport is huge.  Either online chess is somewhat dead on arrival as a sport and was never taken seriously by many players (which makes sense to me given how integrated computer engines are in the sport) ... or the chess world needs to go through some sort of cultural revolution here.<p>Third, chess.com have a conflict of interest in this meta-discussion, I presume, as they have commercial interests in the survival of online chess.<p>Fourth, the OTB cheating question still seems open and it seems plausible to me that a good chess player would cheat online for followers and income and entrance to tournaments and then use OTB as the real testing ground.  My bias here is that I suspect cheating in OTB is just crazy by comparison as you&#x27;d have to carry some sort of device that would stand as hard evidence of cheating while in online play the proof is always circumstantial and so easier for a cheater to convince themselves they won&#x27;t get caught.  Which gets back to my second and third points about how online chess maybe doesn&#x27;t make much sense and chess.com aren&#x27;t quite seeing the forest for the trees on this.