The Hans Niemann case: Numbers – what
they reveal and what they do not reveal
Such a thing has happened because (until now) nobody has ever caught Hans Niemann
cheating, at least not over the board (aka OTB, a new acronym that got immensely popular in
a matter of days). Not because of lack of fantasy on the part of the audience: after the "anal
beads" mentioned by no less than Elon Musk, all sort of devices have been suggested, up the
hilarious "transmission-of-signals-directly-into-the-ear" (described at
https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/laser-can-deliver-messages-directly-your-ear-across-room), a
technique that would require a complex laser equipment placed close to the player, not to
mention the enormous cost of such a device.
That’s why statistics have been widely used to determine if Hans Niemann has really cheated
over the board in the past (as Carlsen played so badly against him at the Sinquefield Cup that
it looks unlikely cheating occurred in that circumstance). At first, Professor Ken Regan,
known to be the world’s greatest expert on cheating detection, studied the matter, and found
no reason to suspect Hans Niemann of cheating. His findings are discussed in an interview he
gave to Albert Silver on the 20th of September: https://en.chessbase.com/post/is-hans-
niemann-cheating-world-renowned-expert-ken-regan-analyzes, but that did not put an end to
the matter.
The general idea, at least for people convinced that Hans Niemann is indeed a compulsive
cheater, is that "Ken Regan’s tool" is obsolete, as it only "relies on centipawn losses"
(differences between a player’s moves and the engines’ best ones), and because it’s well
known worldwide, thus allowing "careful cheaters" to avoid detection. "Ken Regan’s tool" is
much more than simply evaluating the average centipawn losses (aka ACPL – another brand-
new acronym – but that does not bother the new experts, as new statistics and new tools have
surfaced. The most known is probably the one depicted by "Gambit-man", a Chess.com user,
self-defined expert on the matter. This user made use of the "Let’s Check" tool provided by
ChessBase in order to evaluate the games played by Hans Niemann during the last 3 years, a
time frame during which he played - almost frantically - more than 400 games. The "Let’s
Check" tool, as Albert Silver explained in a subsequent article
(https://en.chessbase.com/post/let-s-check-the-elite-are-better-than-you-know#discuss) "will
give you a summary called Engine Correlation at the top, showing the percentage of times a
player's moves matched the top choice of an engine". As FM Nate Solon also explained in an
article published in his own blog on the 4th of October
(https://zwischenzug.substack.com/p/did-hans-niemann-
cheat?r=av0j7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web), the more a game is analysed by
means of an engine, the higher the correlation will be, and also will possibly increase every
time a new engine is employed: furthermore, no comparison could ever be made between
different games (not to mention different players) for the same reason, the different engines
involved in the analyses. That’s why ChessBase says the tool shouldn't be used for cheat
detection (or to be accurate: "the correlation isn’t a sign of computer cheating, because strong
players can reach high values in tactically simple games. Only low values say anything,
because these are sufficient to disprove the illegal use of computers in a game").
Despite that, streamer and FM Yosha Iglesias published a video called "The most
incriminating evidence against Hans Niemann" (https://youtu.be/jfPzUgzrOcQ), promoting
Gambit-Man’s research and highlighting 10 games with a perfect 100% correlation (not to
mention other 23 at 90% or more). According to Iglesias, no other player in the world, not
even Carlsen, boasts so many 100% games; also, Hans Niemann’s average correlation
throughout all the tournaments (65%) compares with "super GMs" (players rated at least 2700
ELO points), despite Niemann never achieving super GM-status. Hikaru Nakamura also
relaunched the video and Gambit-Man findings.
But this is "statistics at first sight". Even discounting Nate Solon’s strong objections, it is not
possible to ignore Albert Silver’s findings when analysing the Sinquefield Cup’s games with
the "Let’s Check" tool, findings presented in the article mentioned above. Not only is Hans
Niemann’s correlation in the infamous game against the World Champion just "a modest
68%", but the player with the best correlation at the Sinquefield Cup (3 games over 90% and
2 more over 80%) is… Levon Aronian. He’s one of the three players who sub-performed at
the Sinquefield Cup, and he currently seems to go through a crisis and lost a lot of rating in
the last tournaments he played (Olympiad, Sinquefield Cup and now US Championship) and
has by now reverted to his 2005 rating.
The fact that Aronian performed so well – according to the Let’s Check tool - in five games
(out of 8), yet his real performance was mediocre at best, should ring a bell. Another player –
Wesley So – had a perfect game with a 100% correlation, but this happened because only 8
moves (out of 28) were considered worth of analysis (the others, being pure theory, were
discarded by the tool). With this in mind, let’s check (for real) the 10 "100% games" played
by Hans Niemann, on the original Gambit-Man table (found at
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/127lwTsR-
2Daz0JqN1TbZ8FgITX9Df9TyXT1gtjlZ5nk/edit#gid=0)
• -World Youth Open U16, 10/2019, 8th round (out of 11): against FM Miguel Angel
Soto (2283), won in 27 moves.
• -Marshall GM Norm, 2/2020, 7th round (out of 9): against IM Christopher Woojin
Yoo (2430), won in 22 moves.
• -CCCSA Fall Invitational, 10/2020, 6th round (out of 9): against IM Aleksandr
Ostrovskiy (2427), won in 28 moves.
• -7th Sunway Sitges, 12/2020, 6th round (out of 10): against GM Matthieu Cornette
(2558), won in 36 moves.
• -1st GM Mix Bassano, 3/2021, 5th round (out of 9): against IM Jesus Martin Duque
(2454), won in 28 moves.
• -14th Philadelphia International, 6/2021, 1st round (out of 9): against Eddy Tian
(2204), won in 31 moves.
• -US Junior Closed, 7/2021, 6th round (out of 9): against IM Ben Li (2376), won in 34
moves.
• -2nd Tras-Os-Montes, 8/2021, 7th round (out of 9): against FM Isak Storme )2398),
won in 38 moves.
• -4th Sharjah Masters, 9/2021, 2nd round (out of 9): against GM Cristhian Camilo Rios
(2466), won in 45 moves.
• -Kvika Reykjavik Open, 4/2022, 5th round (out of 9): against GM Steinn Gretarsson
Hjorvar (2542), won in 37 moves.
What is there behind all these "perfect" games? One possible explanation is, of course,
cheating. But there also alternative explanations. The most obvious is the length of these
games: half of them lasted less than 32 moves, and we already know – from So’s game at the
Sinquefield Cup – that in such a case only few not theoretical moves remain, making the
occurrence of a 100% correlation much more likely. Furthermore, only one game lasted more
than 40 moves – the 45 moves’ victory against Rios – and the analyses show this game to be
all but perfect: for example, both Stockfish and the well-known Chess.com utility (in the
picture below) point out a lot of moves that in no way may be deemed "the engines’ best",
even including some inaccuracies: which engines suggested to the Let’s Check tool that this
game was perfect remains a mystery, and if cheating cannot yet be discounted, possible foul
play also cannot (something that has first been highlighted by Nate Solon). But above all such
analyses strongly hint that the ways the Let’s Check tool works are difficult to fully
understand, thus the tool itself cannot be regarded as reliable, at least not for cheating
detection. Why not simply trust ChessBase itself, that clearly states just that?
But even if these "perfect" games were evidence of cheating, what logic could possibly be
behind it? As the "perfect" games are sporadic, there should be some criteria that prompted
Hans Niemann to select them for cheating. Maybe one could speculate these games were the
tournaments’ last ones, in order for him to achieve the best possible placement without raising
suspicion, but this is not the case: none of these games was played in the last, or second to
last, round. Or maybe one could imagine Hans Niemann only cheated against the strongest
opponents, trusting his own skills in any other case: but this is also not true, as his best
"perfect" victory occurred in 2020 against GM Matthieu Cornette (2558), while in the whole
year 2022 he played at least 70 stronger players, without achieving a "perfect" game against
any of them.
