The reason a lot of older players are overrated is because they stop playing as often and their rating doesn’t catch up to their decline. Magnus plays a ton so that isn’t a concern.
For elite younger players, no matter how much they play, they are getting better so quickly that the rating can’t catch up.
Younger players also get better much much faster than older players decline. It might take a decade for a GM past their prime to drop 100 ELO, whereas a young player can easily add 100 ELO in a year on their way to super GM status.
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCeJrItfQqw
I don't get it. HN seems to be always on the skeptical side when accusing anyone, here we're seeing people pile up on Hans without any evidence whatsoever.
The fact of the matter is, no one knows why Magnus quit.
It was, but for reasons having nothing to do with his analysis of the game. Stronger players like Hikaru have dismantled Hans' last two interviews pretty convincingly[1]. Those interviews and his history of being banned from chess.com seem to be driving the current speculation more than Hans' actual play.
The interview after Magnus was great because Hans was saying things like "He's just so demoralized because he's losing to an idiot like me. It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me." People were excited to have a "Conor McGregor of chess", so to speak. That's it.
1. See short clips at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETzdxK7QUmg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTs-eFgLqc for example.
All I suggest is to stop this speculation, let's wait for evidence and if it is true, then fuck Hans. But at this point, I am just seeing a giant mob coming after him including on HN which is kind of appalling.
We need to be better including Hikaru Nakamura, he seems to be also doing it for the views. Hikaru's accusation or speculations have also been mocked on Twitter.
This just got posted by Gotham, absolutely level headed and facts based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDUmS_MJceU
Who by? Other 2750+ players? If not, then who cares? Hikaru's analysis of the chess is correct. You can analyze the positions with an engine to confirm. I checked, since they had the engine off after the Alireza game.
For example Hans (with white) said: "I did not believe in this position for black. I just don't see any universe where this is holdable. ... Instinctively I'm like OK, what is this? There's just no way. There's zero chance." But Hikaru saw immediately that this was wrong and black was actually winning. Even Alejandro wasn't having it. Sure enough, Stockfish has black at better than +3.
This kind of thing happens over and over in the last two interviews. Hans' take on a position is wrong, or he rattles off a line that just loses. It's not proof of cheating, it's just, to go back to squidbeak's post, proof that he isn't "able to speak accurately and in depth in his post game interviews".
You need real evidence of cheating. What concerns me is that we won't know the truth as GothamChess said. I am onboard with condemning Hans in the strongest terms if he was caught cheating in OTB game, this just seems like the Boston Bombers vigilante mob doing pscyhoanalysis on reddit and twitter. Terrible.
Hans' interviews have been off. This isn't speculation. The positions are right there in the interviews, analyze them and see. Hans says zig and the analysis shows zag.
That's it. That's the whole conversation. Someone said the interviews were bad, you disagreed citing Levy and King, I explained what they (and I!) liked about the interviews and pointed out that the actual chess analysis was, in fact, bad.
Anyway, one small but important logical issue. When you say "the guy is just a few points below 2700", that's begging the question. Other people are arguing, in effect, that "Niemann's play can't be that good, his analysis is too bad", and your counter is "Niemann's analysis can't be that bad, his play is too good".
1. Example I gave elsewhere, now timestamped: https://youtu.be/ETzdxK7QUmg?t=145. Black is better than +3 here and Hans is saying it's completely lost.
Hikaru could have followed the game with an automatic engine evaluation, that would make it 'slightly' easier for him to '~immediately' evaluate the position with better precision.
You are comparing a tired guy answering the questions on the spot to a person who could have had all the computer help in the world (and they do when they are following live matches).
Like compare hans to alireza in their interviews. Hans clearly just has a worse understanding of the position he chose to go into.
I mean to me it feels less like cheating and more like just absolutely wild prep, hans played like a 3200 up to the midgame and then couldn't convert a winning position, but it's suspicious to have such completely insane prep, especially without clear compensation
The interviewer (Alejandro Ramirez, also a GM) asks Hans what happens if black takes the knight on c4, which didn't happen in the game but is the engine's best move. Hans says Bh6, starts down one line with g6, Bg5 (good moves) but backtracks the latter and blunders with f4, and says "At this point my pieces are literally perfect, his pieces are terrible" (Hans is -2). The position in the video is two moves later. By then white is completely lost, but Hans says black has no chance.
As for his 'blundering' in a live Q&A talk, that's not indicative at all, I have posted my reasoning in a sibling comment.
There are two answers to this question. One is obvious and is the subject of the article we're all responding to: Cheating. Some people think he's cheating.
The other is that nobody actually thinks Hans is terrible. Even if he cheated he's still at least a 2500-level player and perfectly capable of taking the odd game off of super GMs. Being very good and cheating aren't mutually exclusive possibilities.
> that's not indicative at all
The word you want is conclusive. The interviews are certainly indicative, but they're very far from conclusive.
No. The word I want is indicative, as in "Serving to indicate; Pointing out; bringing to notice; giving intimation or knowledge of something not visible or obvious".
Giving "imprecise" analysis at the Q&A session does not mean anything at all, and of course it can't be used as an evidence of any kind that a cheating took place.
Specifically on this, I agree with you. Who knows if he's just nervous at giving interviews.
I'm aware of an Indian player, Arjun Erigaisi [1], who made headlines for quickly climbing from 2600 to 2700+ over the last year (18-19 years of age), but he was a grandmaster before he turned 15, whereas Hans achieved everything (including the grandmaster title), in the past 2 years.
There is also the reverse side of the coin that top players peak at a rating and then decline as they age. Not saying Magnus is, but it is not a possibility that can be ruled out.