But, I have yet to see any evidence besides Carlson's claims of cheating. I'm not even looking for "how", but I'd like to at least hear what Carlson thought was so strange in the match that it could imply cheating.
Him showing up for a single play of a rematch and then quitting after the first move seems mostly like a tantrum.
I'd be much not sympathetic to something like "these 4 moves we're so it of the ordinary that I can't see a way he would have taken them besides computer assistance"
The question is not whether Niemann cheated in this specific game against Carlsen (he likely didn't) but to what extent Niemann has cheated in the past, how (online) cheaters should be treated when it comes to over-the-board chess and if the chess profession will finally take cheating seriously, i.e. introduce anti-cheating measures similar to other professional sports or gambling.
As has been stated several times in this thread: Niemann has a history of (online) cheating, admitted to it, and while doing so likely lied about the extent and recency of his (online) cheating.
I'm not a chess expert at all but, from my understanding, he is known for some unconventional play. I could see Magnus having done a calculation ahead of time of a very unconventional opening and, seeing the counter being the exact optimal choice, being convinced of cheating.
All that I really know is he has a lot of credibility and the person he's accusing does not. I think it's a big story because it's dramatic no matter how it turns out.
There is neither of these, though. There is only people speculating that they MUST be cheating because they didn't behave exactly as they were expected to.
> By your standards I shouldn't be able to speak until we examine the coin directly [...]
I never made any such statement or made and indication of specific "standards".
We should absolutely look at the coin if it's behaving this way. But we can't just conjecture that it must be weighted with zero evidence of that.
I don't think any of the accusation that have been brought up in this thread have been with zero evidence. I think we have very different understanding of what's evidence and how much of it sufficient to speak up, and we're kind of talking past each other (the last part seems very likely).
Imagine that we're flipping a coin and it keeps coming up heads every time, and I make a statement that I don't think the coin is fair. By your standards I shouldn't be able to speak until we examine the coin directly and no number of further flipping will convince you that the coin is biased (because it's technically possible that a fair coin does this too). Well, sometimes in real life we can't weigh/measure/scan the coin directly, we can only make judgments based on the flips that come out and we should be able to say that they look fishy.