clousems' frank reaction to the Niemann scandal

I don't keep up with chess news. Professional chess players have turned what used to be a fun game into a series of prescribed moves with no element of luck or chance. When I hear about chess news, I get annoyed.

Imagine my chagrin, then. when I discovered that a chess scandal had become major news point. Everything from newspapers to econ blogs are covering this bullshit, and I am not pleased*. But, with all the differing opinions I've seen, I might as well give my own view.

Background:
Like all stories, this one has two sides.
Side one (the boring one): Some chess-player kept cheating in online chess, got accused by Magnus Carlsen for cheating OTB, and got reprimanded at an arbitrary time by chess.com

Side two (the fun one): Time-traveling wizard Hans Niemann and his two friends, Iaidō master Joey "Knuckles" Heatherton and cannibal warlord Liberace journeyed to a jungle island to participate in a kumite tournament. In the final round, they faced the terrible trio of Boxing Heavyweight World Champion Magnus Carlsen (aka the Mad Viking), retired Pencak Silat champion "Pistol Lilian" Gish, and former US Marine/archery expert Bea Arthur†. After the Liberace Trio proved victorious, the Mad Viking complained to the arbiter that Niemann was using illegal voodoo to deanimate Lilian Gish, so Niemann was banned from chess.com

clousems' view:

Cheating is always bad. This seemingly obvious rule-of-thumb has been overlooked by most, with people quick to praise or blame chess.com for acting "quickly". I don't care if you're a 4 year old chess prodigy or a 90-year old veteran of the 64 Square War. The evil of cheating is a concept that we've all been taught since we were able to understand words. If you are a 3 year-old caught peeking in "Hide-and-go-seek", you'll certainly hear about it from your playmates, who will probably not want to play anymore. Cheaters make games less fun, make losing hurt more, and winning less likely.

Yet, chess.com's report shows a lack of respect for others who play the game honestly:

"In 2020, during a private call with Danny Rensch, CCO at Chess.com, Hans was informed of his account
closure for suspected cheating in these events and matches. During this call, Hans confessed to the
cheating offenses. Following the call, Hans and Danny communicated over Slack, an internal real-time
messaging system, where Hans asked how to acknowledge the cheating offense and how to affirm that it would not ever happen again. In that call, Danny agreed to support Hans’ desire to save face and announce
publicly that he was voluntarily closing his account to start fresh. Hans confirmed with Danny that he had
“made the announcement” to close his own account. (Hans was also asked to email his admission to our
team, but he did not. Given that Danny was trying to be helpful and see the best in Hans as a young rising
player, the lack of email was ignored.)"

2020 was evidentally not the first time that he was caught cheating in a tournament, mind you. He'd apparently been caught cheating in a 2015 tournament. And a 2017 tournament. Chess.com's own estimate is 100+ instances of cheating, mainly in 2020.

Part of that is a problem with any cheat detection system, and the lag between games and the analysis. I get that. But allowing a titled player with prior admissions to cheating to cheat around 100 times in a three-month span? That's some bad.
Allowing him to open a new account? That's a whole different kind of cheating-- it's cheating the users of chess.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE8rSItxJ9k

In closing: I don't really care about the Carlsen game. I don't consider Niemann to be a real chess player, and I don't consider chess.com to be a good chess site.

*One might ask "Why, then, are you posting about this news?", to which I would respond, "I'm a blatant hypocrite with too much time on my hands."
† One of those descriptions is actually true, believe it or not