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Niemann sucks, but Chess.com and Magnus are the real villains

This is belated and somewhat untimely since this is weeks-old news at this point, but I've been meaning to post more here and I've been thinking about this as I try to improve at chess.

The whole controversy over Hans Niemann's cheating is ridiculous. Niemann is a little shit, but the true villains here are Chess.com and to a lesser degree, Magnus.

Let's make just a few interesting observations:

1. Chess.com appears to regularly allow cheaters to continue cheating on their platform because they...admit to cheating? Shouldn't admitting to cheating actually be grounds for a permanent ban from the platform? Doubly so for professionals. Doubly doubly so for professionals playing in tournaments. Their policy of allowing cheaters to continue playing so long as they admit to cheating and promise not to do it again (and to allow this multiple times for serial cheaters) may seem sort of kind of reasonable, until you, you know, *think* about it for a minute. How does this actually deter cheating at the highest levels? It doesn't, but it does allow Chess.com to keep titled players on their platform. Is this policy applied universally for all cheaters, regardless of rating or title? Absolutely not; no-names are, indeed, simply and permanently banned unless they can somehow prove they aren't cheating, which is essentially impossible.

2. Chess.com seems to choose very strange times to make public their knowledge of cheating. Specifically, they seem to do it when it allows them to insert themselves into an important debate or high-profile situation. Chess.com appears to want to be the de facto arbiter of the chess world, deciding who is and is not allowed to be part of it, and when the are and aren't allowed. This has not worked out completely, as Niemann still appears to be welcomed in the broader chess world, but nevertheless, they have grabbed the headlines and the minds of the public quite effectively.

3. Chess.com is pushing a false equivalence between online chess and OTB chess. They are not really comparable. The main difference being precisely that *it is absurdly easy to cheat in online chess*. Any idiot can cheat online. Yes, it is possible to cheat OTB, but this is not the relevant comparison to make. The relevant comparison is between the difficulty of doing so. It's the difference between stealing candy from a baby and robbing a bank. Yes, they are both theft in the most asinine and literal sense, but there are also in completely different worlds. OTB cheating requires motivated, organized planning, flawless execution, and really good acting, all in an incredibly public setting, and that is without even taking into account security measures (however inadequate). Online cheating requires nothing more than being alive and being able to turn one's head slightly to one side. Clearly, we are talking about things that are worlds apart. They cannot be equivocated. The fact that Chess.com insists that they are the same indicates a lot about their desire to insert themselves into a place of dominance in the chess world and also as arbiters of both truth and ethics. To be clear, my point is *not* about the degree of wrongness of cheating online vs OTB. Both are equally wrong. My point is about the material differences of what it physically takes to do one or the other. These material differences mean that the games themselves are materially different.

4. Two years. That's how long its been since Chess.com has detected any kind of cheating from Niemann. To me, this period of time without cheating is more or less equivalent to saying that Hans Niemann is no longer a cheater. This is actually quite good evidence that Niemann has reformed. I'm an alcoholic, and it's been almost two years since I had a drink. Staying sober this long doesn't guarantee that I will stay sober forever, but it is really good evidence that I will. It shows a concrete and sustained change in behavior. If Chess.com had provided some evidence that Niemann had cheated in the last six months, I'd be more inclined to think they were operating in good faith. But two years is quite a long time, especially for a teenager. That might as well be a decade, mentally and emotionally.

5. I'll reiterate: a teenager. No, I'm not making the "young boys will be boys, aw shucks" argument. I'm saying it's super-duper weird for the greatest and most powerful chess player of all time and the most successful and profitable chess website of all time to team up and bring the full weight of their power, prestige, and money down on some powerless no-name barely-adult. Yes, Niemann sucks and should have been banned from Chess.com several years ago, but don't you think it's creepy for Magnus and Chess.com to turn this teenager's incredibly-easy-to-do cheating into a worldwide scandal covered by the biggest news sources in the entire world, to turn him into a meme and divide the chess community? What possible beneficial consequences could there be such that this is a good idea, that this is morally correct? Even financially for them, I feel like I just don't get it. But regardless, there's just no world where Niemann's cheating is worse that what Chess.com and Magnus are doing. Chess.com's greed and Magnus's ego are far more dangerous than Niemann could ever be.