This is interesting! I assumed the same thing, so I just skimmed through the game with an engine. The world, on average, was definitely not cheating. As early as move 7 Magnus was outright winning!
But there's an interesting meta in that Magnus played far more passively than he normally would. And so I think he also expected he was probably playing an engine by proxy, and wanted to keep the position completely under control. If he knew the world was legit, they probably would have lost!
I'm still trying to reconcile how it came to be that the world didn't cheat though. Lowest common denominator amongst 140k+ people paired with inevitable chatter of 'Hey best engine move is blah' seems unavoidable.
I think the assumption that more than 50% of people are cheating in online chess is not correct. Another Grandmaster and ex-world champion Anand recently also did a match against 70k people and won.
That's not the assumption at all. The percent of cheaters in online chess is approaching an asymptotic 0 (as a percent of all players) simply because the sites, and chess.com in particular, have gotten very good at culling them.
But things like this are social. I didn't follow this (or even know it was going on somehow) but it seems very safe to assume that somebody and probably multiple somebodies were regularly pointing out and discussing engine moves.
So my only real assumption is that a significant chunk of people would end up deferring to the engine moves rather than their own preference. Of course my implied assumption there is also that a significant chunk of people were involved in the social aspects of this, but I think that's also a fairly reasonable assumption.
Based on a quick skim of the article, I don't think this was, for example, Twitch Chat picking moves, which might enable the social aspect you're referring to - although I'd like to point out the difficulty inherent to being in a room with many thousands of people, all spamming chess moves, and trying to find the one engine move :P
It's not that. It's that once you know the best move you start to see why. And then it becomes hard to get it out of your mind. It's the reason I don't recommend computer assisted game analysis, unless you just want a quick blunder check.
A very non-zero chunk of people also probably would not have even understood that that's cheating if it wasn't really clearly laid out in the interface somewhere. For instance computer assistance in the largest correspondence chess league is legal.
Isn't this the promise of LLM, that with enough data the best answer will surface. The problem is that it needs training against a Magnus Carlsen which is definitely not going to happen.
Perhaps it is worth considering that this was Freestyle chess and not classical chess. Which means the traditional book moves with which chess engines are trained goes out of window. I am not saying Stockfish cant beat Magnus in Freestyle chess but it makes sense to believe that Chess engines are better at classical chess when compared to freestyle.
But then again, with 24 hour time to brute force every possible combination, I guess chess engines may be better at freestyle when compared to classical chess, due to the sheer amount of creativity and calculation involved.
It's actually the opposite. Humans fare much worse at freestyle chess because they don't have any opening theory and are unfamiliar with the patterns that arise from nonstandard opening positions. Engines don't care much about opening theory one way or another
Source: am rated 2000 fide (partly because I struggle with openings)
It's impressive that Magnus might have won if The World hadn't forced a stalemate.
> In the Chess.com virtual chat this week, players appeared split on whether to force the draw — and claim the glory — or to keep playing against Carlsen, even if it ultimately meant a loss.
It might be natural to jump to immediately think the majority was cheating, but as you rightly point out if they were cheating Magnus would have lost. Human players cannot compete with even a couple hours compute on stockfish let alone 24 hours.
Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1. Meanwhile the world has access to iPhone 16s. The entire concept is flawed. I'm guessing someone made money off it, though.
> Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1.
Did a quick sanity check here - this seems about right - Carlsen might be at least competitive with Pocket Fritz 4 at similar hardware performance to the iPhone 1, but that discounts the software improvements chess engines have seen over the past couple decades.
I don't know enough about chess, and will take your word for it. What it suggests to me is a deeper question: How do you get 143000 people to all fall in line behind a single machine, or person, making the best decision for them?
If you had a military-like organization and turned 143000 people into calculators led by one (talented) person or a hierarchy, then yes, they would crush Magnus.
No they would not. If you imagine running a computer chess engine on 143,000 humans, it's not even remotely close to the amount of compute you need to win.
Humans don't win by calculation the way computers do. When you have multiple humans working together on chess they don't add up to an ultra-smart human. You are simply as smart as the smartest human in your crew, and that's it.
You could absolutely form a system to harness the power of that many people. It would not happen spontaneously, but it is possible given enough effort. Calculation and memoirzation plays a huge role in chess.
Now I want to see a YouTuber hire 1000s of humans to make a human CPU. Each human can do a single simple task like a redstone block. What would their equivalent CPU clock speed be?
Cheating obviously does happen but on the whole chess is kept alive by people who do it for fun. What would be the point of beating Magnus with a computer? Would anyone get satisfaction from that?
Presumably "the world" used enough engine help to do this.
This is interesting! I assumed the same thing, so I just skimmed through the game with an engine. The world, on average, was definitely not cheating. As early as move 7 Magnus was outright winning!
But there's an interesting meta in that Magnus played far more passively than he normally would. And so I think he also expected he was probably playing an engine by proxy, and wanted to keep the position completely under control. If he knew the world was legit, they probably would have lost!
I'm still trying to reconcile how it came to be that the world didn't cheat though. Lowest common denominator amongst 140k+ people paired with inevitable chatter of 'Hey best engine move is blah' seems unavoidable.
I think the assumption that more than 50% of people are cheating in online chess is not correct. Another Grandmaster and ex-world champion Anand recently also did a match against 70k people and won.
That's not the assumption at all. The percent of cheaters in online chess is approaching an asymptotic 0 (as a percent of all players) simply because the sites, and chess.com in particular, have gotten very good at culling them.
But things like this are social. I didn't follow this (or even know it was going on somehow) but it seems very safe to assume that somebody and probably multiple somebodies were regularly pointing out and discussing engine moves.
So my only real assumption is that a significant chunk of people would end up deferring to the engine moves rather than their own preference. Of course my implied assumption there is also that a significant chunk of people were involved in the social aspects of this, but I think that's also a fairly reasonable assumption.
Based on a quick skim of the article, I don't think this was, for example, Twitch Chat picking moves, which might enable the social aspect you're referring to - although I'd like to point out the difficulty inherent to being in a room with many thousands of people, all spamming chess moves, and trying to find the one engine move :P
It was a correspondence event, played a move a day time control on chess.com. Chat would've probably been mostly on X and other such places.
In that case, I definitely don't believe a majority of people interested in this sort of thing would be intentionally setting out to cheat.
It's not that. It's that once you know the best move you start to see why. And then it becomes hard to get it out of your mind. It's the reason I don't recommend computer assisted game analysis, unless you just want a quick blunder check.
A very non-zero chunk of people also probably would not have even understood that that's cheating if it wasn't really clearly laid out in the interface somewhere. For instance computer assistance in the largest correspondence chess league is legal.
Maybe the non cheaters lost interest when he was winning and the cheaters held the draw?
Isn't this the promise of LLM, that with enough data the best answer will surface. The problem is that it needs training against a Magnus Carlsen which is definitely not going to happen.
95 percent accuracy by the world. They traded most everything and played 99 percent accurate in the second half.
I wonder how many people playing legit got bored and signed off leaving it to the people using engines?
Perhaps it is worth considering that this was Freestyle chess and not classical chess. Which means the traditional book moves with which chess engines are trained goes out of window. I am not saying Stockfish cant beat Magnus in Freestyle chess but it makes sense to believe that Chess engines are better at classical chess when compared to freestyle.
But then again, with 24 hour time to brute force every possible combination, I guess chess engines may be better at freestyle when compared to classical chess, due to the sheer amount of creativity and calculation involved.
It's actually the opposite. Humans fare much worse at freestyle chess because they don't have any opening theory and are unfamiliar with the patterns that arise from nonstandard opening positions. Engines don't care much about opening theory one way or another
Source: am rated 2000 fide (partly because I struggle with openings)
There is the full game with some more details here: https://www.chess.com/news/view/the-world-forces-draw-in-his...
It's impressive that Magnus might have won if The World hadn't forced a stalemate.
> In the Chess.com virtual chat this week, players appeared split on whether to force the draw — and claim the glory — or to keep playing against Carlsen, even if it ultimately meant a loss.
It was not a stalemate, it was a threefold repetition.
Reminds me of Gary Kasparov vs. The World on MSN Gaming Zone.
How many people voted in complete accordance?
This means the world (or most of it) was not cheating!
What makes it funny is: when 143000 chess players merge, they basically become Anish Giri.
It might be natural to jump to immediately think the majority was cheating, but as you rightly point out if they were cheating Magnus would have lost. Human players cannot compete with even a couple hours compute on stockfish let alone 24 hours.
Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1. Meanwhile the world has access to iPhone 16s. The entire concept is flawed. I'm guessing someone made money off it, though.
> Magnus Carlsen would get crushed by an engine running on an iPhone 1.
Did a quick sanity check here - this seems about right - Carlsen might be at least competitive with Pocket Fritz 4 at similar hardware performance to the iPhone 1, but that discounts the software improvements chess engines have seen over the past couple decades.
I don't know enough about chess, and will take your word for it. What it suggests to me is a deeper question: How do you get 143000 people to all fall in line behind a single machine, or person, making the best decision for them?
If you had a military-like organization and turned 143000 people into calculators led by one (talented) person or a hierarchy, then yes, they would crush Magnus.
No they would not. If you imagine running a computer chess engine on 143,000 humans, it's not even remotely close to the amount of compute you need to win.
Humans don't win by calculation the way computers do. When you have multiple humans working together on chess they don't add up to an ultra-smart human. You are simply as smart as the smartest human in your crew, and that's it.
You could absolutely form a system to harness the power of that many people. It would not happen spontaneously, but it is possible given enough effort. Calculation and memoirzation plays a huge role in chess.
Now I want to see a YouTuber hire 1000s of humans to make a human CPU. Each human can do a single simple task like a redstone block. What would their equivalent CPU clock speed be?
Could you play doom on humans?
Cheating obviously does happen but on the whole chess is kept alive by people who do it for fun. What would be the point of beating Magnus with a computer? Would anyone get satisfaction from that?
Oh, sweet summer child.
I mean, with Carlsen facing this sort of aggregate, large number of ‘opponents,’ yeah, I imagine quite a lot of them are cheaters.
The proper question might be: Why is this one iPhone stalemating 140k other iPhones in this particular task?
iPhone/computer/machine/etc
Better heuristics. Even 1% better heuristics is enough of an edge in a zero-sum game.