from Hacker News

A Bird-Feed Seller Beat a Chess Master Online. Then It Got Ugly

by elijahparker on 3/13/21, 3:47 AM with 6 comments

• by tacitusarc on 3/13/21, 4:12 AM

  I watch Levy's youtube channel, and he is certainly not the kind of person to vindictively report someone because they beat him. Furthermore, he explains his reasoning clearly when he thinks someone is cheating using a bot: they make strange moves, the time between movies stays fairly constant, they take longer than expected to make very obvious moves. I would be very curious to see this indonesian player legitimately play against a chess master live, because from both chess.com and Levy it sounds like he was definitely cheating.

• by Y_Y on 3/13/21, 9:23 AM

  The article somewhat leaves the matter open, but I think that's unfair. The guy may well have played chess when he was younger, but that he would be a world-class player despite being virtually unknown is the extraordinary claim here, and hence has the burden of proof.

  As others have said the "explanations" are also comically weak. Playing against bots does not make you play like a bot, he's not the first player to practice chess against the computer.

• by gumby on 3/13/21, 7:32 AM

  Couldn’t someone simply livestream the game, filming him from the same room? You could see if he was consulting a computer or not.