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Daniel Rensch explains why chess.com didn’t ban Joachim Nilsen who admitted to cheating in PRO Chess League

The President of the Norwegian Chess Federation Joachim Nilsen resigned from his position today, one day after he admitted to cheating on chess.com. Nilsen confessed to NRK that he cheated online during the PRO Chess League 2016/2017, as he received outside help from a person who was hidden in the room while he played for the Norwegian team. However, Nilsen was not banned from chess.com for violating their fair-play rules at the time.

Chess.com’s Chief Chess Officer Daniel Rensch explained that chess.com did not close Nilsen’s account as there was a 1/1000 chance of being wrong: “Imagine that his level of play can be achieved by a player of his strength only one out of 1,000 times. That sounds incredibly improbable. Now consider that every month thousands of titled players play on Chess.com. If we closed accounts based on a 1/1000 chance of being wrong (false positive), that would mean that every month we could potentially close several titled player accounts unfairly. So, should we have closed Nilsen’s account even though adjusting our standards might result in some accounts being unfairly closed?“. See the complete statement below

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