I'm gonna chime in here and a bunch of smug assholes are probably gonna crawl up my ass about it, but whatever...

I think this is a massive over complication.

The first fallacy that is dangerous to embrace is that a phenomenally good player should not look like an "engine". And right there, we fall down a rabbit hole. Everyone arguing about engine definitions, when what we're concerned about is if he's being fed moves that aren't his. Just because his moves are logical doesn't mean he's cheating, in fact, it should be expected.

Second, Magnus isn't gonna be top dog forever, if he's even theoretically the top dog right now. By that, I mean, is he the best player in the world RIGHT NOW. Is there a human being walking around right now that would win against him more often than they would lose? What would that person look like, and what would their play look like? Maybe that person is named Hans Niemann, maybe they aren't, but that's not the point. The point is to have realistic expectations, instead of assuming that it's impossible for anyone to ever surpass Magnus.

Video Game Speedrunning records get broken all the time, when time saves are theoretically "impossible" and the inputs required "must" require TAS inputs. Then someone develops a new trick and, boom, new record. Or, they just do it better than the last guy, boom, new record.

Magnus isn't unbeatable, and someday, someone is gonna come along and unseat him.

This is not a new story in Chess, of all places.

So, again, the question here is not how suspect his play is, or how engine-like his moves were.

That's expected, better players trend towards playing more like engines than less like engines, because engines win games, and good players win games.

The question is, if he did cheat, how? I'm not saying he didn't, I personally think he did. The odds are in my favor on that one. But that doesn't answer the question of how.

And that is the only important question. Not what reams of "statistics" say.

The statistics can only tell us it's improbable, and at best give us the outline of a smoking gun for whatever technique may have been used. But they will never be conclusive, and frankly, everyone that's interested in this controversy should be intelligent enough to understand that, it isn't "proof" of anything.

Give him a Faraday Cage match with Magnus and I'll bet Magnus rips his fucking face off.

Better yet, put him up against weaker players in the same conditions, and if he can't play like a savant under those conditions, you've got your answer. Simple as.

Having said that, if he still maintains performance even when you've eliminated that avenue of cheating, maybe it's time to consider his play is legit.