Since the 2020 boom, primarily inspired by “The Queen’s Gambit,” few events in the chess world have sparked as much interest as the cheating scandal involving Grandmaster Hans Niemann. He’s a 19 year-old American chess grandmaster who has risen sharply in ranking in the past couple of years, and currently ranks 40th in the world.
On September 5, 2022, during the elite Sinquefield Cup tournament, Niemann stunned the chess world when he defeated reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the third round.
The next day, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, throwing the chess community into upheaval. The implications were clear, though Carlsen made no formal statement: he was insinuating that Niemann had used a chess computer to cheat during their game (see Tweet here).
These allegations were supported by the fact that Niemann has had a history with cheating in online chess. In 2020, the world’s leading chess website, Chess.com, banned him after he cheated in multiple games. Niemann later admitted to cheating in several games when he was 16.
Following Carlsen’s Tweet, other grandmasters began analyzing Niemann’s previous games and discussing his record with cheating online. Grandmasters, such as popular Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura, even went as far as to make informal accusations of their own.
Rumors began percolating through social media: perhaps Niemann had hidden a phone in the bathroom to communicate with his coach, maybe he had gotten leaked preparation from Carlsen’s team or perhaps, most preposterous of all, Niemann used vibrating anal beads which communicated the engine’s recommended moves to him. The theories spread like wildfire across the internet.
More than a week later, Carlsen released a statement encapsulating the reason for his withdrawal from the tournament.
“I believe that Niemann has cheated more — and more recently — than he has publicly admitted,” said Carlsen in his statement, adding that Niemann’s prodigious rise in over-the-board (OTB) chess in the last few years was highly unusual.
Niemann replied to the statement, passionately defending himself.
“I can come to the game, I can completely strip,” Niemann said. “You wanna do any fair play check to me you want, I don’t care, because I know I’m clean.”
However, this felt like an act, a show of false bravado that thinly veiled the deception beneath.
Following these statements, the chess world took sides, either defending Niemann or slandering him.
One of the most popular chess YouTubers, Levy Rozman, (who goes by the handle of @gothamchess), was one of many who vouched for Niemann, arguing that it was improper to accuse him without appropriate proof.
Others thought that Niemann’s prolonged history of cheating and his meteoric rise in rankings in the last four years was damning enough.
A week or two later, the Saint Louis Chess Club, which hosts the Sinquefield Cup, released their formal investigative report on Niemann, stating that their fair play policy had not been breached.
Many were unconvinced. Cheating in chess is nearly impossible to prove if the suspect isn’t caught red-handed. There was simply no way to prove that Niemann had cheated.
Cheating in competitive chess degrades the sport. If cheating OTB becomes as prevalent as it has become online, even in low-level tournaments, the competitive integrity of chess dissolves.
In order to preserve the purity of the sport, anti-cheating measures must be taken seriously, and people with a history of multiple infringements should be disallowed from participating in elite tournaments. Otherwise, the game which has eluded our understanding for over a thousand years will become meaningless.
