Chess scandal — is it all above board?
A bust-up between the world champion and a teenage rising star has electrified the game. Ed Cumming investigates
It is the story that has the chess world gripped. On Monday, Magnus Carlsen, the game’s Norwegian world number one, was playing an online game against Hans Niemann, a 19-year-old American grandmaster and rising star. After just two moves, Carlsen, 31, abruptly turned off his camera and quit.
“Magnus Carlsen just resigned. Got up and left,” said the grandmaster Tania Sachdev, commentating on the website Chess24. She was audibly shocked. In golf terms, this was the equivalent of peak Tiger Woods teeing-off at the first hole, then turning heel and heading back to the clubhouse. “This is unprecedented,” she added. “Did that just happen?”
Carlsen’s departure added fuel to a fire that had been raging for weeks. Before September 4, the Norwegian was unbeaten in 53 games in classical over-the-board tournaments. His run came to an abrupt halt in the Sinquefield Cup, when Niemann beat him. Carlsen quit the competition the next day. He offered no explanation, except for a cryptic Twitter post of a popular meme of the football manager Jose Mourinho saying: “I prefer really not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble.” Carlsen’s post was widely interpreted as implying Niemann had been cheating. On Monday, it is thought he made one move to fulfil a contractual obligation to the tournament — the Julius Baer Generation Cup. At the time of writing, he has offered no further clarification.
“It is disappointing from Carlsen,” says Nigel Short, former British number one and world number three. “If he has something to say, he should say it and not insinuate. Unless he can justify it in some way, it is unacceptable. I will not be surprised if he finds himself in trouble for bringing the game into disrepute and for match-throwing [the second game].” Former world champion Garry Kasparov implied that Carlsen needed to put up or shut up.
“In the last few days, the chess world has become the centre of controversy and spectacle, and for none of the right reasons,” he has said. “I will not talk about the dirty rumours, but I will say that Carlsen’s withdrawal was a blow to chess fans, his colleagues at the tournament, the organisers, and, as the rumours and negative publicity swirl in a vacuum, to the game.”
The “dirty rumours”, in this case, amount to more than a figure of speech. Niemann’s unexpected victory gave rise to a number of ideas about how, exactly, he might have cheated. In big tournaments, players are scanned for devices that could give them an unfair advantage. Twenty-five years after IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Kasparov, anyone with a smartphone could easily crush even Carlsen.
Grandmasters have previously been banned for hiding their phones in the lavatory to consult during midgame visits. In 2022, you need to be more inventive.
One theory had it that Niemann had vibrating, internet-enabled beads secreted about his person, in an area more likely to be inspected before a prison sentence than a game of chess. Without going too much into the nascent field of teledildonics, someone watching the match could feed Niemann information through well-timed buzzes.
Others speculated Niemann might have had a computer in his shoes, or, more prosaically, that he had seen Carlsen’s prep work for the tournament. In an audacious gambit, Stripchat, an adult website, responded by offering to make Niemann a “pawn star”, saying they would give him $1 million to play in the nude to prove he wasn’t cheating.
NIEMANN HAS strongly denied the accusations, calling them “completely unfair”. Computers are capable of analysing games for unusual patterns of behaviour, but there was nothing extraordinary about Carlsen and Niemann’s encounter.
“I just thought Carlsen played poorly,” says Short. “There is absolutely no evidence of cheating.” “The beads are a funny joke,” he adds. To complicate matters, however, Niemann has admitted cheating online as a child. Chess.com, one of the leading chess websites, which hosts tournaments, banned him from playing, again without providing any further evidence.
Carlsen’s company, Play Magnus group, is in the process of merging with chess.com in a deal worth a reputed $138 million. There has been speculation that the deal might have given Carlsen access to more incriminating data on Niemann.
“Magnus is otherwise relatively level-headed,” says Jonathan Rowson, author of The Moves That Matter: A Grandmaster on the Game of Life. “It’s quite dramatic that he doubled down on it by resigning on move two [in the online game]. It makes me think he must know something the public does not.
“But you have to be careful about damaging reputations without evidence. And the nature of the evidence is almost certainly going to be questionable. I don’t see any evidence in recent over-the-board games that Hans Niemann is cheating . . . All that Carlsen can have is his general suspicion, based on the fact this guy has been caught before, and something additional that comes from proprietary knowledge based on the merger with Chess.com.”
Some players, most notably the American number one, Hikaru Nakamura, have implicitly taken Carlsen’s side in the row. Others have expressed suspicion over Niemann’s rapid rise up the ranks in recent years. But Professor Ken Regan, a leading anti-cheating authority, has examined his games and found nothing egregious.
EVEN WITHOUT the sex-toy element, a row involving Carlsen would always be likely to spill out into the mainstream press. For over a decade, he has been chess’s lone crossover star, an urbane champion who has had modelling contracts and in 2019 was briefly ranked number one in the Fantasy Premier League football game. His fierce reaction to Niemann follows an announcement in July that he would not defend his world championship, a title he has held since 2013. “I’m not motivated to play another match,” he said. “I don’t have a lot to gain. I don’t particularly like it, and although I’m sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons, I don’t have any inclinations to play.”
Short says Carlsen may simply be paying the price for years at the top. “After five world championships, it is possible the strain of playing at the highest level is affecting his judgment. He has made a lot of money. Maybe after being the undisputed best player in the world for years, you start to see things differently.”
The Sinquefield Cup game was not the first time he lost to Niemann. Last August, he lost to him at a tournament in Miami. When Niemann was asked to explain his victory, he said “[the] chess speaks for itself ”.
“I think Magnus was greatly displeased by this display of arrogance,” says Malcolm Pein, the editor of Chess Magazine and Telegraph chess correspondent.
“He went on to beat him. I think there is some turmoil in [Carlsen]’s life at the moment,” he adds. “But he has been playing brilliantly, crushing everyone.
“I think he was furious to lose to Niemann [on September 4], and has a disregard for him because he has admitted cheating, and he finds it unpalatable to have to play chess against him when he thinks he shouldn’t be playing.”
BETWEEN THE current row, the opportunities afforded by lockdown and the Netflix drama The Queen’s Gambit, one could argue that the game is having a “moment”.
The internet has been a boon for fans, who can follow matches with real-time computer information about the strength of each move.
But it has also given rise to infinitely more possibilities for cheating. Now there are large prizes available for online games. When the incentives for winning are so great, authorities will need to remain vigilant.
“If there is one good thing to come out of this story, it will be that people who cheat online will realise that there are real-world implications,” says Short. “What you do in your bedroom or your study may affect your life down the line.” A lesson that applies beyond the 64 squares of the chessboard.