In the fall of 2022, at the prestigious Sinquefield Cup, a momentous accusation by the then-world champion and highest-ever-rated player Magnus Carlsen shook the chess world as he withdrew from a tournament for the first time of his career after a shock defeat to American youngster Hans Niemann, insinuating foul play. With accusations going back and forth, some snubs, and even a lawsuit, the story has kept the chess world captivated ever since. Here’s what we know about what really happened.
Who is Hans Moke Niemann?
Born June 20, 2003, Hans Moke Miemann is an American chess grandmaster who earned the prestigious title on Jan. 22, 2021. He is one of the highest-rated junior players in the world and used to have a fairly notable presence on Twitch, which he has scaled back since. He first broke into the world top 100 in March 2022, and shortly thereafter, he was invited to the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour’s FTX Crypto Cup event, which featured some of the best players in the world.
Despite scoring an impressive victory over Magnus Carlsen in the first game of their four-game match, where he memorably ended the post-match interview with a one-sentence remark that “[the] chess speaks for itself,” he then proceeded to lose the series and every other match in the cup, finishing with zero points.
The spice on display attracted a lot of chess fans’ attention to Niemann, and soon thereafter, he was invited to the prestigious Sinquefield Cup after Richárd Rapport was forced to withdraw because of COVID-related travel restrictions. Niemann was ranked 40th in the world at the time and was by far the lowest-rated player in the invitational.
In the third round of the event, Niemann faced Carlsen again, who had been on a 53-game unbeaten streak in classical play at the time, and scored a shock win over the world champion with the Black pieces, breaking the 2700 rating barrier for the first time. The very next day, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, tweeting a famous video from football manager José Mourinho saying “If I speak I am in big trouble” by way of cryptic context. He also changed his Instagram profile description, writing “Beating someone once isn’t revenge.”
Chess experts and fellow players around the world immediately began to work their way through the archive of Niemann’s games and utterances. Grandmasters Hikaru Nakamura and Ian Nepomniachtchi have both implied a history of cheating in online play on Niemanns’s part, referring to a six-month absence of competitive online tournaments, albeit without concrete proof.
The American forcefully denied the allegations in the next round’s post-match interview in terms of the more serious conduct, but he did admit to cheating in online games at the ages of 12 and 16 but underlining that he never cheated in over-the-board play. By this time, chess.com, the most popular chess platform in the world and a regular collaborator with the world governing body, FIDE, had also immediately banned his account after the controversy began.
Since Carlsen forfeited the tournament before the 50 percent mark, his results were annulled from the standings. Ultimately, Niemann finished in sixth place with 3.5 points, beating out Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, but far behind fellow prodigy Alireza Firouzja, who won the event with five points, beating out Ian Nepomniachtchi in the two-game tiebreaker playoffs.
Carlsen and Niemann would meet again in an online tournament, the Julius Bär Generation Cup, which was also organized as part of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour. On Sept. 19, the players were to face off in a highly anticipated clash in the preliminary round, but Carlsen resigned after making just one move.
In the pre-playoff interview, he offered his first set of comments on the matter, saying “Unfortunately, I cannot particularly speak on that, but people can draw their own conclusions, and they certainly have. I have to say I’m very impressed by Niemann’s play, and I think his mentor Maxim Dlugy must be doing a great job,” referring to another player caught up in previous cheating controversies on chess.com. After winning the tournament with a near-flawless set of performances, Carlsen added he will provide a proper statement in a couple of days.
This response came on Sept. 26, when the world champion revealed that he seriously considered withdrawing from the Sinquefield Cup the moment Niemann was announced as Rapport’s replacement. He further said he believes the American “has cheated more—and more recently—than he has publicly admitted,” adding that “his over-the-board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.”
So, has Hans Niemann cheated at chess?
Niemann has confessed to cheating in online play, and chess.com’s statistical analysis seems to underpin that he’s done so more often (and in more meaningful games) than he has admitted to doing. But no similar proof has emerged regarding his over-the-board performances, especially not in the context of the specific game he played against Carlsen at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. Kenneth Regan, an associate professor in UB’s Department of Computer Science and international chess master, who serves as FIDE’s premier authority on matters of tournament integrity, found no evidence of cheating after analyzing over 200 of Niemann’s over-the-board games.
Niemann’s rapid rise in the rankings can be explained by the same phenomenon that applied to many talented young players over the last few years: With no offline tournaments, their accumulated growth in knowledge and skill over the pandemic period took some time to translate to official events and led to some outlier performances where they played far beyond what their rating would suggest. Niemann broke into the 2700-rated “super-Grandmaster” club with his win over Carlsen at the time, and though he was unable to maintain his place in this elite of the elite, he still comfortably resides in the top 100 of the world, hovering above 2660 ELO at the time of writing per the live chess rankings.
With even the smallest devices capable of carrying computational power that can outperform the greatest human players of the world, however, the means are definitely there to cheat in chess offline, and the most prestigious events of the world have significantly ramped up security measures since the incident to further ensure trust and competitive integrity, which occasionally also include delays on the official broadcast and the transmission of moves made.
What happened to the Niemann lawsuit?
In reaction to the growing controversy, Hans Niemann filed a federal defamation lawsuit against Magnus Carlsen and his company, Chess.com, and its “chief chess officer” Danny Rensch, plus Hikaru Nakamura, on October 2022, alleging that he’s directly lost out on important tournament invitations because of the allegations made against him by the aforementioned parties, seeking $100 million in damages for each cause of action involved.
The suit was called “meritless,” “an attempt to deflect blame,” and “a public relations stunt,” respectively, by opposing legal counsel, and it was dismissed with prejudice by a federal judge on June 27, 2023, which means Niemann cannot refile it again.
