American chess grandmaster Hans Niemann, a 19-year old phenom accused of cheating, was to play his first-round match at the 2022 US Chess Championships on Wednesday. The scandal is the talk of the board.
Hans Niemann (right) and reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen are at the center of a cheating stormImage: Crystal Fuller/Saint Louis Chess Club/dpa/picture alliance
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Hans Niemann's credibility has been tested by an investigation into his play that says he "likely received illegal assistance in more than 100 online games”. A report from Chess.com, first detailed Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal, says such cheating occurred as recently as 2020, and many instances involved matches in which Niemann was playing for prize money.
The Chess.com investigation used the platform's own array of computerized and manual cheating-detection tools to analyze Niemann's play over years of matches. Niemann himself has described Chess.com as having "the best cheat detection in the world."
Chess.com's report says Carlsen's accusation played no role in its investigation, adding that its findings point to incidences in online matches. "While Hans (Niemann) has had a record-setting and remarkable rise in rating and strength,” the report says, "in our view there is a lack of concrete statistical evidence that he cheated in his game with Magnus or in any other over-the-board ("OTB")—i.e., in-person games."
Still, the report pointed to "many remarkable signals and unusual patterns in Hans' path as a player, saying some games, behaviors, and actions are hard to understand."
It should be noted that Chess.com is moving toward the purchase of Magnus Carlsen's own app called Play Magnus. Chess.com's more than 90 million members include some grandmasters, and the platform hosts major tournaments for prize money.
While other chess grandmasters have expressed doubts about Niemann's rise to the top 50 in the game, or suggested he has cheated, a number of experts and historians have been quoted saying they have not seen rock solid evidence of impropriety on Niemann's part.
Bobby Fischer and the world's fascination with chess
For many chess fans, he is still the greatest: Bobby Fischer became World Champion in Iceland 50 years ago. The "Match of the Century" in Reykjavik is legendary.
Image: J. Walter Green/AP/picture alliance
On his way to becoming world chess champion
The then 29-year-old grandmaster from New York was renowned to be both brilliant and eccentric: Bobby Fischer contributed to turning the World Chess Championship into a spectacle. He is shown here on August 23, 1972, on his way to a game at the championship held in Reykjavik, Iceland. A week later, Fischer obtained the title he had been working towards since his youth: world chess champion.
Image: J. Walter Green/AP/picture alliance
The chess prodigy
Robert James Fischer, known as Bobby, was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago. Fischer grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with his mother, a nurse who was followed by the FBI due to suspicion she was a communist. The family had little money. Even as a child, Bobby was a very strong chess player. In 1958, at the age of 14, he became the youngest ever US chess champion.
At the age of 16, Fischer was already one of the best chess players in the world. His competitors mainly came from the Soviet Union, the world's chess powerhouse since the Second World War. At the time, Fischer's great role model was the Latvian-Soviet grandmaster and later World Champion, Mikhail Tal. In 1959, the two met in Zurich. The game ended in a draw.
During the 1960s, Boris Spassky (right) became the best player in the Soviet Union. Then in 1969, Spassky became world champion. Before the match in Iceland, he had never lost to Bobby Fischer. The popular Russian came to Reykjavik confident of his victory. Did he underestimate his opponent?
Image: AFP
The 'Match of the Century'
Adding to the tension, it wasn't clear if Fischer would actually show up to face Spassky. The former child prodigy from New York had failed to appear or arrived late to previous games. Fischer did not trust Soviet chess players and the World Chess Federation. At the last minute, the Icelandic organizers managed to get Fischer to come to Reykjavik. In the first round, he conceded defeat.
Image: J. Walter Green/AP/picture alliance
The Cold War played on a chessboard
Amid the Cold War, the match opposing the US and the USSR fascinated the public. Fischer's particular demands — for example, to have the cameras removed from the game — added to the unprecedented media hype surrounding the chess championship. After a high-class match, Fischer clearly prevailed, and officially took the World Chess Champion crown from the Soviet Union on September 1, 1972.
Image: AP/picture alliance
1992: Fischer reappears
It is the biggest mystery in chess history: After the 1972 World Chess Championship, Fischer retired from chess, forfeiting his title without defending it. He publicly returned to the chessboard only once, in 1992, facing Boris Spassky again in a private match in the former Yugoslavia. He won again. But having violated US sanctions to play the game, he was labeled a fugitive and fled into exile.
Image: Dagobert Kohlmeyer/dpa/picture-alliance
Finding a home in Reykjavik
As an emigre, Fischer spent time in different countries until 2004, when he was detained in Tokyo and faced deportation to the US. Mentally ill, he had also made headlines with his anti-American and antisemitic statements. But he still found support from a group of Icelandic chess players who managed to bring him back to Reykjavik, where he spent the last years of his life before dying in 2008.
In 2020 — almost 50 years after the "Match of the Century" — chess was suddenly on everyone's lips again. The Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit," starring Anya Taylor-Joy in the role of chess genius Beth Harmon, was a massive hit during the pandemic.
Beth Harmon's character was in part inspired by Bobby Fischer's life. The myth lives on.
Image: Netflix/dpa/picture alliance
Magnus Carlsen: Fischer's successor?
Bobby Fischer has long been considered by many to be the greatest player of all time. "Fischer was an incredibly competitive player, and that still impresses today," said Icelandic grandmaster Helgi Olafson, who supported Fischer in his final years in Iceland. This irrepressible will to win also characterizes the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen — who, like Fischer, was a child prodigy.
Image: Jose Mendez/EPA/picture alliance
A German prodigy
A young German has also been exceptionally good for a number of years. Vincent Keymer (right), who is now 17 years old, is the best chess player in Germany and on his way to the top 10 in world chess. At the age of 14, he played against world champion Magnus Carlsen for the first time — and narrowly lost. In 2021, Keymer became Vice European Champion in Reykjavik.
Image: Georgios Souleidis/picture alliance/dpa
Bobby Fischer (1943 - 2008)
Bobby Fischer was buried in Iceland in 2008. His opponent in the "Match of the Century," the Russian Boris Spassky, now lives in seclusion in Moscow — the effects of two strokes have confined him to a wheelchair. "Spassky always worried about Fischer ... like a big brother," said Icelandic chess champion Helgi Olafson, who knew both players well.
Niemann has admitted to cheating with the use of an electronic device to determine the best moves, once at the age of 12 and again at the age of 16. He apologized, blaming his youth at the time and saying he hasn't cheated since.
His admissions came after Carlsen pointedly took his stand on Niemann's alleged cheating. Carlsen dramatically resigned after one move in an online match against Niemann on September 19, then released a statement saying he would not "play against people that have cheated repeatedly in the past".
He added,"I believe that Hans Niemann has cheated more — and more recently — than he has publicly admitted. His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup [the September 4 match in which Carlsen lost] I had the impression that he wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black [pieces, a disadvantage in chess] in a way I think only a handful of players can do."
Chess.com said in its report, "we believe certain aspects of the September 4 game were suspicious."
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Chess moves data
One paragraph of the report goes into some detail about Hans Niemann's play in the tournament in question, the Sinquefield Cup. It noted that his win over Carlsen in the third round was apparently seen as suspicious, perhaps relying on assistance from an outside source watching the live video feed.
"We also measured that for the first three games of the Sinquefield Cup, Hans played with a Chess.com Strength Score of 97.17. After round 3, the event organizers (in response to cheating concerns) added a 15-minute delay to the broadcast of the chess moves. For rounds 4-9, Hans achieved a Strength Score of 86.31. Other players also had some interesting changes in Strength, as measured by Chess.com. This can be attributed to any number of factors, including the ensuing situation after Magnus withdrew, different opponents, etc. In our view, no conclusions should be made from this data."
Prior to their game on September 4, both Niemann and Carlsen were given security checks with metal detector wands, as seen in video from the tournament.
The Chess.com report added that while the investigation results focus on Niemann's online matches, six of his best over-the-board, in-person matches "merit further investigation based on the data."
