Magnus Carlsen’s shock withdrawal from the $350,000 Sinquefield Cup in St Louis following his third-round defeat to the newcomer Hans Niemann has triggered a variety of “cheating” claims. It is potentially the most serious such case for international chess since the 2005 Toiletgate world championship match, when Veselin Topalov accused Vlad Kramnik of analysing games in the lavatory.
Carlsen’s loss to Niemann, 19, was his first for several years with White to a much lower rated opponent, and it was the first withdrawal of the Norwegian’s entire career. His only explanation was a cryptic video clip of the football manager José Morinho saying “If I speak I am in big trouble,” during a press conference about referees.
This was widely interpreted as raising suspicions of cheating. Security was stepped up, the round-four broadcast was delayed by 15 minutes, and Niemann was thoroughly frisked before the start of his game, but nothing was found.
The leading chess streamer, GM Hikaru Nakamura, weighed in with the revelation that, many years earlier, Niemann had been temporarily banned by Chess.com for computer use in an online tournament. Carlsen’s opening 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 g3, had been prepared by Niemann in detail.
The Californian teenager, who does not have a coach but whose rating has jumped 250 points in three years, had already beaten the world champion a month earlier in an online tournament in Miami, when he made headlines for a one-sentence victory interview where he said: “ Chess speaks for itself,” before walking off. For a while at St Louis, he became an outcast.
Then a reaction set in. The position out of the opening was almost level, a minimal 0.3 plus for Black, but the world champion seemed to try too hard, with sub-optimal choices at moves 22, 40 and 42. Niemann also made inaccuracies, so the game lacked the tell-tale signs of computer aid.
Support for the teenager came from Jacob Aagaard, the Danish-Scottish grandmaster who was British champion in 2007 and is a popular author. France’s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who is competing at St Louis, said: “The scandal has become a witch hunt.”
Then Niemann spoke in his own defence, in his post-game fifth-round interview following his draw with Leinier Domínguez in which his opponent let him off the hook in a lost position. iIn half an hour of fast talking (a transcript of the salient points is available on chess24) he dealt with the issues against him and issued a defiant message: “I’m not going to let Chess.com, I’m not going to let Magnus Carlsen, I’m not going to let Hikaru Nakamura, the three arguably biggest entities in chess, simply slander my reputation because the question is – why are they going to remove me from Chess.com right after I beat Magnus?”
He has been banned from the largest chess site and uninvited from the Chess.com Global Championship, a $1m event with online qualifiers and an eight-player final in Toronto.
Following this interview, the huge volume of online comments which had been around 90% against him have changed to around 60-40 in his favour, There are growing calls now for Carlsen to issue a fuller statement.
It would appear that the central issue is whether Carlsen believes his pre-game analysis of his intended surprise 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 g3 was leaked, either by a mole within his camp or by a computer hack.
An alternative explanation of the “leak” could be quite innocent. The relevant pawn structure, with plausible transpositions into Carlsen v Niemann, had already occurred in a previous well-known Carlsen game against England’s Michael Adams in 2006. Niemann said he asked himself what ideas Carlsen might produce to divert him from his planned Catalan with … Bb4+ and decided to check 5 Nc3, a rare transposition to the Nimzo-Indian. There was also Niemann’s own very recent game against Le Quang Liem at Miami, where 5 g3 (instead of 5 e3 d5 as played) d5 6 a3 could easily transpose into Carlsen v Niemann.
Carlsen had begun well in St Louis, defeating his 2021 title challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, in the first round by means of a trademark Carlsen grind from an apparently level opening, and taking his score against his rival to six points from their last seven meetings.
The third round on Sunday changed everything and it is easy to understand why the world champion was so upset. Carlsen’s tournament score will be cancelled, but his games will be rated and the defeat by Niemann will cost him seven rating points, a large setback in the context of trying to get from 2865 to 2900. His dream of a record rating has just become more distant.
Meanwhile Niemann is the lone outsider, the new kid on the block challenging the big battalions. Older US chess fans, who have longed since the 1970s for a second coming of Bobby Fischer, will empathise with him. Then, the establishment was Mikhail Botvinnik, Tigran Petrosian and the Soviet chess empire. Now it is Carlsen, Nakamura, and Chess.com.
Of course the comparison easily breaks down. At 19, Fischer had just won the 1962 Stockholm interzonal and was favourite for the Candidates. Niemann at 19, despite his meteoric rise, has only just broken 2700 and is still down at world No 40. Hans has the Fischer glare and the ambition to be No 1, but his mystique rests basically on a single game against the world champion.
3832: 1 Kg3! Bc3 2 Bg6+ Kg5 3 h4+! gxh3 ep 4 f4 mate. Other replies cost Black at least his bishop.