I have a shocking admission to make. I am a chess cheat. Or at least world champion Magnus Carlsen would brand me a chess cheat. Occasionally, in online games where I have been testing out particular openings, I have used a chess engine (a dedicated computer program) to look for the best moves to try to get an understanding of positions.
Strictly speaking, that is cheating and if the chess platforms on which I play found out, I would be banned. But they never have, because after the first 15 or so moves I abandon the engine and just play on my wits, usually making the litany of blunders for which my chess is noted. Any suspicions anti-cheating systems have about my perfect play up to move 15 are allayed by my decidedly imperfect play over the next 30 or 40. I am a cheat who has got away with it.
The 19-year-old American grandmaster Hans Niemann has not been so fortunate. The world’s biggest chess platform chess.com, which recently bought Carlsen’s Play Magnus company, has exposed Niemann as an online cheat – it reckons he cheated in more than 100 games.
Niemann has admitted to cheating in online games as a 12- and 16-year-old. Mostly he says they were “random” games, but money was at stake in some. He had to pay rent and was also keen to win by any means to boost his chess profile and draw people to his internet stream, which he was seeking to monetise. It is all very unedifying, and the world chess governing body, Fide, has convened an inquiry.
There had clearly been gossip in elite chess circles about Niemann’s behaviour because when Carlsen lost to Niemann in an over-the-board tournament last month the world champion immediately withdrew, dropping dark hints that Niemann had been getting computer assistance. Carlsen shared a short clip in which football coach José Mourinho says: “If I speak I’m in big trouble.” His supporters were only too eager to join the dots and accused Niemann of using artificial assistance. Elon Musk, with zero evidence, repeated speculative claims that Niemann might be employing vibrating anal beads to alert him to moves. Niemann countered by offering to play naked.
The plot thickened late last month when Carlsen and Niemann played again, this time in an online tournament, and Carlsen resigned after just one move. A few days later, the world champion went public with his suspicions. He said Niemann’s demeanour at the board during their previous encounter had been strange, that he had barely been concentrating, and also drew attention to the “unusual” trajectory of Niemann’s career: he was good but no world-beater in his early teens, an age when most top players are already grandmasters, but has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past two years.
None of Carlsen’s claims, however, would stand up in court. Lots of players behave oddly at the board and don’t appear to be concentrating: the strongest player at my club has been trying to teach the rest of us to look away from the board while playing – stare at the ceiling instead, he suggests, and try to visualise all the possible moves instead, as Beth Harmon does in The Queen’s Gambit. As for the trajectory of Niemann’s career, well maybe he’s just a late developer.
The onus is on Carlsen to produce proof that Niemann is an over-the-board cheat, and he needs to do it soon, because the young American is suffering what former world title contender Nigel Short has called “death by innuendo”. How can Niemann, who is currently competing in the US championship, be expected to play well when he is subjected to this kind of pressure?
It may be that I am hopelessly naive, but for the moment I am siding with Niemann. Carlsen, whom I once played in a blitz (very short) game that I lost in embarrassing fashion, would perhaps say that cheats stick together. But Niemann was young, rebellious, and says he was living alone and needed money when he cheated online. “This is the single biggest mistake of my life, and I am completely ashamed,” he says now.
I am willing to take him at his word and accept he has learned his lesson. Cheating over the board in elite events is almost impossible. Cheating does occur in big tournaments – even grandmasters have been exposed – but it would be incredibly difficult in the rarefied events in which Carlsen and Niemann play. Fields are small and anti-cheating protocols virtually watertight. Even if you got away with it once, you would eventually get found out. Over time, it will become clear how good a player Niemann is and whether the win against Carlsen was a one-off.
The bigger picture for chess is an odd one: it may have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, but for a sport that has spent the past 40 years in the doldrums the sudden attention is energising. The tousle-haired Niemann is on his way to becoming a global superstar, and chess, we were told in the Guardian this week, is hip and happening. The Guardian reporter even said there were now “chess groupies”, though none has yet made an appearance at Kingston or Surbiton, where I play alongside other ageing aficionados of the 64 squares.
Chess is a beautiful game, but for the most part it has not been played by beautiful people. That could, it seems, be about to change, and how bizarre that a cheating scandal may be one factor in bringing it back into the cultural mainstream. The odd couple of Carlsen and Niemann, with a bit of help from Beth Harmon, have made chess fashionable again, and pot-bellied saddos like me, lurking in draughty church halls and the sticky-floored upstairs rooms of pubs, can once more speak openly of our obsession with the Nimzo-Larsen and the Göring Gambit. Paradoxically, despite the occasional use of dodgy devices, we are respectable again.
Stephen Moss is author of The Rookie: An Odyssey through Chess (and Life)
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