Cheating at chess: the story so far

Imagine two young men. The American teenage chess grandmaster, Hans Niemann, and the Norwegian world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen, are sitting on a sunny Miami beach together, hunched over a chessboard and obviously enjoying themselves as they play a series of quick games. This is chess for fun.

Within a few days, the two meet again on September 4th in a serious tournament game: the third round of the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis. This is chess for blood.

Sensationally, the teenager defeats the world champion, who promptly and unprecedentedly walks out of the entire event. The following week they meet again over the chessboard. The champion’s brusquely expressive gesture of resigning this fresh game, after just one move, indicates that he refuses to play. This gambit, also unprecedented, leads to allegations of cheating and a scandal which has ripped the chess world apart, with grandmasters and former champions taking entrenched positions on both sides.

Not since the days of Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky had chess hit the mainstream news in such prolonged and dramatic a fashion.

An eagerly awaited report by online chess giant Chess.com, was issued on October 4th. They had intended this to be the definitive judgement as to whether Niemann had cheated or not in his famous victory against world champion Magnus Carlsen. Predictably, though, the report came down heavily on Carlsen’s side, resulting in screaming headlines that Niemann had cheated hundreds of times in online games, but also with an innuendo that the teenager might have defeated Carlsen by dubious means in their over the board (OTB) game from the tournament in St Louis.

Chess.com has protested (rather too much, methinks) that they have not acted on Carlsen’s instructions or indeed previously communicated with him in any detail on this matter. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, and Niemann’s reputation was in jeopardy of perpetual ruin. Carlsen’s financial relationship with Chess.com, where a multi-million dollar merger is in the offing, surely had nothing to do with their judgement. Many commentators agree that the behaviour of chess.com has been closer to opaque than transparent. Perhaps people in glass houses are ill-advised to hurl defamatory allegations.

Returning to the Chess.com report, in spite of the media furore, cooler heads such as the English Grandmaster Nigel Davies have been more sceptical. He forthrightly notes in a tweet, “72 effing pages but without any clue as to what constitutes academic rigour…”

He is supported in this viewpoint by an adviser to the English Chess Federation (ECF), Carl Portman, who has tweeted, “It just gets worse. I have not read the full report but words like ‘likely’ are meaningless. In court, ‘likely, probably, might have and possibly’ are NOT enough to make a conviction…” Mr Portman should know about legal contexts, as he is the ECF manager of Chess in Prisons.

Based purely on statistical probability, Chess.com claim Niemann cheated on many more occasions online than he has admitted. Niemann has indeed confessed to two instances of illicit online consultation with chess computers earlier in his teenage years.

But has he cheated now to beat Carlsen in their OTB game?

I would say no. If young players’ moves resemble those of a computer, this surely means that young players training intensively with a computer will end up playing like a computer. I predicted this in my lecture to the Royal Institution almost thirty years ago, even before Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue computer in their 1997 match.

The Chess.com report also damns Niemann for a statistically improbable rapid rise in rating. I wonder what they would have said about the rise of the young Capablanca, Fischer and Kasparov or, indeed, Carlsen himself, had mass online competition been available during their early years.

Crucially, the authors of the report from Chess.com are still insinuating that Niemann’s OTB win against Carlsen, is suspicious. Their report (page 3) states, “Despite the public speculation on these questions, in our view, there is no direct evidence that proves Hans cheated at the September 4, 2022 game with Magnus, or proves that he has cheated in other OTB games in the past.”

However, the report’s authors then proceed to undermine this incontrovertible statement: “We believe certain aspects of the September 4 game were suspicious, and Hans’s explanation of his win post-event added to our suspicion.”

My consistent advice to Niemann has been to consult M’Learned Friends. Niemann has now taken my advice, using the US law firm of Oved & Oved LLP and local Missouri counsel The Gartner Law Firm. The full text of the lawsuit has been published by Niemann on social media, and the damages sought are spread over a wide range of Carlsen’s backers and courtiers, and in particular, Chess.com; with sums mentioned being in the hundreds of millions of US dollars.

In a little quoted and even less known exposé of the financial relationship between Carlsen and Chess.com, the dotesports.com platform has made some rarely reported observations of considerable significance.

“Two of the largest commercial online entities will join forces under Chess.com ’ s banner after the Play Magnus Group (PMG) accepted an offer of purchase from their one-time rivals…With this, there is no other realistic chess competitor in sight (apart from the open-source and free Lichess platform), raising questions about monopolistic issues in the space and the reasons behind Chess.com ’ s recent price hike.

… it’s likely that … the content will be moved under the chess.com banner.”

Commenting on the Chess.com report in the context of this financial report, Adam Black, a former Reuters chess correspondent , added: “It is notable that no mention of the commercial relationship between Carlsen and Chess.com, nor sponsorship links with many of their online commentators is disclosed in their lengthy and technical pseudo-paper.”

Without disclosing  any of their financial links, Chess.com goes to great lengths to try to distance and disassociate their actions from Carlsen’s, but I believe in any case that there is an overriding logical flaw in the argument of chess.com. If their anti-cheating detection process is so perfect, as they claim, how is it possible that Niemann succeeded in cheating hundreds of times, before being identified and exposed? Chess.com is trying to have their cake and eat it.

In a further development, the Chess.com report has been overtaken by events. In a new ChessClubLive post, a video shows Magnus Carlsen himself allegedly  cheating in an online game against American Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky on the Lichess.com. Carlsen has been approached for comment but has not yet responded to these potentially game-changing allegations. The twittersphere is abuzz with reactions that dwell on Carlsen’s prima facie hypocrisy.

The daunting length of the Chess.com attempted demolition of Niemann, with its accompanying innuendo about the St Louis game with Carlsen, was suspiciously timed to coincide with Niemann’s appearance at this year’s US Championship, in which he finished in joint 5th-9th place. It has, nevertheless, so far proved impossible to build up a case that the original casus belli, Niemann’s face to face win against Carlsen, was anything other than a convincing and genuine victory. This view has been endorsed by Malcolm Pein, chess correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, in an extended interview for BBC TV.

In a further attempt to damn Niemann by association, Carlsen attributed Niemann’s success to having worked with former US Chess Federation President and junior world champion, the Russian-born American grandmaster Maxim Dlugy.

This aside was accompanied by additional simultaneous allegations — not from Carlsen — about Dlugy himself cheating on Chess.com. After initially denying they were the source, Chess.com later had to retract their denial of having leaked this confidential correspondence. Dlugy has responded at length to repudiate any attack on his reputation.

“A grandmaster and a chess professional for more than 40 years, I have found myself dragged into the cheating controversy rocking the chess world, following the release of confidential emails by chess.com – a company with a huge financial stake in supporting the version of events pushed by chess world champion Magnus Carlsen.

“Even though I had absolutely nothing to do with the now infamous match between Magnus and Hans, I am now compelled to defend myself against completely absurd and slanderous accusations made against me.

“I didn’t have anything to do with Hans’ success in his game against Magnus, contrary to what Magnus has insinuated, as I don’t prepare Hans for his games.

“It looks like Magnus has been told by advisors to avoid direct accusations and work with insinuations. He insinuated that Hans cheated in their game, without saying as much, and when it came time to say something of note, he insinuated that Hans has a mentor, myself, who is doing a great job helping him to play well, which to Magnus now is equivalent to cheating.

“He then came out openly and claimed Hans has cheated and he will not be playing in tournaments with him anymore. Magnus’ plan is to try to prove ‘Guilt by association’. If Hans has a mentor who is a cheat, by definition Hans must be a cheat and therefore he did cheat in their game.

“I took chess.com at their word that the email exchange would continue to be confidential and private as stated in all of their correspondence…“ Doubtless Dlugy will be anxious to act as a witness for the prosecution should Niemann’s case reach trial.

With publication of Niemann’s detailed lawsuit against Carlsen and his associates, this affair has now been blown into the open. Either the courts themselves, or an out-of-court settlement, will now decide who is the knight in shining armour and who the court jester, le fou in French being their less dignified word for the chess piece we call the bishop.

The lawyers for Chess.com were the first of the defendants to publicly reply to Niemann’s lawsuit: “Hans confessed publicly to cheating online in the wake of the Sinquefield Cup, and the resulting fallout is of his own making.”

Craig Reiser of Axinn’s Litigation group Magnus Carlsen’s lawyer, said, “Hans Niemann has an admitted history of cheating and his lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to deflect blame onto others. His legal claims are without merit.”

It is conspicuously apparent that both defendants are attempting to conflate the two discrete cheating incidents in an attempt to obfuscate liability. The first issue is that there is a historical record of Niemann (and at least four more of the FIDÉ top 100, conveniently non-referenced) having cheated while playing online on Chess.com.

Niemann has admitted this, and to his credit, did so immediately and without equivocation. This is in distinct contrast to Carlsen’s failure to make any comment in respect of the YouTube video of his cheating twice online against Daniel Naroditsky on Lichess.com.

However, these issues are not the substance of the charge that forms Niemann’s defamation action jointly against Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com, Chess.com’s Chief Chess Officer, Danny Rensch, and Chess.com sponsored streamer, GM Hikaru Nakamura. Rather, it is the second and significantly more serious allegation made by Carlsen, Chess.com and their supporters. They have variously published claims that Niemann cheated in OTB games, including but not limited to, his third round victory over Carlsen during the Sinquefield Cup at St Louis in September.

To date, no evidence to that effect has been offered up in substantiation of those allegations, which are powered exclusively by inference, innuendo and insinuation. There may now follow a long period of silence while we wait to hear whether the parties to the dispute can agree upon a resolution. Any possible out of court settlement is likely to be considerable as, following on from the unexpected absence of Niemann from the Tata Steel tournament at Wijk ann Zee, Niemann’s career has been catastrophically impacted by the loose talk of sore losers.

It is always galling to be accused of cheating, when one has, in fact, achieved success by legitimate methods. The great chess cheating scandal reminds me of a story told to me by Tony Buzan, the inventor of the thinking and memory technique of Mind Mapping.

By his fourth and graduating year at university, in Canada, Tony had mastered his Mind Mapping Memory System, and applied it to the complete and perfect memorisation of an entire year-long psychology course, memorising the names of all the psychologists covered, all their experiments and the details and results of those experiments. Also all dates of significance, specific quotes by the lecturer, summaries and conclusions of recommended papers and books, as well as additional ones, and even quotes from the lecturing professor himself,  including the year, month, day and often the time.

The exam was, in his words, “a breeze”. The Mind Map memory system, which was his brainchild, allowed him to remember everything perfectly, while simultaneously allowing him to make connections and associations between each of the elements in his memory banks. It was a combination of total recall and total creativity. Tony expected a summa cum laude with special distinction, and the first “100%” paper in the history of the department. Sure enough, a few weeks after the examination, he was called to a special meeting with the three heads of the department.

And thus begins another story which, in a different way, transformed his life: a threatening encounter with the enemies of Mental Literacy, and, sadly, enemies in positions of great authority.

Striding into the room, full of great expectations, Tony was met, rather than with open smiles and congratulations, with grim faces and an ominous atmosphere. The head professor explained that, although they knew he was an excellent student, they had the very unpleasant task of accusing him of cheating in an exam. Stunned at this reversal of his high expectations, knowing he had not cheated, and already beginning to relish the prospect of a debate in which he knew he had all the evidence as well as the moral high ground, he asked them what evidence they had.

The answer? That his paper was too perfect, and that such perfection could only be achieved by cheating! Taking the initiative, Tony asked them to explain how he could have cheated in the examination room in which he took the exam. After fumbling around with such ideas as notes on shirt cuffs, smuggled papers and even the suggestion that Tony had employed a friend to hire a ladder and hold up significant information at one of the high windows in the examination hall, their case began to disintegrate.

Tony pressed his initiative. Because the memory system had allowed him to lodge the entire year’s course in his long term memory, he was able to challenge them to ask any question from the exam again, as well as any other question that they could make up on the spur of the moment, and stated that he could respond as well and as comprehensively as he had in the exam itself.

This they did and he could. Eventually one of the professors paused, and in a very detective-like, imperious tone, asked:

“Buzan, are you using some kind of memory system?”
“Well done, professor!” said Tony. The response?
“That’s cheating!”
“What?” said Buzan. “Do you mean to tell me that a methodology that allows me to have perfect short term memory, to have perfect mid-term memory, to have perfect long term memory, to be able to relate any aspect of my knowledge to any other aspect, and in addition to that to reproduce it, again perfectly and in a creative way, some weeks after the exam and under the pressure of both accusation and authority — do you mean to tell me that that’s cheating?”
Their answer? “Yes.”

Without knowing it, they had helped Tony Buzan to realise his direction in life. He had no doubt, from the experience just described, that the universe of memory was still comprehensively misunderstood, and that the opportunities for new investigations into it and of its potential and applications were similarly infinite. He went on to be vindicated. I have no doubt that there is a parallel with the scandal now preoccupying the chess world.

Raymond Keene ’ s latest book “ Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus”, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from  Blackwell ’ s .

The second anthology volume of Ray ’ s columns from The Article, Chess in the Year of the King, is now in preparation and due to appear before Christmas. 

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