Ruminations on the Magnus Carlsen-Hans Niemann cheating affair

Polerio defense Boguljubov variation

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies

 115/272 days of load shedding in 2022

In an earlier blog, I dealt with the fact that I started playing chess again at the age of 57 with my son Oliver who is now way better than me. It’s an activity dominated by nerdy men, many of them displaying utter social ineptitude. There are no women in the top 100 chess players in the world. Don’t ask me why. Chess is a difficult game and I play badly particularly if I play blitz. The more time I take the better my rating. My chess coach encouraged me to stick with the openings I know because opening theory is vast. Even super grandmasters sometimes make mistakes in the opening. If I’m playing white, I get to the position featured in the image many times. It has a suitably quirky and nerdy name.  The position is essentially even. The Oxford Companion to Chess lists 1,327 named openings and variants, and there are many others with varying degrees of common usage.

Chess generally plods along under the radar as a fringe activity where it rightly belongs but every now and then a scandal erupts and there is nothing people and the media like more than a scandal.  The scandal started when Magnus Carlsen, the dominant world chess champion, abruptly withdrew from the Sinquefield cup, which is one of the most prestigious chess competitions in the world, after losing in round three to the 19-year-old Hans Niemann.  This ended a winning streak for Magnus who was undefeated in his last 53 classical chess games.  

Initially, he cryptically insinuated that Hans Niemann cheated by saying he could not give reasons for his withdrawal. Thus started the scandal. An elder statesman of the chess world, and former world champion, Garry Kasparov, rightly called Magnus out for this behaviour and said that he needs to explain himself better. Now Magnus has issued a statement (underwhelming to me) accusing Niemann of cheating in their match and saying that he refuses to play Niemann again. Niemann has an unfortunate history of cheating, as a child, in online competitions and has been banned from Chess.Com for that. He has admitted to this and states he has learned from his mistakes. Cheating in an over-the-board competition where you play in a closed space with a physical board where only the players and chess arbiters are present is possible, but it is difficult. Players are scanned with a wand and patted down to check for electronic devices before playing.  If the games are live streamed and if you still manage to conceal an electronic device, for example in your shoe, then with the help of an outside collaborator they can communicate with you. Could you sneak into the bathroom and take off your shoe? Maybe once or twice but the arbiters are watching. Could the device quietly vibrate in morse code with move recommendations? A player has been caught cheating like this. Security measures are being beefed up. The live stream feeds will now be delayed by 15 minutes, and you will be searched more thoroughly, and you will have to take your shoes off. Remember that after 9/11. It has even been suggested that Niemann wore a vibrating anal bead to cheat. Will the rubber glove experience, so familiar to ageing men, be part of the elite chess experience?

Apart from past behaviour is there any actual evidence that Niemann did cheat in his game against Magnus? Not so much. Now a brief digression into the uber nerdy world of people who specialise in analysing chess games and detecting cheating. The world expert in this is Ken Regan. For those of you sufficiently interested it is worth reading how he does this. It’s impressive. For those of you who could not be bothered to go down this rabbit hole, you can put up with my brief and superficial explanation. All competitive chess players have an ELO rating. 800-1000 is a beginner, 1600-1800 is a club player like me, 2000 is an expert, 2500+ is a grandmaster and 2750+ is a super grandmaster.  The higher you’re rated the more accurately you play. The world’s best chess engine, Stockfish has an ELO rating of 3500+. Ken Regan calculates that God, playing perfect chess, would have an ELO of 3600. Stockfish is getting there. Magnus currently has an ELO rating of 2861. He has no chance against Stockfish. Regan has analysed thousands of games and your chess accuracy measured against Stockfish is correlated with your ELO rating. The probability of me (1600 at best) playing even a single long game (more than 40 moves) with an accuracy of a 2800 is extremely low. The probability of me playing several games at this level is essentially zero. Regan has analysed Niemann’s games, and his accuracy is consistent with his rating. He makes many mistakes, and he loses many games. He can find no compelling evidence that he cheated. This is not foolproof, but you can’t ignore it.

Does being a super grandmaster make you a good person and knowledgeable beyond chess? My iPhone can beat Magnus Carlsen at chess, and it is as dumb as a rock. Try to discuss anything sensible with Siri. Even basic requests are frustrating. A former chess prodigy and world chess champion Bobby Fischer was paranoid and as mad as a hatter. His bizarre behaviour led to his US citizenship being revoked in 2005 and he lived the rest of his life as a recluse in Iceland. In the chess world, Magnus is God and he is often treated with excess deference. He is at the top of the chess hierarchy. It is an age-old problem that people get corrupted by spending too much time at the top of a hierarchy and being fawned over by sycophants lower down in the hierarchy. You do not get properly called out for unacceptable behaviour from within the hierarchy.  However, with chess being a public sport with sponsors and public interest there are plenty of others who are having their say including nonentities like me.

Here is my take. Hans Niemann has got under Magnus Carlsen’s skin. After the game, he gave an interview where he said it must be embarrassing for Carlsen to lose to him. Carlsen became infuriated and emotional and withdrew. He dug himself into a hole. Instead of admitting to his mistake and climbing out of the hole, he has chosen to dig the hole deeper because, after all, he is the world champion. He stated Niemann is not capable of outplaying him without cheating. If you are the world champion, you do not get to dictate to tournament organisers or the chess governing body FIDE who you will not play against even if you are the world champion.  If Niemann is cheating, then it is up to the authorities to catch him. An evidence-free accusation from the world champion will not suffice.

There are plenty of quirky and irreverent characters in the chess world and grandmaster Ben Finegold fits the bill perfectly. His take on this whole affair is both hilarious and extremely revealing and Magnus rightfully gets roasted. Magnus’s story is not credible. Only 10 days earlier he played Niemann in a rapid tournament and beat him 3-1. No complaints. If as he states, he believed, Hans would cheat why didn’t he withdraw before playing him at the Sinquefield Cup? He withdraws after losing. Hmmm. Why not complete the tournament? That is what he is paid to do. Going into a sulk and then creating a narrative after the fact that is not credible trying to justify his behaviour is just sad.

We all behave badly at times. I do so daily. It gets pointed out to me. Often, I react badly at the time but then in the dead of night I try to reflect on my sins and if I have dug a hole, I try not to dig it deeper admit my mistakes and move on to make another mistake. Depressingly I sometimes repeat the same mistakes repeatedly. But mistakes they are. I try to listen to people who take me aside and point out the many errors in my ways. It is high time for Magnus to do the same.

Thank you for all the ideas and comments. I really appreciate them and please keep them coming.

Regards

Bruce