Thread by @BlueRepublik

So the chess world has its biggest drama in a while… a 19 year old U2700 prodigy Niemann beat Carlsen, 2850+ world champion #1 in the world

Then, Carlsen exits the tournament with a tweet that many see as implying cheating of some sort by Hans

Nerd drama, here’s my take

https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/status/1566848734616555523

There’s two basic accusations that I’ve seen floating around against Hans

1. He got a hold of Carlsen’s prep

2. He used outside assistance, perhaps a chess engine, to win

Let’s start with the first accusation:

The preparation accusations are somewhat suspicious because Hans claims he looked at the opening before the game in his post game interview.

How?

Hans claimed it's a So vs Carlsen game from the 2018 London chess classic... except no such game ever took place

As far as I can tell, Carlsen only ever played this line in 2006 vs Leko at the Tal memorial. It’s not obscure so much as it is not popular with the higher levels of chess

The other oddity that is hard to explain is the time management

Hans spent well over 10 minutes to get to a point in the opening he supposedly had prepped, when Hans usually blitzes out prep he’s confident in - and having seen prep earlier that day would be a great help!

This isn’t really evidence either way just a strange observation

As for the engine accusations they're far less clear to substantiate, because Hans clearly didn't have perfect play, not finding anywhere near the best move on a couple of occasions

The main theory I've seen is that if he did cheat/

it's by accessing a device while off the board - and so he wasn't able to have analysis on every move but just at different points throughout. This also goes hand in hand with questions raised before the tournament on security, raised by a few commentators

I believe all players are wanded before entering the hall but as for checking the bathrooms for devices and other such precautions, it’s unclear what St. Louis actually does to ensure fair play

I have a friend who has worked on chess chest detection systems online in the past/

/who is currently trying to do an analysis based on when we know via broadcast that Hans left the board, and try to analysts the quality of the moves we know he made while sitting down, vs when he had an opportunity to get up

In the meantime, all we’ve had are veiled accusations

My conclusion? We simply don’t have enough information

We see young players who are clearly underrated get bashed for cheating and ganged up on with no evidence before. Many accused Firouzja over the years, and both Arjun and Gukesha have been attacked as well recently.

Im a big believer in the ethical case for due process and these accusations from top grandmaster and high profile commentators can haunt kids for years and years

The reason this case gets so much attention is because Magnus is pulling out of the tournament midway through/

/an unprecedented move in modern chess at this level

Many are assuming he has evidence we don’t, and are making claims against Hans based off of this purely assumed evidence

However, there is an explanation for why many don’t want to grant Hans the benefit of the doubt

Both Nakamura and Hansen have claimed on stream that Hans was banned from entering prized tournaments on chess.com for 6 months after he was caught cheating

Ive seen multiple other people claim he had another ban, but the only evidence I can find of that/

/is a one hour temporary ban that doesn’t appear to be for cheating

If the top players are aware of Hans having a more checkered past, it would make their suspicion much more understandable