The world champion waited for the second move – Newspaper Kommersant No. 174 (7375) of 09/21/2022

The main chess scandal of the year, which erupted at the super tournament in St. Louis in early September, was continued. World champion Magnus Carlsen, who unexpectedly withdrew from American competitions after losing to the young grandmaster Hans Niemann and actually accused him of foul play, made a second demarche in a row. In the new game against Niemann in the Julius Baer Generation Cup online tournament, the Norwegian grandmaster defiantly resigned, waiting for his opponent’s second move. Meanwhile, there are still no grounds to believe that the rather strong grandmaster Niemann, who confessed that he was engaged in cheating as a young man, resorted to him in the game with Carlsen.

World champion Magnus Carlsen was in the spotlight for the second time in two weeks thanks to an unexpected demarche. The current one took place as part of the Julius Baer Generation Cup online tournament, a stage of the Champions Chess Tour series. It is organized by the Play Magnus Group, one of the key shareholders of which is the Norwegian himself. In the next game, he played black with 19-year-old American Hans Niemann, and this game was one of the strangest in the history of chess. Carlsen made only one move in it, replying with the move of the knight from f6 to d4 by the opponent. And after the American, the leader of world chess, played his second move – c4, shocking the audience, he announced that he was resigning and disconnected from the broadcast, during which the famous Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko, who commented on the game, called Magnus Carlsen’s act “a silent statement.”

In fact, it is a direct continuation of the story that happened in early September at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis. On it, Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the prestigious competitions before the fourth round, immediately after the defeat in the third from the low-rated Niemann. Carlsen did not officially explain the reasons for refusing to speak, but made it quite clear that he suspected the young American of cheating, that is, using tips. None of the chess organizations initiated an investigation into the incident, and Hans Niemann himself, flatly denying cheating on a professional level, admitted that he really did it, but only in online tournaments and for a long time, at the age of 12 and 16 years. The fact that Niman was once convicted of cheating was also confirmed by the Chess.com website, which, as it turned out, blacklisted the American from those who were blocked from accessing the resource’s gaming platform.

A new round of scandal seems to have caused an equally wide wave of discussions about the behavior of Magnus Carlsen, who made the first high-profile demarche back in the summer, when he refused to participate in the next championship match, essentially saying goodbye to the most valuable title (Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi and Chinese Ding Liren). Moreover, this time it is impossible to say for sure that the sympathies of the chess community are completely on the side of Carlsen. And in this sense, the opinion of the eighth number of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) rating, now playing for the United States, Armenian Levon Aronian, who said that he “understands the irritation” of the Norwegian, given the details of Hans Niemann’s biography, looks more like an exception.

The Chess24 website, describing what happened, for example, cited the opinion of a whole group of chess players of various levels about it. And they all talked about the same thing – about the “witch hunt” organized by Magnus Carlsen, about “disrespect for the audience”, about the fact that the world champion, who flatly refuses to clarify his position, should “clearly and distinctly” designate it and press charges against Hans Niemann if he has reasons to do so. And Carlsen’s compatriot Jon Ludwig Hammer, who previously acted as second to the world champion on several occasions, described his actions – “intentional defeat” – as “unsportsmanlike” and even called for sanctions to be applied to Carlsen.

The authoritative website ChessBase also demanded a thorough investigation of the situation, pointing out, among other things, that the scandal negatively affects both the reputation of the Norwegian opponent and the sports component of the tournament: a point presented by Magnus Carlsen to Hans Niemann may, say, ultimately allow the American to get ahead of someone – one of those with more chances to break into the playoffs of competitors. At the same time, the authors of the site do not seem to doubt that there can be no real grounds for suspicions about Niman. ChessBase contains a detailed analysis of the performances of the American over the past two years from Professor Kenneth Regan, the most famous specialist in chess cheating. He noted the “healthy distribution” of Hans Niemann’s results and found “nothing out of the ordinary” in them, as did the vast majority of grandmasters.

Alexey Dospekhov