In chess, there is a controversy regarding cheating. The 19-year-old Twitch streamer Hans Niemann cheated twice on the site chess.com a few years ago, was banned from the site, and has since ruined his reputation. On September 4, he defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen at a tournament. Carlsen angrily left the tournament.
Why is the 19-year-old considered a cheater? The 19-year-old Hans Moke Niemann is an American chess grandmaster and live streamer on Twitch. He streams under the name “GmHansN” and has 58,000 followers.
Niemann admitted that he has been banned twice from the site “chess.com” for cheating:
- Once when he was 12 years old
- Once when he was 16 years old
Today, he says these incidents are embarrassing for him, but he has admitted to them and is determined to make amends and restore his reputation.
This reputation, however, seems to be permanently ruined in the chess community.
Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura explains: Niemann was banned from playing for money on chess.com for 6 months:
19-Year-Old Defeats Chess God Carlsen
This was the controversy: Niemann plays in a tournament in St. Louis against world champion and chess god Magnus Carlsen, who had eliminated one of the best chess players in the world in the first round. Carlsen had previously gone 53 games without a loss.
Carlsen played with white against Niemann and the unimaginable happened: Carlsen lost in 57 moves.
He made some mistakes at the beginning: Ultimately, Carlsen was behind with a bishop against a knight and 2 pawns so much that he had to resign. It is believed that Carlsen may have completely underestimated his opponent.
You can view the game move by move here (via chessgame.com).
In any case, Niemann’s victory against Carlsen was a real sensation. Niemann himself called it: “A ridiculous miracle.” He said he had speculated how Carlsen would open and had prepared for it.
“If I tell the truth, I’ll get in trouble”
This was Carlsen’s reaction: Carlsen withdrew from the tournament the next day, on September 5. He posted a meme of football coach Mourinho saying: “If I tell the truth, I’ll get in trouble, big trouble. And I don’t want to be in trouble.”
The statement in connection with the Mourinho clip was read as an accusation that Niemann had cheated in his victory against him. Even though Carlsen did not make the accusation explicitly, others jumped in for him and took it up.
Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura stated that Carlsen would never withdraw from a tournament without very, very good reasons. After all, Carlsen is the “ultimate competitor.”
Carlsen must “strongly suspect that Niemann cheated,” Nakamura speculates.
Twitch is always good for a surprise:
Did Niemann Cheat with Sex Toys?
How is he supposed to have cheated? No one really knows, as there were strong security measures against cheating at the tournament.
A Canadian grandmaster speculates that Niemann could have cheated with anal beads: Through the vibrations, an accomplice might have been signaling moves to Niemann. But he is not an expert on that.
How does the accused respond? He says in a statement:
If you want me to strip completely naked, I will do it. Because I know that I am clean.
According to Niemann, he has never cheated at a board in his life. He has only cheated in some online games.
I don’t want anyone to misunderstand me. I am proud of myself for learning from my mistakes and now dedicating everything to chess. I have sacrificed everything for chess and have done everything to improve.
He says that at the tournament, there was the best technology in the world to detect cheats. People know exactly that he did not cheat.
I believe it is completely unfair. I am not afraid to tell the world that I cheated in a few random games when I was 12 and 16 because that is who I am.
For Niemann, the encounter with Magnus Carlsen was very strange:
You spend your whole life looking up to someone and then you meet him and know that your dream is coming true. I lived my dream for one day by beating Magnus, and then all of this happened.
Since the success of “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix, chess is experiencing a surge on Twitch. Individual chess players have become influencers and use the streaming platform Twitch to reach a new audience:
