It has been a year, but the biggest cheating scandal started September 2022. Hans Niemann defeated World Champion in a OTB game. There was enough dubious activity leading up to this for eyebrows legitimately to be raised. There’s also a lot of sense in “innocent until proven guilty” that would have prevented the explosion.
And there’s also a lot of sense for the average person to understand the internet culture now and give some thought to how both sides could be wrong. At least about bits and pieces. Some nuance that everything is not all black and white.
The conspiracy grifting economy had already invaded chess related YouTube. All the pieces for the classic recipe were present. Not only was chess booming in popularity, the growth in young players was astounding. Young people with a sense of being smarter than others because they were involved in an intellectual pursuit. And by statistics, a portion without experience on how rotten social media and YouTube in particular could be when there’s cash to be made. A portion of people that are susceptible to one of the biggest driving forces seen in conspiracy grifting - the tactics of making someone feel smarter than they are. You don’t need to be dumb to fall for those tactics. Just gullible enough in the short term.
The same kind of things happening in chess channels were happening with science and math oriented channels. Conversations interrupted with baseless conspiracies for engagement. Arguments between single person controlled sock accounts. Anti science rhetoric. Throwing politics into the middle of discussions that by all rights should have just been about chess. The pump was primed for a major scandal to go viral. An event that makes global news for some armchair chesserbacking.
Carlsen didn’t just lose the game against Niemann, he lost badly. Yes, that is a thing in chess with its black or white outcome imbedded in the rules. Using AI, which I remind you is far superior to what any human will achieve, it was possible to determine Hans’s accuracy compared to what the computers assessed to be the best move. And regardless of how complicated the position on the board was, Hans kept knocking out “best moves”.
In a post game interview, Hans didn’t do himself any favors by not being able to give meaningful insight into his thoughts behind what affected his decision to play some key moves. Intuition is a big part for humans when navigating complex chess positions. You can reference the games of former World Chess Champion Mikhail Tal for what is was like to try to outplay someone by being better at super crazy positions. Add to this that Carlsen described Niemann’s behavior as odd during the game. Like he wasn’t even concentrating.
Carlsen has a ludicrous record of success. Highest rating ever, undefeated in chess championship defenses, top tournaments won. Over and over again demonstrating his dominance. If he’s not the best ever, he certainly is the best now. His IQ is sky high. It’s accurate to describe his memory as photographic. His pattern recognition skills are amazing, to put it mildly. And don’t forget what’s important to internet grifters. People have patterns, too. Now that this became public, a deeper dive into Hans’s history was done. And it turned up more dubious things in his past.
Hans has cheated. He admitted it. He didn’t admit to cheating in that OTB game, but to cheating in the much easier internet setting. And if you haven’t already heard this, buckle up. The armchair chess experts, that same crowd that uses their computer at home to pretend they are a bad ass while predicting moves on a major chess tournament live stream, the same crowd that suggests Hikaru Nakamura is cheating when he glanced at the ceiling during an internet blitz game, the same crowd that thinks it’s more fun to troll that both players of any game are cheating online every game developed a colossally stupid theory that just like the nuttier not chess conspiracies went viral.
Hans had a sex toy up his butt to receive signals on what he should play. Rudolf’s lip balm looks completely sane in comparison to the effort this would take to pull off. Of course, no co-conspirators have come forward to add any direct, actual evidence about this. That despite the stakes being raised by an eventual multimillion dollar lawsuit Hans brought on. It just started as some troll joke that since people are assholes (sorry) took on a life of its own.
Legal experts had already chimed in pre-trial that the lawsuit itself was frivolous. The basis of the suit was that Carlsen, Nakamura (also publicly commenting on Hans’s dubious past)and a major chess site conspired to ruin Niemann’s career. And everyone from people that don’t know even how to play the game, fanboys of one side or the other and even psychologists who claim to be body language experts spouted their opinions.
And the lawsuit was settled before trial. And Hans is naturally more popular than ever, because people do a shitty job of picking their presidents heroes.
Backing up to the September 2022 game for a second here. There’s an old saying in chess, “The threat is stronger than the execution”. Which can mean that in responding to an obvious, serious threat you still have to make a concession and compromise your position in some way. The net effect of that being just delaying the inevitable defeat. Consider that maybe, just maybe, Carlsen with his superior recognition of human behavior patterns had already examined Hans’s dubious past. Maybe, just maybe, the distraction of Hans possibly cheating to get ahead was distraction enough to throw him off that day. Consider that maybe, just maybe, Hans didn’t ever cheat OTB, including that magic day. And maybe, just maybe, his plan was all along to start a lucrative career of streaming videos as the self proclaimed bad boy of chess, including getting away with future cheating online
Now these are much more valid speculations than the toy in the butt kind of speculation. But they aren’t anywhere near as fun. Factually, there *is* a problem now with cheating. Just like internet grifters suck up money right off the top of something like Covid relief, the several % of estimated cheaters online now are sucking the joy out of the game, ruining it for those that believe in an honorable game followed by a handshake. Fabiano Caruana, World Champion opponent of Carlsen from a few years ago is talking about cheating. Kramnik (yes, the Toiletgate guy) is talking about cheating. The major chess sites are talking about cheating. Constantly, every day there’s talk about chess cheating. Just like a political atmosphere of absolutes with no room for nuance everybody is being judged as a cheater or not a cheater with or without any real evidence.
Summing up my personal views which I’ve hinted at. Hans dubious past includes a meteoric rise as a prodigy. All well and good. He’s also defended himself as “letting the chess speak for itself”. His current play is showing signs that he’s way too sporadic in quality of play to ever be anything than just another strong grandmaster; not world champion caliber. I think his meteoric rise was purposefully aided to get a foot in the door on internet profit. I do not think he has ever cheated OTB. I do think his past was enough of a distraction to help him win that one big game. I think he’s already capitalizing on his good fortune for that and the subsequent events unfolded. I think Carlsen was misguided by a sense of duty as a top voice in the chess world to say something about his thoughts. And pointing a finger was a jerk move, equaled only by the jerk move of filing a lawsuit doomed to failure based on legal merits alone. I think the chess world, particularly the top sites are engaging in a pipe dream of ensuring fair play. The cards are stacked against them. There’s far too much money now to not have cheaters attracted to every conceivable niche.
And notice how often I repeated, “I think.” This is how you state opinions. “Covid is a hoax”, is not an opinion. “Climate change is a hoax”, is not an opinion. It’s just misinformation. If you think a wannabe chess champion put a sex toy up his butt to get ahead, congratulations. You’ve just identified yourself as someone susceptible to misinformation and disinformation.
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