This piece corresponds to one of the shipments of the weekly bulletin wonderful play, from EL PAÍS, which is sent by email every Thursday to subscribers; exceptionally, this week is free access.
How are they? Greetings from Budapest!
I am tempted to disengage from this mess and tell you about much more uplifting things, like the educational chess seminar, organized by the Judit Polgar Foundation, that I will present this Saturday in Budapest (I will link the recording in future newsletters). But that would be unprofessional. Among other reasons, because the Niemann-Carlsen scandal has important substantive ramifications that transcend chess. And also because my obligation is to help you distinguish white from black and try to shed some light on the darkest parts of this gibberish.
Let’s start with the obvious: Hans Niemann is an internet game cheater. He has recognized it himself; and this Tuesday Chess.com has published a lot of convincing data (whether he has done it correctly is another thing, I will write about this below) to claim that he cheated more than 100 times until he was 17 years old (now he is 19) . And he was punished for it (banned from the platform several times).
That part of the matter leads to important reflections. chess.com It speaks of tens of thousands of cheaters on its platform — including four grandmasters who are among the top 100 in the world — which, according to the company, has more than 90 million users. Therefore, it is essential that the International Chess Federation (FIDE), supported by the most important companies in the sector, face two urgent tasks: 1) Launch a communication campaign where it expresses itself in very forceful terms about the terrible image of who wins illegal games, even if you do it only online; If chess is the only sport that can be practiced on the Internet, it is essential that this game room is as clean and guarded as those of face-to-face tournaments; 2) Establish very harsh sanctions against cheaters: for example, two or three years the first time and in perpetuity the second in all types of tournaments, including face-to-face ones, even if the cheats are only online. It is true that this would force us to tread very finely and always decide in favor of the suspect when there are reasonable doubts; therefore, point 1) is as important as 2), to create a collective culture of contempt for cheaters. Perhaps it serves as an example that tax fraud is much worse viewed socially in Scandinavia than in Latin countries.
If those measures had already been in place, Niemann would have disappeared two or three years ago from competitive chess. Now – and this begins to introduce us to the dark side of the matter – it would be immoral and contrary to international law to apply those criteria now retroactively. Niemann paid for his mistakes and showed remorse in public, which enables him, morally and legally, to play face-to-face tournaments with all rights as long as it is not proven that he has also broken the law in that field.
And today it has not been proven, as much as there is a vociferous crowd on social networks lynching the young American every day. There is not the slightest solid indication that Niemann cheated in the Sinquefield Cup game that he won against Carlsen or in any other of that tournament, as his compatriot Fabiano Caruana, runner-up in the world in 2018, has acknowledged, among others, to although he does suspect games from 2020. There are some very striking data and games of amazing quality in the tournaments he has played between 2020 and 2022. But, after thoroughly analyzing five of them, the most spectacular, in a series of my daily column, I have not seen a single move that made me think: “This can only be done by a machine.”
And I have found data in favor of Niemann. For example, in the Marshall Spring tournament in New York, 2020, three of the five games he won are very brilliant, yes, but he lost another three and finished fourth out of ten participants, a normal position, which he would have achieved without any cheating with his then category. If he’s smart enough (he attended a gifted school in the Netherlands) to do that on purpose—not always succeeding so as not to attract too much attention—he should also be smart enough to cheat discreetly, without producing as many amazing games in terms of its quality and beauty.
There are much more important opinions than mine. Mathematician Ken Reagan, considered the world’s foremost expert on cheating in chess, says he has not detected any in Niemann’s games since 2020. Grandmaster and eminent trainer Jacob Aagard (British), who worked with Niemann for two years, defines him as both talented and irregular. This would explain his spectacular progress and performance curves since he was 11 years old, with periods of two years stagnant and meteoric rises in the last three. And it would help to understand why, in some games, the vast majority of his moves coincide with the ones he would make with a machine in that position. Aagard is convinced that Niemann has not cheated in face-to-face games. Two other grandmasters whose impeccable reputations go beyond their strength as players, and who have spent much time thinking about and researching cheating, the British philosopher Jonathan Rowson and the Australian economist David Smerdon, do not accuse Niemann either.
On the opposite side are the fundamentalists: if Niemann has cheated online, he is a visceral cheater, and therefore also cheats in live games. That statement is very weak, and not because of the value of Niemann’s word and his announced purpose of amendment from 2020 —I recognize that his credibility is little less than zero, although I also say that he seemed very sincere and convincing in his interview ; if it is finally shown that he has cheated in person, he would also be wasting a great talent as an actor—but for a very pragmatic argument: cheating online from home is very easy—regardless of whether the sophisticated platform systems detect it—, and, therefore, the temptation is very great, either with the help of programs that calculate millions of moves per second or with a good player who blows your best moves.
On the other hand, doing them in the game room of a tournament is much more difficult. Not just because you need an accomplice or manifest a strange attitude (constantly going to the bathroom or making strange movements with your body while playing). Above all, because good referees – I have observed this very closely many times – are very attentive, almost obsessed, to the slightest indication, and they keep a close eye on any player who calls attention to something in that regard.
All this leads me to criticize Carlsen’s behavior negatively. With the information I have at the moment, and after spending many hours on this matter, my hypothesis is that the world champion played that game heavily influenced by inside information someone passed him about Niemann’s background on the internet. If we mix that emotion with the tremendous rage of defeat – like almost all world champions, Carlsen has repeatedly shown that he does not know how to lose, although in other cases he has behaved in an exemplary manner – it makes sense (but not moral justification) for the Scandinavian to withdraw following a tournament for the first time in his life, to accuse Niemann without any evidence, and then to commit an outrage against the ethics of chess by surrendering to Niemann after making a single move in a subsequent rapid game by Internet.
What should Carlsen have done in such a pressing emotional situation? Don’t make hot decisions, shut up, watch Niemann’s moves and behavior carefully in later Sinquefield Cup games, accumulate all the hard evidence possible, and only then—if he really had it—denounce him in public. I think it is worth repeating what he told me in New York in December 2016: “My main weak point is the control of emotions.”
Before concluding, I think it is worth dedicating a paragraph to the delicate questions raised by the behavior of chess.com. Why doesn’t he openly acknowledge that his position on this issue is self-serving, given that he is buying Play Magnus (the company whose largest shareholder is Carlsen) for more than $80 million? Why does he publish all his information about Niemann’s cheating—and not about thousands of other cheaters—instead of discreetly sending it to FIDE? Why didn’t he expel Niemann long before his number of cheats exceeded a hundred? Could it be that the investigation of all this has been very recent, as a result of pressure from Carlsen and Niemann’s partial confession? In any case, it should also be emphasized that the answer to these questions would not question Niemann’s guilt in online games.
I am well aware that any day some new information may emerge that will force me to change my mind and refute much of what I have just written. But I think that at the moment we cannot rule out that someone is being lynched in a disproportionate and, therefore, unfair way. The paradox is that the loose penalties for cheating so far may allow Niemann’s great talent to come to the fore. Although, after seeing games like last night – victory in the first round of the US Championship – I wonder how he can continue to play very well with the deluge of criticism and insults that is raining down on him.
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