Controversial chess player Hans Niemann probably cheated in more than a hundred games on the Internet. This is according to the analysis of Chess.com, which published it on Tuesday.
She did not find any evidence of Niemann’s unfair practices in the games directly above the chessboard, but she points out that the improvement of the 19-year-old American is unprecedented. Even world champion Magnus Carlsen considers Niemann a fraud, and refuses to play with him.
The news about Niemann explains why a well-known chess server unregistered the chess player a month ago and did not even allow him to participate in the Chess Global Championships with a million dollar subsidy. It was immediately after Niemann’s surprise win over Carlsen at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis. The organizers did not want to risk the participation of a player who admitted to several frauds, disrupting their top event.
The server published its findings publicly because Niemann also spoke publicly. “We never wanted to make our concerns about Hans’ violations of fair play a public issue. We have always dealt with player account bans privately, as we have done with Hans in the past. We have also dealt with him privately with his recent removal from Chess.com and CGC. “He decided to make it public. That’s why we feel obligated to share publicly with the (chess) community the reasons that led us to our decisions,” the server said.
He published an analysis of more than a hundred games in which Niemann’s play indicated cheating. There were also tournaments for money. A number of the suspected parties were in 2020, i.e. significantly later than the American admitted. Carlsen also spoke about this.
Niemann’s performance in real matches also raises suspicions. Of the thirteen chess players under the age of 25 who are in the top fifty of the world rankings, Niemann is the only one who did not become a grandmaster until the age of seventeen. Experts generally say that unless a player reaches grandmaster level by the age of fourteen, they cannot reach the top. No elite chess player in history has improved as quickly as Niemann, Chess.com reported.
The server provided its findings to the International Chess Federation, FIDE, which is handling Carlsen’s allegations against Niemann. She set up a three-person investigative position for this.
