Biggest chess scandal in history is currently occurring

Didn’t Bobby Fisher and some Russian GM from a while ago both say that chess games were preordained to let people know about world events? Like you could have predicted that 9/11 occurred because of some moves in a Kasparov game?

I think this is something like that. Carlson withdrawing means that Europe is tired of the US dragging out ukraine and they just want cheap russian gas. I predict we see several euro nations urging the us to get Ukraine to give in soon.

How did the woman that won Badwater fare?

how could one cheat in an in-person game? someone on his ear?

dirty cheating 'muricans

Seems unlikely the dude cheated. Why would Magnus quit tho? Did his prep get leaked?

The video of Hans struggling with analysis after the match is pretty shocking, but he looks so poor that you have to think it's just nerves.

Based on info known now, I'm thinking Magnus may have suspected his prep got leaked. It makes more sense under the circumstances than something as detailed as over-the-board cheating at a major tournament.

Also agree that Hans' struggling with analysis is likely nerves and dealing with the gravity of the situation he found himself in.

I agree with this poster, most likely leaked prep. Not as exciting as the theory floating around that he had a butt plug signaling him in Morse code lol. It will be very interesting to see how this develops.

Entry level player and no historian of the game, but if that’s the worst scandal in chess history (very old) I’d be surprised!

Sometimes peers know best what is natural and what isn't.

IIRC, in the Fisher and Schwartz scandal in Bridge, there was practically zero evidence against the two when the very public accusations of first cheating arose, when many people put their reputations at risk by making the claims. In the end, it was an almost unanimous opinion that the two had indeed cheated, and there were some discipline measures taken against them.

Maybe his next move is for Giselle.

Magnus Carlsen has jumped the shark.

I think Hans is innocent.

As a relative newcomer to Chess how would Magnus suspect his prep was leaked? Were the moves Hans was making too good for his level?

For us non-chess people, what does a "leaked prep" mean? Sounds like something bad that might happen before a colonoscopy ...

Did he invoke the King's Privilege?

Before a match, you have a solid idea of what opening you want to play. This dictates how the game will go, and it is up to the opponent to formulate their plan based on the opening.

Prep would be referring to the “game plan”. It’s a wild theory that someone on Carlsen’s team either inadvertently or on purpose fed the information of Carlsen’s first move to Hans. Hans would then have the ability to practice out every possible scenario from that first move.

HIGHLY unlikely as Carlsen has one of the tightest knit groups.

Hans said in his post game interview that he had ‘“miraculously” looked at an obscure line the same morning that happened in the game and that he had only looked at it because of Magnus had played it against Wesley So in the 2018 London Chess Classic’. No record of this game exists and So said he wasn’t even in London in 2018. Magnus has no games in the database in this opening against anyone. Theoretically, Hans could have paid someone in Magnus’s team for the lines in his prep.

There is no smoking gun, this is all circumstantial. in Hans’ defense, I’ve read Magnus’s play wasn’t especially accurate. I’m not high rated enough to comment on the game myself.

This link does a good job presenting why we know now.

worldchess.com

Did Hans Niemann actually cheat? All the info so far

Yesterday, Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup 2022 after his loss to Hans Niemann in Round 3

Link:worldchess.com/news/all/did-hans-niema...

Thank you.

This poster has an excellent answer. I would like to add,however, that prep extends well beyond the first move, and would most likely involve side lines mangus would potentially steer the game into, 10+ moves into the opening. Grandmasters are familiar with, to pick a general number, at least the first 5+ moves minimum in any openings they play.

magnus is known for steering games away from popular theory, into confusing, little known side lines. This requires him playing a potentially suboptimal move to get the opponent into unfamiliar waters, where magnus’s superior play will more than make up for this disadvantage.

Hacking into someone’s prep does give you an unfair advantage, but it’s not big enough for an unknown 19-year old to defeat Carlsen. It’s not that hard to collect a list of Carlsen’s preferred white openings or black responses, even up to a few levels of depth, and is the kind of info on you that your rivals kinda have in their heads anyway, but that’s just not enough.

Even if Carlsen did work out a new mid-depth strategy that got leaked in practice, it’s not possible for him to be confident that that happened based on this loss. He would have had to think that no less experienced player could possibly think through enough levels of depth of the strategy quickly enough to be able to beat it, but I’m hard pressed to think how he could ignore the element of luck or heuristic intuition in a competitor’s response.