Cheating Allegations Leads To A $100,000,000 Lawsuit

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J.Zheng, Staff Writer
October 28, 2022

Magnus Carlsen and his company Play Magnus, Chess.com and Danny Rensch, and Hikaru Nakamura are being sued for one hundred million dollars by Hans Niemann.

On September 4th, 2022 Hans Niemann defeated Magnus Carlsen at the Sinquefield Cup. This was Magnus’s classical loss in 53 games and the first loss with whites in over 2 years. The next day Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup. 

On September 19, 2022, Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann played each other once again in the Julius Baer Generation Cup but Magnus resigned after one move. This made people in the chess world believe Magnus suspected Hans of cheating. 

A well-known chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura also made numerous comments such as there was a 6-month period on Chess.com (the world’s largest chess website) where Hans Niemann was banned from competition. 

On September 6, 2022, Hans Niemann in an interview talked about his game against Magnus Carlsen and cheating allegations. He admits to cheating but only when he was 12 and 16 and never cheated in an over-the-board game. He has been temporarily banned from Chess.com for cheating in those incidents. 

On September 8, 2022, Chess.com released a public statement on Twitter. 

People started looking for evidence and proof of how Hans cheated.

In the game against Magnus, Magnus played a rare variation of the Catalan (G3 nimzo) an opening he had never played before but Hans had a near-flawless counter to it. In the post-game interview, Hans claims he had prepared for this specific opening just before the game which allowed him to play flawlessly for the first 20 or so moves. When asked why he chose this variation out of every other possible one. Hans claimed Magnus played the opening against Wesley So in the London chess classic 2018. Hikaru Nakamura said on his stream Magus has never played such an opening. “He (Magnus) has never played the G3 nimzo ever, he’s never played g3 and Hans is claiming he prepped it to move 20 before”.

However, a Twitter tweet by grandmaster Nigel Short claims Magus did. 

On September 26, 2022, Magnus came out with his own statement. 

On October 4th Chess.com published a Hans Niemann Report to prove he cheated a lot more online than he claimed.

There are a ton of different opinions that all have different “evidence” to prove their point. There is more evidence and theories to prove Hans cheated but there isn’t definite evidence Hans cheated in over-the-board chess or in his match against Magnus. 

$100,000,000 Lawsuit

One thing that is confirmed is Hans Niemann filed a $100,000,000 lawsuit against Magnus Carlson and his company Play Magnus, Danny Rensh and Chess.com, and Hikaru Nakamura. Hans believed his reputation was defamed and ruined because of these accusations. Magnus seems to not be willing to play against Hans from their last interaction where Magnus resigned in 1 move. This makes tournaments harder due to having to pick Magus or Hans to compete in a tournament since Magnus won’t play against Hans. 

Many people believe that it won’t follow through due to it being harder since Hans Niemann is a public figure. Due to him being a public figure the person who said the false statement has to say it with the knowledge that it was false or reckless disregarding whether it was false or not. To find evidence to prove Magnus or Hikaru knew it was false is just as hard as finding concrete evidence to prove Hans cheated over the board.

Did Hans cheat against Magnus Carlsen? It’s hard to say because no one has concrete evidence he did. He was caught cheating in online games two times. Chess.com made a report saying he has cheated more online than he has claimed. But that doesn’t prove if he cheated against Magnus or not. However, these claims do hurt his reputation. Some people believe his a cheater some people don’t but at the end of the day, it’s hard to pick a side when there is no concrete evidence.