PARIS —
American international grandmaster
Hans Niemann has “probably cheated more than
100 times” in online games, claims the chess platform chess.com in a report.
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The 19-year-old
from San Francisco was accused last month of cheating in a competition by
Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen.
“Overall, we
have found that Hans (Niemann) has likely cheated in more than 100 online chess
games, including several prize money events,” writes the world’s leading online
chess platform in an in-depth report published Tuesday evening.
Chess.com banned
Niemann on September 5, shortly after the first accusations were made, but the
platform is defending itself against suggestions that it is under pressure from
Carlsen, whose Play Magnus company it is in the process of buying.
The platform
says it is “extremely confident” in its means of detecting cheating, which
includes using grandmasters — the highest rank of chess players — as well as an
analysis of moves made by computer programs.
The suspicions
of the platform go beyond the framework of the internet. It also devotes part
of its 20-page report — with 50 additional appendices — to Niemann’s
spectacular and rapid progress on the chessboard.
“While we do not
doubt that Hans is a talented player, we note that his results are
statistically extraordinary,” said the report which illustrated the American’s
rise with a dramatic graph.
However,
chess.com said it had no evidence that Niemann had cheated in “over-the-board”
(OTB) games when players are physically present.
“There is
nothing in our statistical investigation to raise any red flags regarding Hans’
OTB play and rise,” said the report.
Last month, at
the Sinquefield Cup in St Louis, Carlsen flatly declared that Niemann had used
illegal means after losing to him OTB.
Chess.com
described this encounter as “bizarre” but concluded that there was no evidence
“that Hans cheated in this game and we do not advocate for any conclusions
regarding cheating being made based on this one encounter”.
Two weeks after
St Louis, the two players met again in the sixth round of the online Julius
Baer Generation Cup. This time Carlsen resigned after making just one move,
going on to release a statement that he would not “play against people that
have cheated repeatedly in the past”.
The
International Chess Federation announced on September 29 that it was opening an
investigation into these accusations of cheating.
Niemann has
admitted cheating in the past on chess.com, when he was between 12 and 16 years
old, but denies the most recent accusations, claiming to be “ready to play
naked”, if necessary.
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