World chess champion Magnus Carlsen has accused US grandmaster Hans Niemann of cheating. The Norwegian took to Twitter to post a statement explaining why he pulled out of his matches against the American.
“In the 2022 Sinquefield Cup I made the unprecedented professional decision to withdraw from the tournament after my third round match against Hans Niemann. A week later in the Champions Chess Tour I resigned against Hans Niemann after playing a single shot,” Carlsen’s statement read. “I know my actions have frustrated many in the chess community. I am frustrated. I want to play chess. I want to continue playing chess at the highest level in the best events,” he added. .
In the third round match against Niemann at the Sinquefield Cup, Carlsen succumbed to a shock loss to the American. Following this, he withdrew from the event.
“I have retired from the tournament. Always loved playing in the @STLChessClub, and hope to be back in the future,” he tweeted on September 5 announcing the retirement. After last week he resigned again after just one knock against Niemann at the Julius Baer Generation Cup. Niemann trails Carlsen by nearly 200 Elo points, a measure used to calculate the relative skill level of chess players.
Carlsen said cheating is a big problem and poses an “existential threat” to the game. “I also believe that chess organizers and anyone who cares about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increase security measures and cheat detection methods for outboard failures.”
“When Niemann was a last minute invitee to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup I strongly considered pulling out before the event. I ultimately opted to play.” “I believe Niemann cheated more – and more recently – than he has publicly admitted. His excessive progress was unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I felt that he wasn’t uptight or even fully focused on playing in critical positions, while outplaying me as a black in a way that I think only a handful of players can. change my perspective,” Carlsen said.
Coming to Niemann, the 19-year-old grandmaster admitted to cheating twice according to Chess.com, when he was 12 and 16 years old. However, he regrets it. “We have to do something about cheating, and for my part in the future, I don’t want to play against people who have cheated many times in the past, because I don’t know what they are capable of doing. in the future,” Carlsen added in his statement.
“There is more I would like to say. Unfortunately, at this time I am limited in what I can say without Niemann’s explicit permission to speak openly. So far, I have only been able to speak of my actions, and those actions made it clear that I didn’t want to play chess with Niemann. I hope the truth about this matter comes out, whatever it is,” the world champion concluded. Notably, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) also shares the world champion’s deep concerns over cheating.
“Last week, World Champion Magnus Carlsen quit in a hard-fought match in an online competition against GM Hans Niemann before making his second move. The previous week, he had quit a speedboat tournament after having lost the match against the same Mr. Niemann,” said a FIDE statement issued on September 23. “These were not FIDE events; however, as the world governing body of chess, it is our duty to protect the integrity of the game and its image, and given that the incident does not continues to worsen. , we believe it is necessary to take a step forward.”
“First of all, we strongly believe that the world champion has a moral responsibility attached to his status, since he is considered a global ambassador of the game. His actions have an impact on the reputation of his colleagues, the sporting results , and can potentially be detrimental to our game. We strongly believe there were better ways to handle this situation.” At the same time, we share his deep concern about the damage cheating is doing to chess. FIDE has been leading the fight against cheating for many years, and we reiterate our zero tolerance policy towards cheating in any form. Whether online or “down the line”, cheating is still cheating. We are strongly committed to this fight and we have invested in training a group of specialists to design sophisticated preventive measures that already apply to the best FIDE events.
“As we have done before, FIDE calls for increased cooperation between major online platforms, private events and top players – most of whom have already expressed their willingness to partner with FIDE. FIDE is prepared to entrust its Fair Play Commission with a thorough investigation of the incident, when adequate initial evidence is provided, and all parties involved disclose the information available to them. We are fully aware that, in some cases, the Uncertainty can harm player performance. It can also be damaging to reputation – which is why we insist on anti-cheating protocols to be followed.” “We hope that this whole situation could have a positive effect in the long term, if handled correctly. We propose to launch a dedicated panel, which would include representatives from major chess platforms, grandmasters, anti-cheat experts and FIDE officers, in order to fight against this risk and prevent it from becoming a real scourge,” the statement concludes.
(This story has not been edited by the Devdiscourse team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)