Dlugy on Cheating Accusations

Both against Niemann and himself.

[Sorry that I’ve been away from the keys for a few days (mostly due to traveling), but I’m back and will be caught up on the U.S. Championship games soon.]

Many of you won’t remember Max Dlugy, and will only know of him, if at all, on account of Magnus Carlsen’s snide remark about Dlugy’s having trained Hans Niemann well, hinting that he was in some way behind Niemann’s alleged cheating in over-the-board chess. But Dlugy was an impressive figure in his own right, “back in the day”, winning the World Junior in 1985 and showing himself to be one of the absolute best blitz players in the world in the 1980s and ‘90s. He never made it to the elite level in classical chess, and decided to pursue a career in the financial sector instead, though he remained very active in online chess. (He has returned to chess, but primarily in an entrepreneurial and teaching capacity, not as a player.)

At any rate, he was flagged for cheating by Chess.com’s detection algorithms in 2017 and 2020, and since he worked for a time with Niemann - who was by his own admission busted by Chess.com in 2015 and 2020 (and according to the Chess.com report, in 2017 as well) - the suggestion was that he (Dlugy) was somehow implicated in Niemann’s wrongdoing.

Now Dlugy has responded; here’s the gist. First, with the exception of a four-hour session working on endings with Niemann in 2021, he hasn’t worked with him since late 2014/early 2015. Second, he doesn’t understand how Niemann could have cheated in the Sinquefield Cup, given the precautions taken. Third, his violation of fair play rules in 2017 was inadvertent and confessed to as soon as he understood what happened. Fourth, Carlsen was guilty of the same sort of cheating himself, but in a worse version. Fifth, he analyzes the 2020 games that were the source of the second Chess.com accusation that he cheated, and argues that their conclusion is wildly implausible. Only one of the games could be reasonably construed as suspicious, and in that game he argues that a big chunk of his excellent play was thanks to opening prep.

If it’s true that Dlugy hasn’t had a working relationship with Niemann for eight years, excepting a four-hour session last year, it does seem scurrilous to bring him into the controversy. (And this is true regardless of whether or not Dlugy was guilty of cheating in his own games.) I have no idea about his 2017 games, but his argument about his 2020 games at least seems plausible. (Though it might be a red herring, as no one is claiming that he cheated on every single move. The reply, though, could well be that if he did cheat, he picked some strange moments to do so.) As for Carlsen cheating (or being the beneficiary of someone else’s cheating), with David Howell giving him a critical move in an online game against a major rival, that’s unquestionable. Certainly Carlsen could have found the move, but the fact it that he didn’t, and it was given to him. (Daniel Naroditsky, his opponent in that game, was apparently pretty irked at first, but downplays it - unconvincingly, in my opinion - in this video clip.)

Anyway, what do all of you think? And Ken (Regan), if you’re out there, do you buy Dlugy’s argument about his 2020 games?