Dubov and Niemann, Again

Can you feel the love? Me neither.

You might recall that Daniil Dubov was paired with Hans Niemann in the World Blitz Championship this past December, but “overslept” and forfeited the game. (Practically everyone believes that Dubov intentionally forfeited and didn’t oversleep, a point Dubov “hinted” at to the point where the practical certainty is north of 99%.)

Niemann has been earnestly fighting for his reputation since his infamous game with Magnus Carlsen from the Sinquefield Cup in 2022 (Wikipedia will catch you up if you’re new to all of this), and Niemann invited Dubov to play a blitz match with an interesting prize: the loser would answer a single question while hooked to a polygraph. Dubov won the match - barely - 9.5-8.5 and Niemann subsequently balked on the agreement, though it seems that he has since rescinded and will take the polygraph exam.

You won’t be even mildly surprised to learn the question Dubov has in mind: “Have you cheated over the board?”; more specifically, if he cheated “over the past five years”. (More here.)

The effectiveness of polygraph exams is widely disputed and are generally not allowed as evidence in courts of law. Needless to say, that probably won’t prevent those who like the results (assuming Niemann goes through with it) won’t point to the results as evidence of their preferred conclusion. We’ll see what happens, and if you learn of the results before I blog about it, please drop me a note to let me know what happened.