The Chess.com Report on Niemann (Updated)

No proof of cheating vs. Carlsen, but everything else looks very bad.

Unless Chess.com is fabricating evidence and emails, there’s on two ways about it: Hans Niemann engaged in far more online cheating than he ‘fessed up to, and more recently, too. Niemann cheated, repeatedly, in multiple online matches in 2020. (Confirmed, incidentally, by Ken Regan as well.) Worse still, he admitted it to the Chess.com administrators at the time. So much for Niemann’s claims in his interview during the Sinquefield Cup, that he only cheated on two different occasions in online chess, with the most recent offense taking place in 2019. (Update - a correction [thanks to Ken Regan]: Niemann’s admission was that he last cheated when he was 16. That could mean 2019, but could also mean 2020 before his birthday on June 3. That still leaves him on the hook for seven post-birthday events in 2020.)

Does that mean that he cheated against Magnus Carlsen? No, and Chess.com does not claim that Niemann cheated in that game, or in any other over the board game. (Indeed, they count themselves unimpressed with a recent claim that Niemann had an unusual number of “perfect” OTB games.) They do, however, take note of his extraordinarily rapid improvement (which is made even more unusual by a couple of prolonged plateaus), improvement which in some respects exceeds just about everyone in the history of the game.

So, where does this leave matters? Niemann has cheated more often and more recently than he admitted, and at least for the moment his protestations of innocence aren’t going to find many sympathetic ears. There are also general reasons for suspicion about his over the board performances, but there are no smoking guns. What now? He is playing in the U.S. Championship, which begins today/tomorrow (Wednesday), but after that who will want to invite him to their tournaments? Maybe if an organizer believes his anti-cheating measures are essentially foolproof Niemann might get a try, but otherwise he’s likely to be very leery. Additionally, there’s the question of whether players will want to be in a tournament with him. For Carlsen, that’s a loud and clear no, so even if he’s the only objector it’s going to lead to Niemann’s exclusion from a great many elite events.

Anyway, the ball is now very much in Niemann’s court, but what can he do? If he makes a mea culpa on the evidence released in the Chess.com report, but denies everything else, who will that persuade? Unfortunately, if he is innocent on all other points, that leaves matters at an impasse.

We’ll see what happens; for now, here’s a link to the Chess.com report.