Who Said There's No Money in Chess?

Hans Niemann files suit for $100 million

A busy week is behind me, and now we can get caught up on blogging, starting with the big news of the day: Hans Niemann has filed suit for defamation against Magnus Carlsen & Play Magnus (Carlsen’s company), Danny Rensch and Chess.com, and Hikaru Nakamura. As indicated in the subtitle, he’s asking for a cool $100 million - or more precisely, “no less than One Hundred Million Dollars”. This amount seems, let’s say, rather imaginative to me - but then I’m not an attorney. I’m not sure that Carlsen and Garry Kasparov together have made $100 million from chess, and as talented as Niemann is (assuming that all his over the board games have been completely on the level) he has not yet proved that he is a once-in-a-generation talent of the sort that could plausibly earn 100 megabucks. But, again, I’m not a lawyer; those with the relevant expertise can and should explain why this is a plausible figure.

Anyway, you can read a quick summary here and a useful quickie analysis in this Twitter thread by attorney Akiva Cohen. He doesn’t think that there’s absolutely nothing to Niemann’s complaint, but believes that in addition to the significant hurdles it would have to clear in any case, there are numerous unforced errors of both a procedural and a strategic nature. Here’s how he closes the thread:

Anyway, here are my takeaways:

There is a potentially valid defamation claim (by which I mean “can survive a motion to dismiss”) against Chess.com - but that defendant probably isn’t subject to suit in Missouri (nothing it allegedly did happened in MO)

The claim against Carlsen is likely to get dismissed for a failure to plausibly allege actual malice; nothing in this complaint provides a basis to say Carlsen doesn’t actually believe Niemann cheated.

The stuff against Nakamura is both dead letter on actual malice (on the current record) and filed in a court that has no jurisdiction over Nakamura

I suspect that there was a viable way to have brought this defamation case, potentially only against Chess in CT while indicating that claims against Carlsen and Nakamura might get added depending on discovery - but that will not work as it’s been pled.

That said, this doesn’t appear to be a Mignogna-class lolsuit; there’s material here that is at least potentially defamatory or tortious if intentionally false, and definitely damaging.

My take from reading Cohen and consulting with other sources is that his lawsuit has little if any chance of success. Niemann has done as little as possible to endear himself to the chess world over the past few months, but I do feel bad for him if he has been innocent in over-the-board play. Three things can be simultaneously possible: he cheated (on multiple occasions) in online games, he can be extremely abrasive, and the accusations that he has cheated in in-person games are false. If the three parts of that triad are all true, then the damage to his career is tragic and unfair. There needs to be a way of arranging in-person events and evaluating them that, as much as possible, prevents future Hans Niemanns from suffering this fate - and for that matter, that allows Niemann himself every opportunity to become the best player his talent and hard work will allow.