Is Hans Niemann a cheater ?

Is Hans Niemann a cheater?
Last several weeks brought us one of the biggest scandals in chess history. After the defeat to Hans Niemann, who played black pieces in 4rth round, Magnus Carlsen surprisingly withdrew from the Sinquefield cup leaving an ambiguous message shortly in his Twitter account.

Magnus Carlsen's hint of Hans Niemann cheating in the tournament raised a huge wave of discussions in the chess world. By indirectly accusing Hans Magnus created doubt and suspicion in millions of minds around the world. Many prominent chess players gave various opinions. On the side of those accusing Hans are Alexei Shirov, Hikaru Nakamura and Eric Hansen. Anish Giri said: “it has been a big problem to play against players who admitted cheating online, you lose trust in them”.
However, he mentioned that it is clear that Magnus doesn’t have any evidence against Hans Niemann.

How can one cheat in the official chess games, where each player is thoroughly scanned by metal detectors before the game? In July 2019 Igor Rausis was caught in the bathroom using his mobile phone to assist him in the game. As a consequence, he was disqualified from the Strasbourg Open and declared his retirement from chess. Similarly, Georgian Grandmaster Galioz Nigalidze was disqualified from the Dubai Open Chess tournament for using a smartphone hidden in the washing room. The punishment was denouncement of his grandmaster title and ban from official tournaments for three years.

Famous multibillionaire Elon Musk commented on the scandal using the quote of Shopenhauer in Twitter: “Talent hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one else can see (cause it’s in your butt)”. His remark along with the Reddit post gave birth to a theory of Hans having a special rectal device, which would aid him by transmitting a morse code. This theory did damage to the already fractured reputation of Niemann, who later claimed that he was ready to play naked to prove his innocence.

The scandal around Hans Niemann didn’t finish after Magnus withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup. In the Julius Baer Generation Cup, an online tournament with 15 minutes plus 10 seconds increment control, Magnus has resigned after the second move against Hans Niemann. After remaining silent for a while about his implicit allegations, Magnus Carlsen gave an interview to Kaja Snare. “Unfortunately, I cannot particularly speak of that. People come to their own conclusions”. It is likely that Magnus doesn’t have evidence against Hans Niemann, yet as Levon Aronian commented: “he is just saying ‘I will not play against this person and that’s it’”.

Despite Hans Niemann admitting to cheating online at the ages of 12 and 16, there still has been some support for his chess in recent years. Professor Kenneth Regan, expert in cheating, has analyzed all of Hans Niemann games over the last 2 years and claims that there is no evidence to suspect the young American chess player. Regan’s system " deliberately does not use specific chess knowledge, it's all based on the quantitative data from the computer's evaluations of the moves transplanted into a utility function, which is then fed into a predictive analytic model that really works in a broadly similar way to how economists base predictive analytical models on utility functions." His method also shows players who are better than others at inducing errors from their opponents.

Cheating in chess is only inferior in terms of difficulty to detecting cheating. Hans Niemann was banned from chess.com and their major events as he admitted cheating online. Yet, there is no concrete proof which suggests that Hans Niemann has been cheating. Nevertheless, his reputation is already destroyed and most likely he will receive less invitations to major chess events in the future.