NOT for the first time this year, world champion Magnus Carlsen, the sport’s dominant player for the last decade, has rocked the chess world, this time withdrawing from a prestigious — and highly lucrative — invitational tournament in the US implying that his opponent, Hans Niemann, had been cheating.

Having already withdrawn from next year’s world title match, Carlsen pulled out of the 10-player round-robin Sinquefield Cup, held in St Louis, Missouri, after an unexpected third-round defeat as white to the 19-year-old Californian grandmaster last Sunday, simply tweeting a clip of football coach Jose Mourinho’s unsubtle complaint about refereeing: “If I speak I am in big trouble.” 

The 31-year-old Norwegian’s message was that he had been diddled, and for the past week the experts have been poring over the game, trying to divine whether Niemann had some sort of help with his moves as the pair faced off over the board — and how it might have been achieved.

Twitter loudmouth and chess fan Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, added his weight to the conspiracists speculating that Niemann had used a vibrating sex toy to receive his messages, while Niemann has said he’s prepared to play naked if necessary to prove that he’s innocent — not something many spectators would be eager to witness, one might suppose, though who knows? Perhaps slightly more credible speculation centres on a possible leak or hack of Carlsen’s preparation for the game.

Niemann’s bid to protect his reputation has not been helped by his admitting that as a youngster he actually did use computer aid to advance his reputation and ranking via online games and had been suspended from Chess.com, the sport’s biggest online platform. But he seems to be drawing a distinction between the online chess world, which boomed during the pandemic, and the “over the board” game, insisting that such misdemeanours are in the past and his play is clean and attributing his rapid Fide rating rise from 2,465 in September 2020 to his current 2,688 to sheer hard work.

The tournament, which will end on Tuesday, added extra fair-play measures on Monday, but with the world’s top player dropping out, the damage has been done and chess’s big beasts have been taking sides. 

World number six Hikaru Nakamura was quick to point out Niemann’s previous Chess.com ban — and the platform has banned him again and withdrawn his invitation to its $1 million Global Championship. Its chess chief  Daniel Rensch said in a statement: “We have reached out to Hans Niemann to explain our decision to privately remove him from Chess.com and our events. We have shared detailed evidence with him concerning our decision, including information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on Chess.com.”

Other players see the situation as a fuss over nothing: though Carlsen defeats are rare, he’s not infallible. Chess great Garry Kasparov called Carlsen’s withdrawal “an act with no precedent in the past 50 years, and his explanation is required,” while Levon Aronian, ranked eighth in the world, jocularly observed that when youngsters play well, there are always accusations buzzing around the chess world and that “all of my colleagues are pretty much paranoid.”