Perpetual check in chess is a game condition where repeated checks could theoretically go on forever, the game never ending. To relieve us from playing the same moves over and over until we die at the board, when an identical position is reached three times in the same game it is declared a draw.

 

As an outsider, reporting on stories within niche, relatively closed subcultures is terrifying. Each decision an author faces can feel like an opening trap. The blank page can paralyze, holding us in a suspended state of zugzwang.¹ How you tell a story matters. What order you tell it in. Which details you emphasize. Which details you leave out. When you tell a story. I am not a chess player. I am a fiction reader/writer. I don’t think you need to be a chess player to spot the tactic in this position that will end the game. You only need to know how the pieces move.

 

This story is complex, like the game it emerges from, but it seeks to answer a deceptively simple question: can human beings play chess? For most of chess’ long, significant history this would have been a ridiculous question to ask. It is now a fundamental one. I am fond of saying I was born in one world and will die in another, to illustrate the pace at which life has changed in my short life thus far (forty years). Specifically, I was born in one millennium and will die in another and that bridge has come to define my entire generation, dismissively and often rudely since my generation, like all generations and any cluster of people anywhere at any time, is insufferable. I was alive when chess was only a game played between two humans. It always signified a great deal more than that, of course. Chess rarely has to strain as metaphor. In my lifetime (1996) the world champion Garry Kasparov played a match against IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue, and won (4-2). The following year Deep Blue won (3.5 – 2.5), and now there is easily enough computing power in all of our pockets to defeat any human that has ever or will ever play the game of chess. The game is irreversibly changed.

 

 

“Chesse-play is a good and wittie exercise of the mind for some kinds of men, and fit for such melancholy persons as are idle and have impertinent thoughts…”

–  Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1626)

 

           

Life is suffering. Chess is suffering. To play is to accept suffering. Chess, unlike life, is a solved game. In my own lifetime it was unsolved – perfect play was a distant shore, a chimera. Beauty exposed itself on the board in this quest for enlightenment. The pursuit of this ideal of perfection, like art, gave and conveyed meaning to our idle hours. In our exuberant march to obsolescence as we anxiously crossed over a millennium Godless and overly medicated, in disagreement with nature, we birthed machines and programmed them to attain this perfection over-the-board. Chess became a game of determining the distance between the limits of our mental abilities and those of the machines we serve, at least in part. The art shifted under our feet from the pursuit to the suffering itself. Life is suffering. Chess is suffering. To play is to accept suffering. This was always the case, and still is. The clues to our suffering lie undiscovered and dormant on the board like a rare combination, a brilliant move, two exclamation marks in the notations scribbled in the Grandmaster’s moleskin. The key to our salvation, however, does not. This was also always the case, but in the surety (in the act of knowing), we multiply our suffering.

 

What the hell am I talking about? This is what I’m talking about. A cheating scandal has rocked the world of professional chess and made international headlines.

           

A timeline for the uninitiated with a brief detour for vibrating anal beads:²

 

• The young, brash nineteen-year-old American with a recent meteoric rise in rating to become one of the top fifty chess players in the world, Hans Mote Niemann, defeats the current world champion and highest rated player of all time, the Norwegian Magnus Carlson, in the first game of the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis on September 4th, 2022, in classical chess, as black.³
  
  
• The next day in an unprecedented and highly controversial move, Magnus Carlson withdraws from the round robin tournament. He is in excellent health and only gives, as way of explanation, a clip of a famous European football coach saying that if he were to speak he would be in trouble. Other grandmasters and commentators immediately fill in the blanks – Hans Niemman has been caught cheating in online chess before and has had his account banned from Chess.com.
  
  
• The next day a fifteen-minute televised delay is instituted in the tournament along with increased security measures (a guy with a wand like a TSA agent checks all players for magnetic devices as they enter the playing hall).⁴

 

The conflict reveals an existential problem for chess – it is simply quite easy now to cheat. There are sophisticated computer models that can detect cheating. These models are excellent at identifying cheating by your average player. But at the very top level it’s not so simple. I would need a computer to tell me every single move to beat any titled player. That’s not so hard to spot. A 2600+ grandmaster might only need one move at a particular point in the game. In fact, a 2600+ grandmaster might not even need a move at all. When you watch chess online there is an evaluation bar. The computer is tracking the game live and shifting its evaluation of who is winning after each move. It’s not based on human intuition or our creativity. It’s not based on our years of experience or hard study. It is a calculation of the conditions on the board on a level much deeper than any human being could ever achieve alone. Knowing where that calculation bar sits at a critical moment, whether to confirm your intuition or signal you to take more time in a particular position, might be all a 2600+ grandmaster needs to close the gap between his play and his strong human opponent. Most chess tournaments cannot afford security measures of any kind. You could walk into a bathroom and pull out a phone and evaluate any position in literal seconds. Spectators (often made up of coaches and family, individuals with vested, personal interests in the outcome of the game) are free to come and go as they please.⁵

           

Our ability to play the game is inexorably tied to the trust we have in our opponent to play it fairly. Magnus Carlson does not trust Hans Niemann. He has logical reasons backed by Hans’ own past actions.

 

 

• After the fifth round Hans Niemman gave an interview where he admitted he had cheated twice in online chess⁶ (once at 12, once at 16), but never over-the-board and never in tournaments or rated games. He was contrite and emotional. He explained his current drive for chess greatness as stemming from these transgressions. He spent a lot of time defending his weird accent.⁷
  
  
• The next day Chess.com releases a statement that claims Hans was downplaying his past history of cheating on their website and encourages him to reach out with an explanation and response to the evidence they had presented him privately “with the hope of finding a resolution where Hans can again participate on Chess.com.”
• The tournament ends with Hans finishing sixth out of ninth.⁸ During a twitch stream, as the entire chess world was covering the incredible story unfolding, the Canadian grandmaster and popular streamer Eric Hansen joked that one way for Hans to cheat over-the-board irl would be to insert vibrating anal beads that sent him signals on the computer’s best move in any given position. Elon Musk, a cartoonishly evil pale South African billionaire seeking to populate Mars, tweeted out the anal bead theory to his gazillion followers and sent the story into a mainstream stratosphere chess rarely knows.

 

To the outside world the collective tightening of chess players’ sphincters in all this drama may seem comical, absurd, and quite provincial. I assure you it matters. Recall, chess rarely has to strain. We live in a world psychotically, efficiently designed to steal our attention. An astounding amount of capital and intellectual human labor goes into fighting (for and over) our attention constantly. Digital spaces in this era of hypermodernity are not so subtly impugning our very desire to give something our undivided attention. We often chalk it up to our lack of ability and try to escape these conditions chemically, to mixed results rife with unintended consequences. A game that trains our focus on the present moment is very, very valuable. Locking away our devices and learning to sit with our thoughts unencumbered by the smartly designed distractions beckoning us to disassociate, searching instead for a hidden combination or spotting a threat, recalling a past position, preparing a reply to external conditions with incomplete, imperfect information is very, very valuable.

 

• Due to some existing contractual obligations, Magnus and Hans were both already scheduled to play again, in the Julius Baer Generation Cup, online, in Round Six on Monday September 19th. Hans opens the game with D4, pushing the Queen’s pawn to the center as he begins the fight.

• Magnus plays Knight to F6 as black, in response to Hans’ D4. This opening response, broadly characterized as the Indian Defence, is a hypermodern opening which could lead to the Nimzo-Indian Defence, a Modern Benoni, the Catalan, King’s Indian, Grünfeld Defence, and even some standard lines in the Queen’s Gambit declined.

 

  

• Hans plays the most common reply, C4, staking an even stronger claim to the center of the board. At this stage, Magnus’ reply will begin to further clarify the opening and the type of game they will be playing.

 

Trust is critical for two humans to play. What about forgiveness? Chess study is now entirely linked to engines. During training and preparation, players run chess engines and the computer trains them on moves, positions, openings, tactics, etc…The computer teaches us how to play better chess.  Less than two decades ago we were teaching the computer. This shift matters, and the implications matter. At one point we theorized these implications. Now we live them. Games are much more likely to be drawn (perfect play in chess strives for equality), and bluffing (trying to catch an opponent off guard or out of their preparation with a less than ideal move), while always an important facet of the game, is now perhaps one of the only ways to upset the march to equality at the highest levels. Hans did not turn off his engine while playing games online. We don’t know how often he did this. We will never know. He was young. He was anxious to get to a higher rating online to improve his prospects as a chess streamer. He has asked for forgiveness. Can human beings play chess?

 

• Magnus resigns. Magnus refuses to play Hans in chess. His resignation pours gasoline on the fire. He was not preparing for a Modern Benoni or the Grünfeld. The online site they were playing on requires that a player make one move before resigning. Magnus moved his knight to F6 to prepare for his next and final move of the game, resignation.

 

The commentators and professional chess watchers and fans erupted in shock. Magnus was disrespecting the game. It was not sporting. His behavior had negative impacts on the tournaments, on the standings and match-ups and other players not involved in their game. Magnus was draining some of his considerable social capital, without speaking or providing any explanation, on a principle.

 

It became clear that Magnus knew of the allegations and suspicions against Hans prior to losing to him in the Sinquefield Cup. Even Magnus’ most recent challenger for the World Chess Championship, the Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi⁹ stated that he had reached out to the event organizers of the Sinquefield Cup to protest Hans’ inclusion¹⁰ due to the cheating suspicions. Why, then, did Magnus play him in St. Louis? His detractors, and there are many, argue that Magnus withdrawing from the tournament was an emotional reaction to losing. They rush to comment sections everywhere to shout, “Sore loser!” It is not, of course, outside the realm of possibility that Hans did somehow cheat to beat Magnus as black in classical chess in St. Louis, though it seems increasingly unlikely given the reports of the arbiter and analysis from many fellow grandmasters and the computer models. Did he even have to cheat to defeat Magnus? Was it not enough to allow for the possibility that he might or that he could? Would that germ of an idea stick somewhere in Magnus and begin poisoning his own play? Could he trust Hans? Perhaps if he beat him (he was ranked 200 points higher than him and playing as white) he could start to silence his own doubts and quietly move on to the next round. When he sat across from Hans, the human being, was he stricken with doubt and fear? Was he playing Hans or the computer?

 

Magnus has certainly been confounding and occasionally infuriating the chess world lately. His decision to not play Nepomniachtchi in defense of his world title is something of an emotional lightning rod for fans and grandmaster peers alike. Magnus Carlsen is the best chess player in the world and can play whoever he wants, and this makes people mad. There is nothing Magnus Carlson has to prove to chess. Chess has to prove to him that it means something – that it is a real thing, that it was worth his considerable mind.

He is not the first world champion to leverage his position or dictate his terms.

In 1857 the first great American player, Paul Morphy (1837-1884), traveled to Europe to try to convince the world’s best player at the time, the Englishman Harry Staunton (1810-1874), to play him. Staunton refused. Morphy played and beat a number of masters, but never got his shot against Staunton. After returning home his interest in competitive chess waned considerably. In 1875 he began suffering from paranoid delusions and he died in 1884.

The second official World Champion, the German Emmanuel Lasker (1868-1941) was heavily criticized for requesting high fees to play in matches. His successor, the Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca (1888-1942), continued in the tradition and set the price to pay him at $10,000. Perhaps most famously, the American Bobby Fischer (1943-2008) refused to play Game 2 of his World Championship match against the Russian Boris Spassky (1937-) in 1972 in Reykjavik during the white-hot center of the cold war. Fischer wanted all cameras and spectators removed from the playing area. After forfeiting Game 2 and heading to the airport to return home to Brooklyn, Henry Kissinger called and begged him to play for the honor of his country. Spassky agreed to play the third match in a smaller room away from the crowds and Fischer was ultimately victorious in the match (7-3-11) despite giving away the second game.

 

Magnus finally speaks for himself on the matter, instead of letting the chess speak for itself, and cryptically name drops a coach of Hans’, GM Maxim Dlugy, crediting him with Hans’ spectacular rise. It’s a clever, calculated move. Dlugy is an admitted cheater. Chess.com goes so far as to release e-mails between them and Dlugy. Vice runs an article.  After winning the Julius Baer Generation Cup in simply incredible form with veritable ease despite forfeiting his game to Hans, Magnus releases a statement. He hints that Hans’ legal team has restricted him from commenting further. The New York Times releases a story written by Greg Keener, a FIDE master and assistant manager of the famed Marshall Chess Club in New York. In it, Keener makes the salacious, but strange, claim that if Hans is not cheating then “he may already be the best player in the world.”¹¹

 

Surely refusing to play someone you suspect of cheating in the game you are the unquestionable best in the world at is not somehow more egregious than blatantly ducking your opponent (Staunton, Riddick Bowe), for pure financial gain (Lasker, Capablanca), or to create more favorable winning conditions (Fischer). Yet you will have no trouble finding scores of chat pros across the internet accusing Magnus of throwing a temper tantrum after Hans beat him in St. Louis. Did he react emotionally? Of course he did. Did he react emotionally because he lost a game to a young, brash lower rated player? Or did he react emotionally because he lost to something else? A computer or his doubts and fears. His fears the game cannot be played, fairly, between two humans, any longer. And the subsequent repudiation of a lifetime of study and sacrifice to a game. Magnus Carlson is having an emotional reaction. Is he allowed this? Can human beings play chess? (+)

 

Was there a better, more pleasant way to handle the position? There almost always is. It is very difficult for us, as humans, to find it. Can Magnus be forgiven? Can Hans? Are we capable of something approaching grace? Is everything only ever black and white? Magnus Carlson is having an emotional reaction. Is he allowed this? Can human beings play chess? (+)

 

Chess is a patient game. It is a game of sustained, unwavering attention to the present situation. It stands to reason Magnus Carlson would move carefully and deliberately. This story is not over.¹² Nothing has been resolved. We stand on the sidelines straining toward the possibility of a catastrophic stalemate. My thoughts circle in on themselves and return to the same position again and again. I am having an emotional reaction. Am I allowed this? Can human beings play chess? (+) ½ ½

 

 **********

Acknowledgements:

I could not have written this story without the following incredible resources:

• GM Hikaru Nakamura’s coverage on his twitch stream
• GM Daniel Naroditsky’s coverage on his twitch stream
• Chessbrah’s coverage on their twitch stream
• The Perpetual Chess Podcast with Ben Johnson
• C Squared Podcast with GMs Fabiano Caruana and Cristian Chirila
• GM Ian Nepomniachtchi’s Podcast ‘Lachesis Without Q’
• The books The History of a Game by Richard Eales & Chess: A History by Harry Golombek
• r/chess & chat pros everywhere

 

1. It is your turn to move and you must move, but every possible move will weaken your position.
2. Every single footnote in this timeline could lead you down a different path, creating entirely new positions on the board. One of the most valuable lessons chess teaches us is where to direct our attention. It is not enough to pay close, persistent attention (which is a separate skill we must master), but we also have to maintain some control over what we pay attention to. Our attention is an incredibly valuable resource. The fight to master our attention is extremely difficult and incredibly important. More on this later. Ignore idle threats. Learn to spot a distraction.
3. A week prior the two played a match (set of games) in person in Miami. Magnus won the match but Hans won the first game, after which he said only to the interviewer: “chess speaks for itself.” As the tournament in Miami went on, and Hans struggled mightily, his interviews became increasingly bizarre while also garnering him significant attention. After one loss he talked about walking into the ocean and disappearing forever: “I wanted to lose as quickly as possible so I could go back to my hotel room and turn all the lights off, order some delivery, and watch Netflix and numb the pain until the next game.” He claimed he’d spent $1,000 on Uber Eats.
4. The arbiter of the Sinquefield Cup ruled there was no suspicion of cheating on the part of any player and our most respected current computer analysis models detect no abnormalities.
5. The stunning cinematic film How I Became a Cheater by Irina Stepaniuk, featuring my favorite young grandmaster, Danil Dubov, in a tremendous acting debut, was from seven years ago. Consider, for a moment, the technological advances over the past seven years. The next seven?
6. In late August Chess.com agreed to purchase Magnus Carlson’s fledgling online company, PlayMagnus, for eighty million dollars. Following Magnus dropping out of the Sinquefield Cup, Chess.com released a statement that Hans Niemann’s account was banned on their website AND they were uninviting him from their brand new, flagship, million-dollar prize fund tournament starting in a few weeks. Why, you might ask, when Chess.com knew of Hans’ prior cheating on their site, would they invite him in the first place? Well, Hans had become quite a popular figure. He was very quotable (“chess speak for itself”) and emerging as an exciting new American player. It made good business sense. Many of the top players have deals with Chess.com either as streamers or instructors, regulars at their events and so on. Chess.com also apparently has a list of banned accounts which features many top players. Hans would hardly have been the first grandmaster to use an engine (cheat) during online games. For most of Hans’ supporters (and there are many) this key point, along with him being a “just a kid” when the cheating allegedly took place online, factors heavily in their position.
7. At some point, and it might as well be here, I have to tell you that Hans, despite being born and raised in America, developed a hilariously weird Russian accent in the past two years. He claims this is due to him living out of a suitcase throughout Europe only playing chess and talking to non-native English speakers. Whatever the reason for the affect, it immediately recalls, for us Americans, an entire genre of based action movies of the eighties and nineties featuring Russian villains. An impeccable choice on his part.
8. His win in the first game against Magnus ended up not counting in the standings, although it did briefly cross Hans past the elusive and illustrious 2700 “super GM” rating threshold.
9. Nepomniachtchi lost the match to Magnus in 2021 in Dubai after making a series of embarrassing, human blunders following a brilliant, strenuous record-breaking game six (a 136 move, seven hour and forty-five-minute game). Magnus had expressed regret that the match overall was not of particularly high quality due to the blunders and lamented the time and energy he has to spend every other year defending his title. Prior to the Candidates Tournament in 2022 (the round robin event where a challenger to the world championship is decided), Magnus stated he might not play in the 2023 World Championship, relinquishing his title and causing some level of uncertainty as to Chess’ true, undisputed World Champion (can you be a World Champion if you do not defeat the current one? Will this sport become boxing with its dozens of confusing, competing belts?). Nepomniachtchi cruised to another victory at the 2022 Candidates, earning the right to play in the 2023 World Championship. Magnus announced he would not defend and the Chinese world ranked number two and runner up in the Candidates, Ding Liren, will now face Nepomniachtchi for the watered down title.
10. Hans Niemann was invited very late to the Sinquefield Cup when one of the original participants, Hungarian grandmaster Richard Rapport, refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and was thus unable to travel to St. Louis. Hans’ recent popularity and proximity (American) were no doubt factors in his selection.
11. It’s strange because chess operates on a rating system that is fairly objective at determining the best players in the world and at the time of the article Hans was rated 40th. There were even five players with his same birth year, or younger, ahead of him: Vincent Keymer (#39, Germany, b. 2004), Nodirbek Abdusattorov (#31, Uzbekistan, b. 2004), Arjun Erigaisi (#21, India, b. 2003), Gukesh D (#18, India, b. 2006), and Alireza Firouzja (#4, Iranian playing under the French flag, b. 2003).
12. On the contrary, the story grows new tentacles with each passing day. Hot babes show up to tournaments in mini black dresses with signs of support to cheer Hans on. A photograph emerges of Magnus and Hans playing chess on the beach in Miami, days before the Sinquefield Cup, shooting promotional content together. Amateurs and pros alike pour over Hans’ games for clues with chess engines. Views, clicks, subscriptions, follows: everything is loud and getting louder.