Chess fans around the world were left shocked when Jan Henric Buettner announced the participation of Hans Niemann at the upcoming Paris Freestyle Grand Slam event, scheduled for April. Buettner went on to reveal that co-owner Magnus Carlsen, who finished third at Weissenhaus, was against the idea but accepted it.
Carlsen and Niemann have a long history together, which goes back to September 2022 when the Norwegian accused him of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup without providing any evidence. Niemann denied all allegations and admitted to cheating in casual online games as a teenager. Meanwhile, a Chess.com investigation report claimed that Niemann likely cheated in over 100 online games. Since then Carlsen hasn’t really gone into the exact details regarding the controversy, but it also came to an end after a legal settlement between all parties involved.
Magnus Carlsen spills fresh details on Hans Niemann’s anal beads cheating controversy
Carlsen recently appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and revealed that more details on the cheating controversy would be revealed in an upcoming Netflix documentary, rumoured to be released this year. Fans will be eagerly excited to hear more when the controversy comes out, but were also treated to some details as Carlsen opened up on Rogan’s podcast. He was asked about the accusations on Niemann that he could have used anal beads to cheat, Carlsen stated that he didn’t believe that but there were other ways in which Niemann could have cheated. The anal beads accusation went viral on social media during that time, and Niemann was also asked about it by British journalism Piers Morgan. Many fans also accused him of using anal beads to communicate via morse code to cheat.
Commenting on what made him suspicious of Niemann, Carlsen claimed, “There was a combination of things, based on the chess level that I thought that he had, and that I had seen from his games. Both by playing against him and analyzing a bit with him and by looking at his games. There were a lot of stories back then.”
“There were a lot of factors that made me very, very suspicious. I think ever since then he has become better. But there’s still something off, both then and now.”
Analysing Niemann’s playing style, Carlsen remarked, “With him, specifically…I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to be playing….or he didn’t at that point seem to be playing with a particular style. It seemed that he either played, kinda eh, or he more or less played any position very well in certain games. He could just switch from tactical to positional play very easily.”
“It didn’t smell good to me. It still doesn’t, but to some extent, he had his lawsuit and we have all kind of moved a little bit on. I don’t trust him, and a lot of top players still don’t trust him. He certainly doesn’t trust me or Chess.com, Hikaru, or whoever he felt wronged by.”
Rogan also went on to question Carlsen about how a chess player can cheat in a top-level tournament. Carlsen said, “An invisible ear piece that people use for exams and so on.”
“Yeah, he would. That would not have been detected by the security system that they used at that tournament. They amped up the security after the whole thing happened. They started checking our ears.”
Niemann is currently 18th in the latest FIDE standings, and has a rating of 2734. In the past, he has claimed on multiple occasions that the controversy has affected his chess career, and he doesn’t receive invites to tournaments due to it.
