The chess world has been gripped by drama after world champion Magnus Carlsen accused newcomer Hans Moke Niemann of cheating. WSJ’s Andrew Beaton explains how the whole fiasco is threatening to taint the sanctity of the 1,500-year-old game.

- Chess Is in Chaos Over Suspicion That a Player Cheated Against Magnus Carlsen 

- The Question Behind the Magnus Carlsen-Hans Niemann Drama: How to Cheat at Chess? 

This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Speaker 1: And, there we have it. We're under way. And, as you were saying, (inaudible).

Andrew Beaton: At the start of the month, there is this big chess tournament in St. Louis.

Kate Linebaugh: That's our colleague, Andrew Beaton.

Andrew Beaton: In the third round of the tournament, two players sat across the board from one another.

Kate Linebaugh: Seated at one side of the board, playing the white pieces, was the 31-year-old Norwegian superstar Magnus Carlsen.

Andrew Beaton: One thing you need to know about Magnus Carlsen is that he is the modern golden boy of chess.

Speaker 5: Magnus Carlsen of course not a stranger to be leading the Sinquefield Cup. But, our (inaudible).

Andrew Beaton: He has won the world championship five times. Many consider him to be the greatest player ever. He's sort of great face for the game internationally.

Kate Linebaugh: Okay. So, Magnus Carlsen is at one side of the table. Who is at the other?

Andrew Beaton: On the other side is Hans Moke Niemann.

Speaker 6: And, there we see a newcomer, Hans Niemann, and (inaudible).

Andrew Beaton: He's a young 19-year-old American with a big mop of brown hair who, over the past couple years, has absolutely skyrocketed in the world rankings. He's good enough at chess to make it into this tournament, though he was also the lowest rated player in this tournament.

Speaker 8: Well, he's playing (inaudible) his bishop, D five.

Kate Linebaugh: Niemann, the shaggy haired teen, was surprisingly in command of the game.

Speaker 7: That's probably as bad a body posture I've seen on Magnus in ages. I mean, he's just (inaudible).

Kate Linebaugh: And, after 57 moves, Niemann won.

Speaker 7: Wow. What a result.

Kate Linebaugh: Niemann had pulled off a stunning upset against the world champion. But, the bigger stunner came the next day.

Andrew Beaton: Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the tournament entirely. This was completely out of the norm and signaled that this wasn't just run of the mill behavior. It signaled to everyone something might be up here.

Kate Linebaugh: And, this afternoon, that something became crystal clear. Carlsen said in a statement he believes Niemann is a serial cheater and that he was suspicious of Niemann's play in the match. And, if it's true that he did cheat, what would that suggest about how much the game has been compromised?

Andrew Beaton: That is one of the most unsettling parts of about all of this, this existential question of if this doubt can legitimately exist in a game that is prided in many ways on its age and that it is an intellectual battle, what if it's intellectually compromised?

Kate Linebaugh: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, September 26th. Coming up on the show, the cheating allegations rocking chess. After beating the world grand champion Magnus Carlsen, Hans Niemann basked in his win.

Niemann: I think he's just so demoralized because he's losing to such an idiot like me. You know? It's just the... It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me. I feel bad for him.

Kate Linebaugh: What is in it for someone like Hans Niemann to beat the world champion?

Andrew Beaton: There's prestige. There's money. And, in the bigger picture, every win, especially for a young player such as himself, catapults you further into the upper echelons of chess. It increases your rating, which helps get you into bigger tournaments with more prize money. And, a signature win such as that... It really solidifies your bonafides as a chess player. Right? I mean, it's like if you can beat LeBron James in a game of one on one, that probably says something a bit about you as a basketball player.

Kate Linebaugh: The day after Carlsen lost, he quit the tournament. So, he was a sore loser.

Andrew Beaton: That's one way of looking at it.

Kate Linebaugh: What's the other way of looking at it?

Andrew Beaton: Well, the only public indication that Carlsen gave to the world about his decision was a cryptic tweet.

Kate Linebaugh: That tweet linked to an old meme of a soccer manager saying he couldn't talk about something or he'd get in trouble. This cryptic tweet led the chess world to infer that Carlsen thought Niemann cheated in their game, something Niemann has denied. How could Niemann have cheated? How is that even possible?

Andrew Beaton: Well, given that anybody can pick up an app or a website on their phone that has what chess people refer to as engines... Those are the computers that give you the best moves. Chess scandals have centered around that idea. There have been more than one instances of what we'll call Toiletgate.

Andrew Beaton: Toiletgate. So, when people say Toiletgate in chess, they're mostly referring to a 2006 incident in which Veselin Topalov's team accused Vladimir Kramnik of taking a suspect number of bathroom breaks during a world championship match. Though the allegation wasn't proven, organizers responded by forcing the players to share a bathroom.

Kate Linebaugh: The idea of this, if I can just, is like you've hidden contraband, i.e., a cell phone or something, in the bathroom and you're like, "Oh, I must go to the loo." And, you're actually in there tapping the computer brain.

Andrew Beaton: Exactly. And, you know, the strangest part is that this wasn't the only Toiletgate in high level chess. More recently, in 2019, a Latvian grand master was suspended by the game's world governing body after he was caught using a smartphone in the washroom.

Kate Linebaugh: The role of computers in chess has changed a lot over the years. A smartphone is a far cry from Deep Blue, IBM's refrigerator-sized supercomputer. In the 1990s, the tension in chess was whether computers like Deep Blue could beat the world's best grand master.

Speaker 10: (inaudible) 1997. The ultimate test of man versus machine. In this arena, man has been unchallenged until now.

Speaker 11: Deep Blue has defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in an absolutely stunning (inaudible).

Andrew Beaton: The state of chess has progressed so much since then that, Kate, you could take your phone out of your pocket right now and open up a chess engine and just by using that chess engine, if you were to play a game against the best player in the world, you would beat them. There's no question at this point of who is better, man or machine. The answer is machine.

Kate Linebaugh: In that game between Carlsen and Niemann, it's speculated that machines could have been used to tilt the balance. Andrew's talked with chess experts about how that could have happened.

Andrew Beaton: What if a player had something, say, a buzzer that might have just been hidden somewhere on their body and they had an accomplice who was watching the games online and going along with the chess engines and could send you a buzz saying move your rook, is one buzz. Two buzzes, move your queen. This isn't to say Hans Niemann did that. This is to say there are methods if someone wanted to be brazen enough that they could probably develop an intricate enough plan to somehow receive signals from a third party that would help them win.

Kate Linebaugh: Niemann's defenders say Carlsen could have simply been having an off game. He's lost before. And, Niemann could have been having a good one. One way or another, in the days that followed, chess analysts have scrutinized Niemann's past.

Andrew Beaton: And, as this conversation grows louder and louder, Niemann eventually is forced to launch an impassioned defense of himself.

Kate Linebaugh: Niemann gave this impassioned defense during a post game interview.

Niemann: They could literally come with the most ridiculous thing. If they want me to strip fully naked, I'll do it. I don't care because I know. I know that I'm clean and (inaudible).

Kate Linebaugh: He lashed out at his naysayers.

Niemann: You know, people are absolute idiots because the explanation I'm going to give is going to make you all look, all the top (inaudible), look like total idiots.

Kate Linebaugh: But, eventually Niemann made a big revelation.

Niemann: I wanted to gain some rating. You know, I just wanted to get higher rating so I could play stronger players. So, I cheated in random games on chess dot com. Now, I was confronted. I (inaudible).

Andrew Beaton: He admitted that in two instances when he was 16 and when he was 12 years old, that he had in fact cheated online. However, he says he has never cheated at over the board chess, never cheated with prize money on the line, and he chalked those up to youthful mistakes.

Niemann: And, this is the single biggest mistake of my life and I am completely ashamed.

Kate Linebaugh: And, were there any repercussions to Niemann's admission that he had cheated before?

Andrew Beaton: Well, the big chess platform chess dot com seemed to indicate that Niemann was not being completely forthright about saying he had only cheated twice. In a statement not long after, chess dot com said they had, quote, "information that contradicts his statements regarding the amount and seriousness of his cheating on chess dot com."

Kate Linebaugh: Why are they so cryptic?

Andrew Beaton: Calling someone point blank a cheater could have some legal ramifications. But, I think there's also a broader point here, which is nobody knows and in fact nobody probably will ever know if Hans Niemann cheated in that game or has cheated in really any game that's happened in person in the past at this point. But, one of the things that they often look for is that over a course of time, was there a pattern of behavior that was suspicious.

Kate Linebaugh: By analyzing the moves or their actions.

Andrew Beaton: Right. Because, for example, if I were to play in a game, I'm so bad at chess that if I played all really, really great moves in a long game, it wouldn't take an algorithm much to say, "Hey, this guy stinks at chess. How'd he suddenly play every move perfectly? He probably cheated."

Kate Linebaugh: Chess dot com has since barred Niemann from its one million dollar global championship. Meanwhile, these two chess grandmasters were about to face off again. That's after the break. Last week, Carlsen, the world chess champion, and Niemann, the young upstart, were set to play each other again, this time at an online tournament called The Generation Cup.

Andrew Beaton: There was an incredible amount of speculation around this match because nobody was quite sure what would happen and frankly, over the last couple weeks as all of this unfolded, the chess world, to put it mildly, melted down.

Kate Linebaugh: Accusations were flying. Online sleuths were combing through Niemann's playing history. There were Reddit groups discussing this. And, all the drama between Carlsen and Niemann was overshadowing other games.

Andrew Beaton: This latest event was an online event which tends to have a lot of protocols in place in order to ensure that the players don't just have some cheating mechanism available to them nearby. They have to have cameras trained on them. There's often screen sharing. So on and so forth.

Kate Linebaugh: So, what happens in this online match?

Andrew Beaton: Niemann made the first move.

Speaker 12: He plays D four because this is his... This is his main move.

Andrew Beaton: Then, Carlsen moved.

Speaker 12: D four knight of 64.

Andrew Beaton: Then, Niemann moved. And, before Magnus played his second move...

Andrew Beaton: He simply resigned.

Speaker 12: That's it?

Speaker 13: We're going to try and get an update on this. Magnus Carlsen just resigned. Got up and left.

Andrew Beaton: If you were watching the stream, all of a sudden, out of the blue, it just popped up that Carlsen lost, Niemann won and Carlsen shut off his camera and left.

Kate Linebaugh: After giving up that one game, Carlsen went on to win the tournament. Niemann didn't make it past the quarterfinals. Chess analysts have interpreted Carlsen's decision to quit their game as a protest. A chess reporter asked Carlsen about the controversy last week and Carlsen declined to talk about the specific situation but said he believes it's, quote, "fairly easy to cheat in today's chess." And, he added this.

Speaker 14: Have to say I am very impressed by Niemann's play and I think his mentor, Maxim Dlugy, must be doing a great... A great job.

Andrew Beaton: You know, he didn't directly call Hans Niemann a cheater, but he didn't not say it and he made a wry little remark that has sent the internet aflame again when he brought up Hans' mentor, Maxim Dlugy, must be doing a great job, because Dlugy is somebody who has been suspected by the chess community of cheating in the past. So, maybe you could call it a wink or a nod. But, he's putting more chum out there.

Kate Linebaugh: Is it so crazy that a 19-year-old could beat the world's number one? I mean, we did just see a 19-year-old win the U.S. Open.

Andrew Beaton: It's not crazy that he could have beaten him and it's not crazy that he could have done it without assistance and I think one of the interesting questions that has emerged from this is it's not necessarily a question of whether Niemann specifically cheated in that game against Magnus Carlsen or not. The question even more broadly is has Hans Niemann cheated in general more broadly than he has let on.

Kate Linebaugh: In his statement today, Carlsen revealed that he had considered pulling out of the St. Louis tournament weeks earlier, believing Niemann to be a cheater. Regarding the game in St. Louis, Carlsen said he had the impression that Niemann, quote, "wasn't tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions." He said Niemann outplayed him in a way only a handful of players can. Carlsen also called on the sport to do more to stop cheating. But, whether or not these allegations stand up, this is a big moment for the world of professional chess.

Andrew Beaton: An entire game is having a really introspective moment. Chess is loved around the world and if this could be happening with this one person, how do we know it's not happening more rampantly than that? I think one of the things I've learned covering sports over the years is that when the integrity of whatever game is being watched by fans starts to be thrown into question, all of a sudden it changes their view of it and that's why those scandals live on for not just days or weeks or months, but for years, and they resonate because all of a sudden people look at what they're watching and they almost feel a little cheated. Right? Because, they thought they were watching something that's completely fair and later they learn it wasn't. And so, we're seeing an iteration of that here in chess where all of a sudden people are wondering, was what I was just watching, was that real? And, that doubt is uncomfortable.

Kate Linebaugh: That's all for today, Monday, September 26th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Joshua Robinson. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Kate Linebaugh is the co-host of The Journal. She has worked at The Wall Street Journal for 15 years, most recently as the deputy U.S. news coverage chief. Kate started at the Journal in Hong Kong, stopping in Detroit and coming to New York in 2011. As a reporter, she covered everything from post-9/11 Afghanistan to the 2004 Asian tsunami, from Toyota's sudden acceleration recall to General Electric. She holds a bachelor degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and went back to campus in 2007 for a Knight-Wallace fellowship.

Ryan Knutson is the co-host of The Journal. Previously, he spent more than four years in the newsroom covering the wireless industry, and was responsible for a string of scoops including Verizon's $130 billion buyout of Vodafone's stake in their joint venture, Sprint and T-Mobile's never ending courtship and a hack of the 911 emergency system that spread virally on Twitter. He was also a regular author of A-heds, including one about millennials discovering TV antennas. Previously, he reported for ProPublica, PBS Frontline and OPB, the NPR affiliate station in Portland, Ore. He grew up in Beaverton, Ore. and graduated from the University of Oregon.