Saturday, 22 October 2022 – American teenage chess prodigy, Hans Niemann has sued a grandmaster who accused him of using beads to cheat.
Niemann is also suing online platform Chess.com, claiming they defamed him in a bid to blacklist him from the game after he was accused of using vibrating beads to communicate with his coach during a September 4 tournament against Carlsen.
In court papers, filed in Missouri on Thursday, he claims that 31-year-old Magnus Carlsen, a self-styled ‘King of Chess’, was fearful that he would blemish his multi-billion dollar brand after beating him in September.
In a report by Chess.com, they claimed Niemann had ‘likely cheated’ in hundreds of games weeks after the incident.
Niemann, 19, denied the accusations, saying that he only cheated twice in his life at the age of 12 and 16 and that were some of the greatest regrets of his life.
Chess.com executive Daniel Rensch and chess streamer Hikaru Nakamura are also named as defendants.
Niemann is now demanding a jury trial ‘to recover from the devastating damages that defendants have inflicted upon his reputation, career and life by egregiously defaming him and unlawfully colluding to blacklist him from the profession to which he has dedicated his life,’ according to the lawsuit.
He is seeking $100 million in compensatory, consequential and punitive damages.
In his lawsuit, Niemann claims:
Carlsen created Player Magnus, a lucrative global brand that he merged with Chess.com in an $83 million deal, ‘to monopolize the chess world’
On September 4, he taunted Carlson in an interview after beating him, and this caused the Norwegian to ‘snap’ and he ‘maliciously’ retaliated against the teenager
The defeat robbed Carlsen of solidifying him ‘as the greatest chess player of all time’, which ‘would have made his empire more valuable’
Carlsen then ‘falsely and baselessly’ accused Niemann of cheating after he was ‘unable to accept the reality of his unexpected loss’
‘Carlsen’s unprecedented actions, coupled with his unfounded accusations, sent shock waves through the chess world and instantly thrust Niemann into the center of what is now widely reported as the single biggest chess scandal in history,’ the lawsuit reads.
‘Even though Carlsen had no legitimate basis to believe Niemann actually cheated against him, he could ensure that no reputable chess tournament would invite Niemann to compete in the future, and his false accusations would cause other top chess players to boycott Niemann as well.’
The lawsuit alleges that Carlsen’s actions were financially driven – his Player Magnus brand merged with Chess.com in a $83 million in August deal. Player Magnus is Carlsen’s chess training app.
While Chess.com and Play Magnus announced the merge of the companies on August 24 – it would take up to two months to complete the transaction.
Defendant Nakamura is one of Chess.com’s ‘influential streaming partners’ that posted content to amplify Carlsen’s accusations with ‘numerous additional defamatory statements.’
After the bead cheating accusations, a 72-page report by Chess.com accused the ‘self-taught chess prodigy’ of cheating ‘more than 100 times’.
‘On October 5, 2022, Niemann was scheduled to begin competing in the U.S. Chess Championship tournament, which, due to Defendants’ repeated defamatory accusations and blacklisting, is quite possibly one of the last competitive chess tournaments in which Niemann will ever be allowed to play,’ the lawsuit reads.
‘Niemann desperately hoped to be able to compete in that tournament, deliver an impressive performance, and lessen the blow of at least some of Defendants’ defamatory accusations. Yet, once again, Defendants had different plans.’
The lengthy report showed that the prodigy privately confessed to Chess.com he had cheated on numerous occasions, while it also revealed that he was banned from the site, though this was never made public.
The report states that Niemann confessed his cheating to Chess.com COO Danny Rensch during a Zoom call, and afterwards in writing during a Slack chat.
Many of the tournaments Chess.com said Niemann cheated in included cash prizes, the report said, including Chess.com prize events, Speed Chess Championship Qualifiers, and the PRO Chess League.
Niemann would participate in about 15 major chess tournaments per year and earn between $5,000 to $15,000 in appearance fees and between $5,000 to $100,000 in cash prizes, according to the lawsuit.
Now that Niemann has been barred from participating in most tournaments, the lawsuit claimed the 19-year-old’s ‘career’ is destroyed by the Carlson’s ‘lies’.
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