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Originally Posted by Slava
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The full report is now up on chess.com. It’s long—over 70 pages.
I haven’t had time to read the whole thing but overall it looks very bad for Niemann. Apparently the games in which he cheated include a game against Ian Nepomniatchi (Carlsen’s World Championship challenger) so his statement that he never cheated in “real games” looks like it might be wrong.
On the other hand the report does concede that there is no evidence Hans has everbcheated over the board, or in the specific game that gave rise to this whole thing. Again, not sure what to take from that: it’s kind of bad enough that he lied (and so recently) about the extent of his online cheating…. And cheating online is way easier—so at best doesn’t that just mean he won’t cheat when it’s more difficult? And at worst it just means no one has been able to prove it.
I find the whole thing quite sad though: Niemann is a young guy—21 I think?—and I have to think his chess career is now over. Given that he is notorious for cheating, a career outside of chess could be a bit harder too. Plus, high level chess players sometimes aren’t good at much else.
And what is being done about the more widespread problem? I highly doubt Hans Niemann is the only one. The chess.com report suggests cheating is rare, but ALSO says that their algorithm has caught multiple grandmasters, some of whom were among the top 100 players in the world….