There are as many possible chess games
as atoms in the visible universe.
31-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen
is the current World Chess Champion.
…reigns supreme in a sport played by 500 million people.
Magnus must remember the position of 320 pieces
while calculating ten moves and countermoves on each board.
Magnus wins on all boards.
I can see these things immediately, where other people see chaos.
That is that, ladies and gentlemen. Carlsen has won…
Magnus Carlsen…
Magnus Carlsen has this edge mentally that nobody else possesses.
I've been the definite best player in the world now for 12 to 13 years.
Magnus Carlsen is doing things no human being I've met before can do.
Do you consider yourself a genius?
Do I ever wonder why he was given this gift?
Are we living in a simulation?
I'm Magnus Carlsen.
Magnus Carlsen.
The Mozart of Chess! One of the great geniuses of our time…
- Please welcome Magnus Carlsen! - The reigning five-time world champion.
Magnus Carlsen was defeated in a major upset at the Sinquefield Cup.
Magnus Carlsen just resigned.
Carlsen lost to this younger player.
Sending the chess world into chaos.
Does chess make you insane?
Or does chess keepyou sane?
One of the greatest chess champions of all time
is accusing a fellow player of cheating.
He explicitly accused 19-year-old American Hans Niemann.
All I did was play a chess game, and I beat him.
He's entered a level of paranoia that is not, like, sane.
He's created a monster.
And while he's old,
I'm gonna be young, improving.
And the best player, he's gonna have to watch.
And every fucking day of his life, he's gonna have to realize that
he did this to me.
The community doesn't like people who cheat.
Of course it's fucking coordinated. It's a genuine conspiracy against me.
Just, people think he's cheating. It's as simple as that.
They think I'm cheating. Are they crazy?
- Is Hans cheating over the board? - This is war, isn't it?
They did this all because of a personal vendetta.
Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?
Sometimes I wonder how my life would be without chess.
And I think it's a blessing and a curse.
I've thought about this a lot. Like, what price do you pay for genius?
Because of course, my mind, you know,
is capable of things that, you know, make me a pretty good chess player
and good at other things, but that comes with an emotional price,
and that's probably why I was never normal.
When I told my parents at 16, "I'm gonna move to New York,
I'm gonna live alone, pay for rent," they… everyone called me crazy.
But I knew that I needed to prove to myself
I could be the best chess player in the world.
And that took precedent over living with my family
and having security.
There was periods where I didn't speak to a single person for two months.
But… I used to go on these 30-hour benders. I wouldn't sleep.
And I would literally just stay up, solving chess puzzles nonstop.
I just consumed everything I could about chess.
I liked to watch interviews with past players.
I'd analyze their games.
I'd be working on the openings, absorbing everything I could.
Bobby saw six moves ahead here. He just didn't seeseven moves ahead.
I'd sit at my computer for 12 to 16 hours a day,
just playing thousands of games a month.
And I understood that the only way for me to improve
was to play against people much better than me.
Every opportunity for me to play against the best players in the world
was a chance to just absorb that strength.
And every single top player is playing on Chess.com.
It's the entire fucking chess ecosystem.
There's no alternative.
They have a monopoly over online chess.
It would be correct to say we don't look like the average chess player.
When I say "chess player," people think of an old white guy from Russia.
"Chess is not cool. It's super hard."
"It's only for nerds. It's not something that's for me."
And that's really a big reason why Chess.com has the "pawn" as the logo.
Because chess is for the pawns.
The pawn potential to move up the board and be whatever you want to be.
Chess is for everybody.
Welcome to anotherUnder the Green Pawn.
Chess.com started as an idea in 2005
that I wanted to build the MySpace of chess.
We officially opened in May of 2007.
Here's the hall. Wish me luck. See you on the other side.
But it was really small potatoes.
I was turning down jobs at Facebook and Palantir and YouTube,
and everybody in Silicon Valley was telling us
chess would never be big enough to be investable
and just kind of like laughing us out of the office a bit.
We were always the underdog.
Till COVID.
Today the World Health Organization
officially announced that this is a global pandemic.
Imagine there's no heaven
The murder hornet--
- I think it's a filter. - I don't know how to remove it.
The pandemic was absolutely bonkers,
but for chess, it was unreal.
We could see it in the server logs and registrations.
Each country that got locked down, registration spike.
Italy was first to lock down.
Registrations in Italy, boom.
And next was India. Registrations in India, boom.
And every country, as it got locked down,
registrations bumping up, four or five x. Overnight.
I thought we'd play some chess.
I'd like to play chess.
And thenThe Queen's Gambit show on Netflix came along.
Those waves hit each other and spiked.
At Chess.com this month, more than two million new members.
We literally did go from a million daily active users
to five, six million daily active people, playing chess.
It was crazy.
What's the company currently worth?
Probably… gettin' close to a billion dollars in value.
That's my guess.
Do I care? Not really, but that's my guess.
Fuck!
During the pandemic, we were constantly thinking about,
where is our next growth opportunity?
What the fuck just happened here?
And we saw influencers playing chess en masse,
like we'd never seen before.
And it became my job to choose the next stars
and build the streaming program.
- Send this to overtime! - Change of queen!
Danny became maybe the most important person
in the entire chess community.
We changed chess yet again today.
I love you andsalud.
You're in this position where you're the gatekeeper,
the key master to someone's hopes and dreams.
And everybody wanted to be a star.
Get out of here!
You just got owned!
Before the pandemic, I didn't really know Hans Niemann.
I knew--
Hans!
You just got owned!
All of the biggest chess creators,
people you see now with millions of subscribers,
they were nobodies.
And then Chess.com artif… created their careers.
Okay, finish him.
Chess became a fad. It became a trend.
When there's a trend, everyone follows.
Yo, 2,700 viewers. Damn.
These guys are… You guys are enjoying this.
There's always opportunity if you look for it.
So, I just start streaming on Twitch every single day.
Dude, you watch Twitch?
- Are you Hans Niemann? - I'm Hans Niemann!
Oh shit! Yo!
Here was a young talented American…
…with an insane amount of self-confidence.
Let's be civil, let's be mature, and let's continue with the show.
He's got bravado.
Yeah!
And it made sense for us to work together and help him become a streaming star.
I became someone who was mentoring him.
Speaking of our participants, they're ready to roll.
As we see Hans Niemann,
he's got his Doritos, which is hisfavoritos snack.
Everything about our relationship was met with a full partnership.
And Hans was special to us.
Rook e7.
Suck my balls.
I had quite a big fan base.
The rage is not for the camera.
Unfortunately, it's just how I am.
Tick tock, tick, tick, tick!
What set me apart from other streamers
was everyone else was so boring that I seemed interesting in contrast.
How! How is he so smart?!
All right, let's play something slow.
Nothing fancy-schmancy. Just keep it very slow and controlled.
I am Hikaru Nakamura.
I am a grandmaster.
Currently ranked number three in the world at the great game of chess.
Computer will tell you guys if I'm wrong, but I think king f6, is the only…
Hans, he's someone I would compete against,
playing blitz games online.
It was very clear he was a strong player. No doubt about it.
Whoa, what? No, this is insane.
But I didn't really particularly care for his brand of antics.
The old-school chess establishment, the view is you have to be very proper.
You win, you say, "I won the game." You lose, "Guy played better than me."
My congratulations, sir.
A brilliant coup.
But Hans is very wild.
When he lost games, he would scream, he'd yell.
When he'd win games, he'd be like, "I'm the greatest in the world."
I am a God.
Now, sit the fuck down and get with the flow.
You know, why not? Why not speak my mind?
Some people like that. Some people don't.
So while the fans enjoyed it, there are people in the chess world
who were not fans of that and thought it was disrespectful,
and it wasn't fitting for someone who was a serious player.
Players would talk about it.
"Why does he do this, do that?"
And they think it's so crazy,
but in the world of sports, it's not that crazy. It's normal.
First of all, people are absolute idiots
because the explanation I'm gonna give is gonna make
all the top GMs look like idiots.
Why doI have to be held to the standard of being so polite and nice?
Nice guys, you know, they finish last, as they say.
And I'm not a nice guy.
You can't be a nice guy and be a champion, unfortunately.
I've sometimes just found it very surprising
that I'm the best in the world at something.
'Cause I don't consider myself particularly remarkable.
I know that I'm relatively bright, but I'm not a genius.
Like, I'm not something amazing.
I only know that when I sit down at the board,
I am better than the other guy.
I sometimes feel as though I don't deserve it.
I feel like, at times, it's come kind of easy to me.
There are probably people who have worked a lot harder
who haven't reached as far.
What do you know about Hans?
I had played him a couple of times online.
And it was, at times, quite entertaining
'cause his mood swings would be pretty wild.
Chat, we're playing fucking Magnus!
We're playing Magnus Carlsen!
I was just this kid who didn't view himself
as this potential champion.
And suddenly, here I am, playing Magnus.
Playing the world champion, a player I've looked up to for so long.
So of course I'm excited.
Holy shit!
He was pretty decent, but I still won the game quite easily.
Mate. Very pleasing.
He's a good player who happens to be American and talk a lot.
There's a clip that I watch back.
And in this clip, I say like, "You might not believe in me."
"You might all think I'm crazy, but…"
There will be a day where I take down Magnus
and where I rise to the best in the world!
And you guys will be there every single step of the way.
There was a journey behind it. People wanted to see the underdog kid
overcome the top players in the world.
We've got fucking so many GMs,
and the little IM, who no one thought could do it,
fucking qualified!
I won like 30 grand a month on Chess.com.
I was one of the best players on the website.
And I was beating all these, you know, grandmasters.
The top players in the world.
I thought if I could beat them online, why can't I beat them face to face?
And I knew that I had to prove myself to the chess world over the board.
Over-the-board chess is where two players sit down at a table.
You play with a timer or clock.
And you're playing face to face.
Queen… to king 4.
Over the board is intimate.
You hear the breathing of the person across from you.
You can see their reaction to the move that you make.
And when you win, you can see the pain in another person's eyes. Literally!
I think we can make a clear distinction
between online being this, like, pick-up game,
and over the board being the real deal.
For the top players, the over-the-board rankings,
it is basically the current gold standard.
The rating system in chess is quite straightforward.
You start from a rating of zero,
and it goes up to World Championship level,
which is around 2,800 or a little bit above that.
At that point, my rating was 2,466.
Nothing special. Plenty of people at my age had a rating.
But my life's mission was to become the best player in the world,
and nothing was gonna stop me.
So I decided to go to the over-the-board circuit
while being a senior in high school.
I gotta go all in, play the best tournaments.
I gotta go to Europe.
I started in Spain. I had three amazing tournaments.
Gained a lot of rating. I actually went from 2,488 to 2,525.
And then, I went off to Italy.
Increasing my rating.
And then after that, nonstop tournament schedule,
one month in Serbia, back-to-back tournaments.
Then for the month of March, I played all these tournaments in Italy.
I actually did really badly there.
I was stuck. I was plateauing. The money was running out.
But thankfully, I then went to Montenegro…
…playing two tournaments there. I absolutely dominated.
Catapulting my rating up, and with that confidence going forward,
crushed every tournament.
I guess I knew that he was ambitious in general.
He was stationed in Europe.
He was playing tournaments more or less every single day.
Generally doing quite well, gaining rating.
I was an absolute maniac and played every tournament I could.
I won the Philadelphia International.
Won the World Open.
The US Junior Championship.
I won the Capablanca Award in Cuba.
I won another tournament right after that in Sweden.
I broke the record for the amount of games played in one year.
I played 261 games in one year.
And his ranking just keeps going up, straight up to about 2,700,
which is, essentially, I would say, top 30, top 40 in the world.
He always had the talent, and now he was turning it on.
He flipped the switch.
Hans Niemann must be someone who's on trajectory
to becoming one of the greatest players of all time.
My entire life, I was conditioned and told and bullied.
"You won't be a chess player. You won't make money."
"You have to go to college."
So it's a very special moment to sort of see your dreams materialize.
So that was my entrance into the elite of chess.
And when you're in the club, life's good.
I got an email saying, "We'd like to invite you to Miami."
We are so ready for the FTX Crypto Cup.
The Miami FTX Crypto Cup was an Esports chess event spectacular.
They brought a bunch of top players to Miami,
put them up in a great hotel.
We love chess. Yeah.
We're talking about people who have competed in the NBA or the NFL
of the game.
It was one of the most popular events in chess.
And having proven himself as a rising star,
Hans Niemann got the invite.
No, it was big for me. It was big.
So that was the first moment where I
realized, okay, this is real.
And I'm with all the best players in the world.
Just two years ago, I idolized all of them.
I didn't even think I'd be having conversations with them.
And then, I'm sitting with them at dinner trash-talking.
And that was a big moment to realize,
"This is real. I'm gonna be one of the best in the world."
A lot of players who eventually make it to the top,
there's some defining game or moment early in their careers.
This great game, this masterpiece they play that's talked about.
You step back, like, "This is amazing. They're destined for greatness."
And Hans never had any of those moments.
In order to be the best, you have to beat the best.
He needed legitimacy.
Yeah.
And Hans, if you want to step a little closer, please.
I consider you a man of quite the confidence.
Is this just the first step to absolutely crushing these guys
for years and years to come?
Yeah, I'd like to establish psychological dominance over all of them.
What did he expect from this tournament?
'Cause he's a significant underdog in every… in every single match,
and if he thinks that he can just come here
and beat everybody, that seems… that seems completely delusional.
Magnus has been good for a very long time.
That's because he's crushed the soul of all these guys in this room.
I intend to replace him.
Is he even at your level?
Of course not.
It felt like he was trying to sort of cosplay as a top chess player,
to be honest.
That just really threw me off a bit.
Thanks, guys.
Hans starts off this tournament very, very poorly.
He's losing most of his matches, and it's clearly not going his way.
Yesterday Hans Niemann lost all three games,
and it's going to be an uphill battle for him.
- Looks hopeless, to be honest. - It does.
He could, like, barely last 15 moves.
In certain areas, he was just completely lacking understanding.
So to say that anybody thought Hans Niemann was capable
of beating Magnus Carlsen would be… would be laughable.
Nobody was paying attention to this.
You're playing the reigning champion.
How do you prepare for that match?
Rating champion? Oh, "reigning"? Reigning champion.
I had two nice smoothies.
But there's nothing about Hans that makes any sense.
Honestly, there's nothing about this that makes any sense.
I've been the best player in the world now for 12 to 13 years.
I've won a lot of chess games and a lot of tournaments.
I'm not insecure about my ability to play chess.
His history is unparalleled.
And I do get the sense that he is very aware
of sort of the aura he has.
At some point, you think he's invincible and he could never be beaten by anybody.
It's a big psychological effect that he has.
I was the lowest-rated player there, but I didn't have the fearful attitude.
I thought, this is my chance, let me take it.
Psychologically, Niemann definitely doesn't lack for self-belief.
He just needs to back it up now.
To start the game, Magnus Carlsen, greatest chess player of all time,
is in a great position.
This just looks visually terrible for Hans.
Magnus's pieces are so well positioned. The rook, the queen, the bishop.
It'll be hard for Hans to survive the next few moves.
What's interesting then is that Hans jumped in
and turns what looks like a dysfunctional king-side into an attack.
I like what he's been doing, Hans.
He's playing very well.
If he keeps this up, he's gonna really challenge Magnus.
His rooks come to life, and Magnus's position completely falls apart.
Very impressive. Everything connected for black now.
And that's not Magnus, is it, to play like this?
I had no chance in that game whatsoever, which was really weird.
Like, we're not on the same level. Like, I'm a lot better than you are.
There are moments I could've went for a draw
and showed respect to the great champion,
but, unfortunately, I didn't have that in mind.
It was just a complete beatdown.
He's resigned. Wow. What can I say?
What a result.
Incredible start for Hans Niemann, the lowest-rated player in the tournament.
A win against world number one.
The reaction from Hans in Miami.
Hans, yesterday was a terrible day for you.
Today you start out with a masterpiece. How would you summarize it?
Chess speaks for itself.
Is it something special, doing this against Magnus, Hans?
Chess speaks for itself.
Is it something special, doing this against Magnus, Hans?
The interview after the game goes viral.
It's all over Twitter and Reddit.
Some people are like, "You don't act that way."
Other people are like, "Look at that! Mic drop. Let's go, Hans Niemann!"
Guess which side of the camp I sat on.
There are a lot of people who don't like seeing
Magnus win every tournament,
and so it's like this underdog kid who beats Magnus,
and he's sort of rubbing it in his face.
I don't even get it. He wins a nice game, and he's just, like, he's just angry.
I don't know what's wrong with him. It's funny, but it's also kinda weird.
Like I said, when I saw the interview, I literally was like,
"This is what the chess world's been waiting for,"
and then everyone else is going like,
maybe the chess speaks for itself because Hans doesn't know what he was doing.
He was getting help from somewhere else.
I was not groomed to be a top chess player.
Going to eight different schools and being bullied at every school
for being this sort of chess outcast.
So, when I was 13, I'd take the train from Connecticut to New York,
and I'd play against the hustlers for money.
What are you doing? That's on the board, look!
This is the famous Washington Square Park.
This is where the chess tables are.
A lot of top players in New York come from this park.
I have to beat this man like a dog.
And they'll take your money any which way they can.
Don't you just love it? Rack 'em up!
I didn't play the sort of formal type of chess.
Bye-bye.
I had my own way of doing things and have taken a very unique path.
Chess player, let's go!
I know who you are, and I saw what you did last summer.
Hans is the latest. He's the latest, man.
He won the World Junior Championship,
but that didn't teach him until he came here.
And then he learned to play.
The first thing you learn about chess in the parks,
where you fight to the very end, is that no one ever won by giving up.
You can take control even when you're losing.
People don't realize that.
But itis about control. Taking command of the game.
Get him, Poe!
I'm trying! This guy's like one of the toughest on the planet.
You have to be forged through the fire, the suffering.
Shit. This guy's the Muhammad Ali of chess.
You got more experience than me.
Experience don't count!
All along the line, Hans was always the best for his age.
And not only was he incredibly good, but he was really fierce at the board.
Legal move! Get out of here, kid!
Get out of here.
I wanted them to know I wasn't afraid of them.
When you're a kid comfortable playing 56-year-olds,
nothing intimidates you anymore.
You know, when you see your opponent clearly struggling,
and you sort of know that you've got him, it's just the best feeling.
Because you know that you're hot shit and they're not.
He's tough, though. He's tough. He's tough.
Hans can manifest this energy.
This intimidating force coming at you, and that wears you down.
He's a monster.
And the beautiful thing about Hans being a monster,
we in New York, he'sour monster.
The thing is that, like, I've overcome so many things to get to where I am today
that the greater the challenge, I honestly find it exhilarating
knowing that everyone wants me to fail.
And it makes me happy.
It only motivates me more. It's only fuel to the fire.
This is it. The grandaddy of them all.
Welcome, everybody, to day one of the Sinquefield Cup.
Sinquefield Cup is a very prestigious tournament,
which pits ten of the best players in the world against each other.
By far and away, it is the most watched event
in professional chess.
When it was announced Hans was in the Sinquefield Cup,
there were a lot of rumblings.
A very young player from New York, Hans Niemann.
People felt that it was implausible for this player
to have suddenly gone up so fast.
I had gone, in a short period,
from this high school student
to on equal terms with the best players.
Suddenly it's like this awakening of all of my dreams,
my childhood dreams, coming to reality.
The tournament that's going on inside, we're especially here to support Hans.
Got our fun little signs here, and, yeah, just out here to show our support.
There were a couple of girls who showed up to the playing hall.
They said they were the Hans Niemann fan club.
I don't think he knows that we're here, so I really hope he comes out and sees us.
We love him.
I did not pay those girls to show up as the Hans Niemann fan club. No.
The tension that was building was already palpable.
None of the top players trusted who Hans Niemann was.
These guys have a group. It's a clique.
And it's not just an elitism thing.
It's that they've been there. They've earned it. They've done it.
And people are like, "What are you doing here?"
I was looking around, and I said, "Okay, I think I can belong
in this room of great chess players."
People were nervous about Hans Niemann competing in over-the-board chess.
They didn't know what he was capable of in over-the-board chess.
They were afraid. They were paranoid.
More and more players are becoming suspicious.
You're wondering, what is going on?
More than one player considered withdrawing from the event.
And I can only surmise as to the reason why.
I do think on the question of whether
this will be a dominating performance by one player…
- The man on screen? - …perhaps running away with it.
Heading into the Sinquefield Cup,
there was still no real doubt as to who the heavy favorite was.
We had Magnus Carlsen, the greatest of all time.
But then something surprising happens.
Exciting chess has brought us a surprise in the leadership.
From the beginning, I was just outplaying all of them.
Extremely solid performance by Hans.
- How exciting, indeed. - Absolutely.
Hans got off to a very good start.
He drew the first game against Levon Aronian, an American player.
Round two.
He won a shocking game
over the Azerbaijani player Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.
He blew him off the board.
You can be arrogant,
you can be confident, but these guys aren't better than me.
Magnus was looking at my game.
I think he was impressed, to say the least.
We have headliners, and they're going head-to-head right now, right here.
It was probably the biggest opportunity of my entire chess career.
I remember being very nervous about what opening he would play.
The opening's really important.
So I decided, you know, let me just be in a good mental headspace,
ready to fight and to take every chance that I got.
And there we have our battle of our leaders, yeah,
with Magnus starting with one d4, no surprise there.
I think if you're in a situation where you don't trust your opponent,
you have a huge psychological disadvantage.
So I'm in a mindset of I'm gonna try and surprise him
in the opening a bit.
And I pick kind of a rare line.
An unusual approach by Magnus in the opening.
These types of move orders are chosen to trick your opponent.
Frankly, this type of approach is Magnus Carlsen's specialty.
It's a bit of a risky line.
And he plays the exact best move.
And it looks like Hans is reasonably well-prepared, even here.
It's clear that Hans, despite this being an obscure opening,
knows what he's doing.
From the player that I'd known before, I thought he was not that good.
And I did not like the situation at all at that point.
And I kept applying pressure, slowly and slowly.
Eventually he collapsed.
That's probably as bad a body posture I've seen on Magnus.
He seems rattled by how this game is going.
It was very surprising, the way… He seemed to have no chances, honestly.
It definitely felt that I was playing somebody
who didn't appear to be putting a lot of effort into this game.
It just seemed that, "Yeah, I'm better than you."
"I'm outplaying you. This is normal."
I'm thinking, like, this is back to Miami again.
Like, this guy is just fucking with me at this point.
Sometimes I'd wonder, was sacrificing my childhood worth it?
Was it worth it to be bullied?
Was it worth it to live alone?
You have these thoughts.
Those thoughts sort of disappeared.
And I was just enjoying my time.
Thinking about my next first-class flight.
At this point, I'm really upset.
I'm fuming.
This just did not feel right.
At all.
And there we have it. Handshake.
Wow. What a result.
I take pleasure in knowing
that he was one of the best players in the world for so long and I broke him.
I think he was just so demoralized
because he's losing to such an idiot like me, you know.
It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me.
I feel bad for him.
So the thing that's strange about this interview
is his explanations of some moves he played
really just don't make sense.
I was actually very fortunate that this opening came on the board.
- I looked at this today, and… - You guessed this opening?
No, I didn't guess it, but some miracle, I had checked this today.
There's so many possible openings in chess, we don't have time to name
the, you know, thousands of possible variations of chess.
And so, to say that he had looked at the one out of 10,000
and been like, "Yeah, I'm gonna focus on this for a minute before my match,"
like, it just didn't make any sense to anybody at all.
- But is it possible? Yes. I mean… - Sure. One in 10,000 chance!
Anomalies happen.
I have no idea why I would check such a ridiculous thing.
Such a ridiculous miracle.
That's a good word to describe what anomalies are.
They are ridiculous miracles.
- That answers my question. - That's okay, but it's only the beginning.
Hans, thank you for joining us. Candid, as always.
Congratulations on your performance.
Definitely a big day for you, beating the world champion.
Thank you for joining us.
Once I got back to my hotel room, I had this almost euphoric moment.
Like I had made it.
And now, life's gonna be good. I'm gonna be a great chess player.
I'm gonna be one of the best in the world. I went to bed feeling amazing.
So, I watched the match between Hans and Magnus
in the hotel in St. Louis.
I was just kind of a bit sorry for Magnus.
I knew he would be annoyed. He didn't seem to play his best game.
I didn't have any suspicions about what had happened
until I met Magnus coming back from the playing hall.
Magnus was kind of doing like this, "What is this?"
And I thought, "What?" Then he explained basically
that he had been highly suspicious from the start of the game.
This was not Hans playing. He was playing some, some computer.
And I said, "What do you mean?" "He was cheating."
I felt that I was not playing a human.
Cheating has been happening in chess for hundreds of years.
It goes back to the Mechanical Turk.
People were losing to what seemed like an invisible force.
But there was a human hidden under the chess board, making the moves.
This was a parlor trick.
Cheating, as we think about it now,
is the act of accessing a chess computer to gain an edge on an opponent.
Making a move, seeing opponent move,
looking at a computer, saying, "Okay, next best move." Making the move.
It's the culmination of human and AI knowledge, all put together.
With a chess computer,
you would beat Magnus Carlsen 1,000 out of 1,000 games.
And it's available anywhere.
It's very, very easy to gain access.
So, as far as online cheating goes, you could just reach for your phone
and put in the moves and go from there.
But cheating over the board is quite difficult,
and the main reason for that is there's a much higher barrier to entry.
In other sports, you're cheatingbefore the event.
High fastball. See you later!
9.79!
But in chess, you have to be cheating right then in the moment.
If people could get help from computers, they would just be unbeatable.
I know that I was way in my own head,
I recognized that then, and I recognize that now,
but that's the way it felt to me,
both in Miami and also in the Sinquefield Cup,
that this was somebody who had the ability to cheat.
It was an unpleasant situation, but… yeah.
The emotional toll of seeing your child suffer
at, for instance, the chess board is significant.
It was clear that Hans was a character that you can't really trust.
He's a potential threat to the chess world.
So, if we really suspect that something is going on,
I would like clarity.
One way or the other.
Magnus talked about going to Hans and knocking on his door.
"Tell me, what's going on?"
Well, that probably won't work, and it's a bit offensive also.
So we need to talk to the people that might have information about this.
And I said, "I had a meeting with Danny Rensch this morning."
"And I know he was gonna fly home,
but I can try to ask him if he has any idea about this."
It all happened very fast.
When I landed, I landed to text messages from Henrik Carlsen
and a request to have a call as soon as I could talk.
And he said, "I know what you're gonna ask me about."
I thought, "Wow."
He was asking whether Hans Niemann had ever been caught
cheating on Chess.com.
And for most people, we punt on the answer,
it's not your business, and for some people, we tell the truth.
Because it's just not in our interest to create a scandal
and we're not looking to defame anyone.
But the reality is, when people know, they know.
When we found the first cheater on Chess.com,
we had a pretty big existential crisis.
If we don't have the trust of the players playing on our platform,
like, online chess would be dead.
So, you start to look at the math, and build cheat-detection algorithms
to help us understand what was human play and what was more-than-human play.
Has there been an occasion
where someone is accused of cheating online,
and just like… you almost didn't believe it.
You're like, "I know this person. They're a friend."
The Hans Niemann case.
I was the top person pushing back.
In the year 2020, during the pandemic,
whispers started amongst a couple of our staff members
that they were convinced Hans was cheating.
I didn't want to believe it.
I'm injured, though.
We had been putting a lot of effort and resources and energy
and, frankly, love into the potential of Hans's career.
Unfortunately, when we peeled back the onion,
we saw that Hans had been cheating
borderline since the first day he joined Chess.com.
Yes!
Fuck yes! Yes!
We had to do what we had to do.
Talking to someone about the fact we've caught them cheating
is a little bit of a well-rehearsed script for me,
but… this call was unique in that Hans immediately started denying.
"No, what are you talking about?" This and that.
And the moment I told him that this was no longer up for debate,
he burst into tears.
The thing he was most worried about was,
"If you guys shut me down and I disappear, everyone's gonna know I cheated."
Lucky for Hans, I'm gonna help this kid figure this out.
He's gonna self-close his account.
He'll tell his fans he's doing it 'cause he wants to start fresh
with a new username that's just for streaming.
And in doing that, he's gonna have controlled the narrative to the community
that he wasn't closed for cheating.
Honestly, I was surprised at the time of how generous you were being.
I wasn't looking for a scandal. I wasn't looking for a scandal.
I'm still in big-brother, mentor mode. But that's when the call gets weird.
He started asking me specifics.
Like, "What games exactly did I cheat in?"
"Howdoes the algorithm work?"
"Do you think I have ever cheated over the board?"
It felt like, to me, that he was trying to pinpoint how we caught him.
And that part of the phone call never left me.
"Shit, we can never trust this kid again."
So in those conversations with Magnus and Henrik,
during the Sinquefield Cup,
I also thought that Hans might have cheated over the board.
For me, that was just like… that was the confirmation that I needed.
This guy is cheating.
Why?
Why is he not showing up to the game?
It's unprecedented.
This is the Sinquefield Cup, this is not some random tournament that you ditch.
You don't just not show up to the game.
So I presumed that…
He must have some reason to not want to play the tournament anymore.
And there's his opponent saying,
"My gosh, I came to play the world chess champion,
and he's not here."
Um, I'm told we have breaking news.
There's a tweet from world chess champion Magnus Carlsen.
Alejandro, what was the tweet, exactly, if you please?
"I've withdrawn."
"I've always enjoyed playing in the St Louis Chess club
and hope to be back in the future."
I prefer really not to speak.
If I speak, I am in big trouble.
In big trouble. And I don't want to be in big trouble.
Oh my gosh.
It becomes very clear right away what Magnus is saying with this tweet.
There's really no doubt about it,
in my mind, I would say any top player's mind,
especially in light of what we know is being said behind the scenes.
It's obvious what it is. It's a cheating accusation.
I was in disbelief.
Don't understand how you could…
How you could even think that would be possible.
It's just disappointing because you work your entire life,
you beat the world champion,
and at the moment you should be praised and celebrated,
this person that you've looked up to your whole life
then accuses you of cheating.
Sometimes I feel like Magnus forgets how much power he has.
And after this, all hell breaks loose.
It's been absolute pandemonium in the chess world.
What's going on? Why did he withdraw?
What am I even supposed to say?
There's a lot of rumors already,
but probably some people have a decent idea of what he's alluding to.
He had no reason to be trusted,
regardless of Magnus Carlsen lighting a fire.
Everybody was coming to the same conclusion that Hans had cheated.
And he had somehow gotten a signal from an earpiece
or some other type of communication device.
Everybody was going back and reviewing footage
as to what could have happened.
Did his jacket look a little bulky in this area?
How come he's… his ankle is itchy all the time?
Protective gestures covering his neck, that is important to notice.
Every single part of his mannerisms got picked apart.
If he has a cavity in his tooth,
could he take out the filling
and input a small device that sends very small electroshocks or something?
What level of grandiose cheating am I doing?
And in this discussion, in one stream on Twitch,
somebody in chat said…
"Maybe it was anal beads."
That's probably a good one.
An anal bead probably would beat the thing.
I'm ser… the engine… I… It would probably…
I don't know. I really don't know. Like, think about it. I don't know.
Talk about something getting out of control
faster than anybody knew what was coming.
The chess world has been rocked by rumors of anal beads.
They call it "castling."
It involved a vibrating sex toy in his rear quarters.
Dude! He's using anal beads Morse code!
I mean, the theory is that basically someone had some anal beads.
And I'm obviously… I'm no expert at it,
but I think it's you get some sort of signal from the beads.
It sort of became the truth.
Suddenly, it became this legitimate theory.
…player was able to communicate by flexing his anus,
which apparently communicated to a computer.
I mean, this is extraordinary stuff.
People on Twitter started talking about it,
and then my own children said,
"Did you see that Elon Musk retweeted about wireless anal beads?"
Sending the chess world into chaos.
One buzz means a bishop, two buzzes means a knight.
And it sort of exploded. Joe Rogan was talking about it.
"Chess grandmaster denies cheating by using anal beads."
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, I like to win.
But do I like it that much?
It was, like, mainstream news. Front page.
I get why someone would use vibrating anal beads to cheat.
Because even if you lose, you still kind of win, you know?
When I was offered a million dollars to play chess naked,
people were telling me to take Adam & Eve sponsorships.
"No, thank you."
I do think the anal implant is a genuine concern.
We had our COVID bump, we had ourQueen's Gambit bump…
- The beads bump was real. - The beads bump.
Anal beads have been super good to us.
- Can I just say-- - Don't use that!
They enjoyed it. They took pleasure in it.
And it was sad to see my life's work just, like,
burn in front of my eyes.
Yeah, I think that people, they might laugh about it…
but there's actually a very sad story behind it.
…even if you lose, you still kind of win, you know?
Knight to king seven!
Yesterday I probably had to explain that I didn't use anal beads
about five different times to five different people.
That's what my life and all my accomplishments
and all my work has been boiled down to fucking anal beads.
Players arriving for the game.
Exactly, as the players get checked with all the electronic gizmos
that we can possibly muster.
We can see Hans Niemann already.
He arrived to the playing venue,
and he's carefully checked by the chief arbiter of the event…
Of course, they had to make a mockery of me.
They were trying to humiliate me.
But as we saw, he got delayed by the security at check.
That's a very serious wanding.
I felt like everywhere I walked in this hotel, someone was watching me.
I told myself I had to fight, but I was not in the mental state
to play chess, unfortunately.
They played kind of in a very normal fashion
up until move nine, and then Hans went for a setup
which I don't believe I've seen before at all.
Every day I'd finish my game and see all the news,
the new articles, and I couldn't focus.
- Whoa. - Whoa. Yeah.
Everything I know about chess
indicates this is a terrible move.
It was just my life.
I just knew I was gonna be fucked for a while.
Since this whole thing, controversy of the last few days,
it's been impossible for him.
It's a wonder he held…
He held on for so long before it started coming unglued.
There was a point where I was looking in the mirror, and I'm like,
"What am I gonna do?"
And at last, we have Hans Niemann in studio with Alejandro.
Hans, we gotta speak about the elephant in the room.
You've asked to have some words.
Before the interview, I told him.
I told the interviewer, "I want you to let me speak uninterrupted."
And in that interview, I let everything out to public.
Okay, so this is what happened, when I was 16 years old,
during my streaming career, in an absolutely ridiculous mistake,
I wanted to get higher rated to play stronger players,
so I cheated in random games on Chess.com.
Now, I was confronted, I confessed,
and this is the single biggest mistake of my life, and I am completely ashamed,
and I am telling the world because I do not want any misrepresentation,
and I do not want rumors.
If you were to ask me how many games I cheated in online
when I'm 12 or 13…
Oh my God, okay.
I think it was nine games.
So it's one tournament.
Around the age of 16…
Maybe… 20 to 30.
Maybe a little mo… I don't…
I was a complex person who made mistakes.
You make mistakes as a kid.
Doesn't mean that through every single thing
that you do for the rest of your life should be discredited.
He truly is just a Jekyll-and-Hyde human being.
An immense talent with a ton of issues.
He admitted to just enough to garner sympathy,
ensuring that anything we would say after that
would make us look like the big bad guys.
It was exactly the right play.
Then after the game,
I went to go on Chess.com to log into my account.
Password wasn't working.
Because of this game against Magnus, because of what he said,
they have decided to completely remove me from their website.
- Did they give a reasoning? - No reason.
That was a permanent ban from Chess.com,
and they removed my invitation from the Global Chess Championship
with a first prize of 200,000 dollars.
It was all…
very well-timed.
I'm like, you can be mad that I'm unfair to you now.
I was probably too fair to you before.
You lied and you cheated multiple times.
The truth is, Magnus Carlsen's actions were the catalyst
to a pot that was much closer to boiling than people know.
I didn't know what I was dealing with. I acted and removed Hans Niemann
because I could no longer punt or kick the can down the road
on the fact that I didn't know whether Hans was cheating again.
That's the reason we removed him.
Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to be honest and speak the truth about all my enemies.
Welcome, everyone,
to the closing ceremony of this year's Sinquefield Cup.
Hello, Hans.
I was happy the tournament was over because I couldn't handle it.
…be here with everyone.
Why was I banned at the exact same time that Magnus accused me of cheating?
It's not a fucking coincidence.
It's all connected.
They banned me because they're in the process
of finalizing the most important merger of chess history.
A merger that will give them complete, untouchable power over the chess world.
You know, if Magnus wants to come and party, he can or not.
People would fucking come to this.
They're buying Magnus Carlsen.
Play Magnus Group was a group of 13 companies.
They were one of our main rivals
and kept Magnus Carlsen from participating on Chess.com.
Not having Magnus Carlsen on Chess.com was like the NBA
but LeBron James was competing in a separate basketball league.
And so we eventually made an offer to buy them out.
You know, paid roughly 80 million dollars.
The timing could not have been worse.
If someone writes a story, it's like, these pieces that randomly fit together,
it almost looks like this great conspiracy where this happened, that happened.
It was all part of the grand plan.
I'm just a little speck, a little ant that they decided to step on and destroy.
There's no denying there was pressure
to remove Hans during the Sinquefield Cup.
But I stand by that we did not remove Hans Niemann because of pressure.
Of course it's fucking coordinated.
They have to pander to their business partner Magnus.
You know, they can't upset him too much,
or otherwise he'll throw another tantrum, and when a baby starts crying,
you have to give them something to shut them up.
You think Magnus's manager isn't on the phone with Danny Rensch?
"You know, merger this, merger that." And, "You know Hans Niemann? Yeah."
I don't know how the Niemann case would impact that one way or the other.
It was just that we were future team members
that wanted, uh, to help each other, basically.
I understood that I put myself
in the crosshairs of some very powerful people.
Henrik and Magnus wanted to know
if Chess.com's anti-cheat technology
could be used to investigate
if Hans had cheated in any over-the-board games.
Whether it was on his meteoric rise
or during the Sinquefield Cup, they were asking us, like, can you do it?
We were just looking for objective information, basically.
And our response was like…
- We'll take a look. - We'll try.
- We'll try.
We're gonna find out. Right now.
Danny convinced me that,
"Our algorithm is good at detecting cheating over the board."
And I believed that, uh, absolutely.
Chess.com has the best cheat detection.
Period.
There's no reason to dance around that.
Hans Niemann said it himself. It's not even close.
We have a huge anti-cheat department.
We put the most people on it,
the most amount of money and resources into it.
With the biggest server farms that are crunching the numbers.
We have all the data, all the algorithms.
Like, let's go. I want to find this.
I'm gonna launch the world's greatest investigation
to find out how this little cheating kid gamed the system and beat the champion.
I'm gonna solve this mystery.
So many people came out of the woodwork
to provide Chess.com with evidence that Hans had cheated.
I was running down every single story.
I'm gonna look at every single game he's ever played.
We did a very thorough job investigating all of Hans's games online.
It was eye-opening 'cause he had cheated way more than even we thought.
The online cheating was rampant.
He had cheated in well over 100 online games.
I was like, there's so much smoke here, there has to be fire.
And I thought the truth was that Hans Niemann cheated over the board
at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup.
I thought that that was going to be the end of this story.
A development in the cheating scandal
that's rocked the world of chess.
A 72-page investigation from Chess.com
found no evidence that Niemann had cheated in his game against Carlsen
or in any over-the-board games.
There's nothing in our investigation to raise any red flags regarding his…
That's a crazy sentence to read right now.
Everybody wanted this to be true. Everyone wanted this to be true.
And, like, I felt like I was in the chair ultimately at the end,
saying, "Sorry, everyone, like,
this isn't what is being shown in the data."
I was arguing with Erik,
"What do you mean, the data isn't saying that he's cheating?"
As time went on, every theory, every accusation fell apart.
The over-the-board evidence wasn't there.
I thought that we were gonna, like, set the world free
on the fact that we solved this incredible mystery.
And in fact, in the end, it looked like we fucked up.
Of course they wanted to find some smoking gun or some proof like,
but it didn't exist.
So it just, unfortunately for them, I'm innocent.
I always have been innocent.
We stood before Magnus Carlsen,
this brand-new working marriage of companies together
and said what they didn't want to hear, which is that Hans Niemann was innocent.
That was some of the hardest shit we had to do.
And it's the stuff people don't know.
This is how they operate.
They talk a lot.
I've had to tell, especially Danny, a few times, like, can you just use
a bit fewer words to say what you want to say?
I don't want all the bullshit.
They didn't have the smoking gun.
I felt pretty bad.
I felt that… I'd sort of been gaslit a bit
by Danny and Chess.com into thinking that they had evidence
which they really didn't.
That's the sort of… the ace that I felt that I had all the time.
In retrospect, maybe Chess.com was so concerned
about the relationship to Magnus,
they might have promised a little bit more than they could deliver.
It just didn't… just didn't happen.
So that left me in a bit of a strange situation.
What to do now?
I don't mean to be, you know,
zealous here, but everyone's day of judgment comes.
The teenage chess grandmaster accused of cheating last month,
now suing his accusers for 100 million dollars.
That's according to a lawsuit he filed in federal court yesterday.
We got the news that he'd filed a lawsuit,
suing, you know, everybody and their dog.
The filing reads, in part, "Enraged that the young Niemann
dared to disrespect the 'King of Chess,'
and fearful the prodigy would further blemish
his multimillion-dollar brand by beating him again,
Carlsen maliciously retaliated."
It was a bit too much.
Claiming this whole conspiracy against one kid,
like, maybe he believes this, which I really don't think.
This facade that he puts up in interviews and media training,
it's all a complete joke.
Even his friends don't like him.
His friends will… Like… "He's like unbearable even to be around."
All of his friends would be telling me about how annoying it is to be around him.
I sued them because they lied and they conspired
and they destroyed my entire career and life.
They made a mockery of me, and they all did it in coordination.
And no one's denying that.
I'm the one who had the most personal relationship with Hans.
A talented young man individually, normally focused on only your own chess…
It's just hard 'cause when you get sued for 100 million dollars,
it is the biggest punch in the gut, the most mind-blowing experience.
Like, I don't have 100 million dollars, FYI.
Like, that's not something that is, like, that is there.
I certainly don't think that he's a mentor to me now.
Actually, you know, I think all the terrible things he's done
has inspired me so much.
So, whatever the opposite of a mentor is…
It's a mentor but in the worst possible way.
So he has the effect of a mentor by inspiring me and invigorating me
to destroy all of them.
Have you not seen what the guy has done to me?
Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?
Not a question I thought I'd ask a guest, to be honest.
That interview was a good example of what my life has become, right?
It's anal beads this, anal beads that. I have to live with that.
Well, your curiosity is a bit concerning.
Maybe you're personally interested, but I can tell you no.
Okay, categoric no.
Just the fact that how Hans
survived through this process
and even seemed to "thrive" on this noise,
it's, uh, it's very impressive and nearly disturbing.
Magnus Carlsen, are you still suing him for 100 million dollars?
The case has been resolved, Piers.
There was obviously the settlement.
Um…
And, mind you, I didn't want to settle.
But also, the US legal system sucks, and it's really expensive.
He can't look me in the eye.
He's, like, literally afraid to even be close to me.
It's traumatic for him.
If he had to shake my hand, or look me in the eye,
he'd collapse, he'd throw a tantrum.
I think it's very likely that I'll play him again.
But he needs to get a bit better
to play me in proper, like, over-the-board tournaments.
I'm joined by Magnus Carlsen on the evening before the first match
of the 2024 Speed Chess Championship in Paris, France.
Let's address the elephant in the room,
your semifinal matchup is against Hans Niemann.
You've never had a villain.
How does it feel to have this kind of presence in your life now?
Which, it will not go away so long as you are competing.
Carlsen has avoided the youngster, who is now rapidly climbing the charts
and defeating super grandmasters.
Niemann has certainly become a lot better at chess the last couple of years,
and it's a matchup I certainly didn't… didn't want.
The press conference is gonna be up here.
- Where's the press conference? Here? - It's gonna be right here.
I don't do exclusives.
It's not a matter of an exclusive,
it's just a matter of we're a broadcaster of the tournament.
You gotta be allowed to have a civil conversation.
Oh, really?
The fact that Hans is here is just, like… it is mind-blowing.
If someone from Chess.com tells me
I am contractually obliged, then I will do it.
I've done my part.
He's gotten so much fucking better.
He's playing the best chess of his career.
Like, there was no anticipating this.
It's going to be interesting from a pure chess perspective
to see what he can do.
What's your main feeling about this matchup with Magnus?
Is it excitement?
Is it relief that you can finally play him again?
- Is this revenge? - It's pure serenity.
Very calm.
If he loses this match, it'll be the greatest stain on his legacy
because he put his entire career on the line.
All right. We are here for the match of the day,
the one everyone has been waiting for.
How's the crowd feeling about today's match?
Let's go. Let's hear some energy from the…
Whoo!
It's time.
Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, okay.
Our first player of today's match, grandmaster Magnus Carlsen.
There's always a little bit of fear,
playing against somebody whom you don't really trust.
And his opponent, grandmaster Hans Niemann.
There's a lot of history. There's a lot on the line emotionally,
especially for Hans Niemann.
You see him there. He's locked in.
He wants this one more than anything in the world.
This is the culmination of a two-year saga.
Almost two years to the day.
Everyone has been waiting for this matchup.
The first time that they are sitting across from each other in two years.
Your life is defined by critical moments. And you have chances and opportunities.
This is one of these opportunities. And I will rip him to shreds.
There is potential for this to spiral if things start the wrong way.
There's no doubt about that.
We've got drama.
We've got action.
And we are gonna have chess in less than ten seconds.
Can I get an amen?
Life is truly poetic, and I think that this is the most poetic ending.
I'm here in Paris.
It's the best place for revolutions.
Bring out the guillotine.
Wow. A4 played by Hans. He's trying to explode the queen side.
Magnus darts to the center.
You see Hans bobbing there and getting angry. Can he convert?
What a decision from Magnus Carlsen.
Only Hans can win-- I'm wrong!
Gets himself in trouble! It's almost mate!
This is gonna be a nasty finish here, and this finally will end the match.
Seriously, the guy just got it done in a match.
What an incredible performance.
Magnus Carlsen, the world number one, just took down Hans Niemann.
A player who is maybe one of the best known players on the planet
for some things off the board,
but his play on the board, it wasn't quite enough,
and Magnus Carlsen, he made him pay.
Magnus Carlsen dominated this match,
and whatever Hans Niemann thinks that means,
and whatever statement that sends…
Chess is not gonna be speaking for itself tomorrow, guys.
Remember that summer
You were number one
But everybody said that Lord, you deserve to have won
And I say to you That I deserve to win too
Well, I'm better for that
Thanks to you
It's not the worst city to lose in.
He always said that he wanted the chess to speak for itself.
He wanted to settle things not in the courtroom,
but on the chessboard, so…
I might have lost on the chess board,
but on my end, I'm doing pretty fucking well.
As a lone warrior against a legion.
Even though my entire life and career has been destroyed
and I'll have to live with the fact that every conversation I have about chess,
we'll eventually discuss anal beads.
I am a man on a mission, and they've made it my life's purpose to win.
I'm gonna be a stone-cold killer for the rest of my life.
There's something about Hans
that creates an uneasiness inside of me.
How do you explain Hans Niemann?
You know, now you have the Norwegian world champion,
a god among men,
the most dominant chess player of the modern generation,
and it's not even close.
And then there's the kid.
The kid who had the beads?
He's now one of the most recognizable, infamous people
to ever play the game of chess.
And in my opinion, he lost the person that he was along the way.
They're just a complete chess mafia, really.
That's it.
And I just cannot wait for Magnus, while he's old and disheveled
and going further deep into his insanity,
I'm gonna be young, improving, and he's gonna have to watch it.
I'm not motivated by spite,
but if that's gonna inspire him to be the best version of himself,
then…
then, uh, go for it,
just as long as he plays…
plays, um, fair.
I'm going to be the best player.
No one's gonna believe that now,
but this clip will play over and over again in ten years. Just wait.
I know things that the world doesn't, and that's because I can see the future.