Netflix explores buzzy cheating scandal between world’s best chess player Magnus Carlsen and his US opponent

On September 4, 2022, Magnus Carlsen, a Norwegian chess grandmaster, who is the world’s best player — and is believed by some experts to be the best ever — lost a game in a tournament in St Louis to Hans Niemann, an American grandmaster.

The loss was startling, partly because Carlsen rarely loses and partly because Niemann, then 19, was a relative unknown, given little chance by the experts to topple Carlsen, 31.

The story might have ended there, but the next day Carlsen withdrew from the prestigious tournament, called the Sinquefield Cup, insinuating that he lost because Niemann might have cheated.

A seismic story within the insular chess world, it made more general news headlines when a rumour began circulating about the way Niemann might have cheated: by receiving signals from a co-conspirator about what moves to make via remote-controlled vibrating anal beads.

Maurice Ashley, an American grandmaster who was a commentator during the tournament, speculated, “One buzz means a bishop, two buzzes means a knight.”

On “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert joked, “They call it castling.” Even Elon Musk tweeted about it.

Now the story has gotten the documentary treatment.

Chess Mates premiered Tuesday on Netflix as an episode in the current season of “Untold,” a series of behind-the-scenes sports stories.

“Untold,” which debuted in 2021, has mostly concentrated on traditional sports such as football, boxing, tennis, soccer and even yacht racing.

Ryan Duffy, the showrunner, said chess is trickier to film than more active sports like, say, basketball, the subject of this season’s first episode, “The Death & Life of Lamar Odom.”

“You can inject energy into a sport doc anytime you’re feeling a lull by cutting away from the Lamar Odom interview and going to some great Lakers highlights,” Duffy said.

“We did have quite the question of how we would kind of realise chess on screen.”

What they didn’t have to question was the built-in drama of the interpersonal conflict between Carlsen and Niemann.

“These two fascinating characters carry the day through the film,” Duffy said.

Niemann, in particular, is unlike any notion of a typical chess player. He is not buttoned down or reserved.

The documentary includes many clips of Niemann, when he was younger, screaming and smashing things on camera.

“I understand in sports people say a bad boy is someone who’s a bit emotive — like John McEnroe is the bad boy of tennis or Nick Kyrgios, people like that,” Niemann said in an interview.

“I personally view myself as someone who is fighting bad people, so I wouldn’t say that I actively try to be like a bad boy.”

“I honestly view myself as the hero,” he added.

Niemann vehemently denies that he cheated against Carlsen in their game.

“At no point in the documentary was there any evidence of anything other than my innocence,” he said.

The source of the beads rumour, which Niemann has always denied, including in the film, remains a mystery. (Most of the chess world seems to have accepted that it was untrue.)

Carlsen, who participated in the documentary, declined to be interviewed for this article.

In the film, he said that during the game, “I am really upset. I’m fuming. This just did not feel right at all.”

He later added: “I felt that I was not playing a human.” (When Niemann and Carlsen had a rematch in Paris in 2024, Carlsen won convincingly.)

“Chess Mates” is primarily focused on the Carlsen-Niemann match and the accusations and fallout. But it also offers a peek into the world of elite chess.

The documentary explores Carlsen’s remarkable rise and abilities, including a video of his playing and beating 10 people simultaneously while blindfolded.

For Niemann’s, part, it follows his own intense efforts to become a world-class player by crisscrossing Europe to play in tournaments and tracing the events leading up to the game in St Louis.

The film also gives a primer on chess and the differences between playing online and in person.

The last element is important because even before Carlsen’s loss, there were rumours in the chess world, particularly among elite players, that Niemann had cheated while playing on Chess.com. (With more than 250 million members, it is the biggest chess site on the internet.)

After Niemann’s match with Carlsen, Chess.com issued a report saying that Niemann had likely cheated in more than 100 games on the site.

Cheating at chess is most commonly done by consulting computer chess engines during games for suggested moves.

Artificial intelligence can play better than any person — the documentary points out that a computer could likely beat Carlsen 1000 games in a row — so such advice confers a tremendous advantage.

For the best players, having moves suggested by an engine even once or twice a game would be enough to turn any of them into a world champion.

While cheating in live, face-to-face tournaments like the Sinquefield Cup is very difficult, it is rather easy online because detecting the subterfuge is much more complicated.

Sites like Chess.com have invested significant financial and technological resources on systems to root out cheating.

Chess.com’s report on Niemann seemed like damning evidence but it came out at the same time that the site was buying Carlsen’s company, Play Magnus, for about $83 million.

Niemann and others suggested that the report was part of a conspiracy to ruin him and protect the merger.

Niemann eventually brought a $100 million lawsuit, for defamation and unlawful collusion, against Carlsen; Chess.com; Erik Allebest, the site’s CEO and founder; Danny Rensch, the chief chess officer; and Hikaru Nakamura, a leading player and streamer who weighed in on the scandal.

A judge dismissed the suit in 2023, in part on jurisdictional grounds, and the parties later settled, clearing the way for Niemann to return to Chess.com.

All involved appear in the film. In a joint interview, Allebest and Rensch said they were not entirely happy with how they are portrayed.

The portion about the beads rumour, in particular, “presented us like we were flippant and that we didn’t care,” Rensch said.

“I don’t think they did us justice.”

Allebest added, “It made us look like we were laughing at his pain. I wish that it had been a little more clear that we weren’t responsible for that rumour.”

Rensch said Chess.com stands behind its report about Niemann’s online cheating when he was younger, but he and Allebest said they have no problem working with Niemann now and that he is welcome to play on their site, which he does.

Niemann admitted that he cheated on the site a total of 30 or 40 times when he was 12 and 16.

He compared it to a teenager stealing a comic book — a youthful mistake that shouldn’t hound him for the rest of his life.

He insists he never cheated in any live, face-to-face game.

Niemann said Carlsen’s 2022 accusations continue to affect his career.

“To say that the damage from the entire thing is gone would be completely false,” he said.

“There are still real forces against helping my chess career progress.”

The documentary lets Niemann have the last word. Looking into the camera, he says, “I’m going to become the best player in the world. And no one is going to believe that now, but this clip will play over and over again in 10 years, just wait. Because I know things that the world doesn’t, and that is because I can see the future.”

Seeing the film now, Niemann is inspired by his own words, he said. “It kind of reminded me what my mission is, and that’s what really matters.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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