Chess is Wild

Hitting the boil-over point.

Chess might not be a game in the video sense, but in many ways the intricacies of chess are in themselves aspects of the first game ever made. The game of warfare and strategy, of sacrifice and valour, of give and take, of kings and kingdoms. A game born in ancient China and gutted so thoroughly that anyone who thinks they can play Chess will find themselves looking like a total novice if they try out the original derivative. So in a way, it makes the most sense that I'd be paying attention to and drawing power from the absolute turmoil gripping the Chess world in this era of constant instant coverage where every minute detail can be blasted across social media like a breaking news bulletin. Thus though there may be just as grand spectacles of Chess misappropriation in the past, today's kerfuffle feels like the biggest upset in modern chess gaming history and I, like many others, cannot look away.

If you came into this totally blind to the details like I did, then allow me to set you up like I'm introducing you to the third season of a revival series of a long-running anime. Magnus Carlson is a Chess Grand Master commonly accepted to be one of, if not the, best players in the world. He's a respected competitor for his tactical prowess on the board and few can say losing to him is any sort of disgrace. Hans Neimann is a GM several times his junior and a decently talented player in his own right. Of course, by 'decently talented' I mean in the realm of Grand Masters; which is an entire league above mere mortal casual play. Any Grand Master in the world could clean their teeth with you in a competitive match; these are just the rankings of the best of the best. In DBZ terms, Hans is a Super Saiyan 2 and Magnus is a Super Saiyan God. Or Maybe a Super Saiyan God SS Evolved... (I researched way too much DBZ to make that stupid comparison.)

These figures of yore became living and breathing once an errant scandal developed out of nowhere to rock the chess world. Hans and Magnus engaged in a tournament, Magnus started on the whites, a position of advantage, and lost to Hans Neimann. Scholars and philosophers will debate and argue for generations about how this upset could have occurred in this most precious of sports, with everything from astral phenomena to misaligned ley lines entering into the heated discussions. The Internet, on the otherhand, had their own pithy theory; an anal buttplug installed with a Chess playing AI that told Hans how to play with Morse code vibrations. The more serious sectors of the Chess world have gone back and forth and more concrete accusations that Hans was cheating, ways he might have and, most importantly, whether or not he'd be the sort of player to cheat. Though still we've yet to find that crucial final nugget of proof. We all had our laughs and our jests, giggling and memeing at all of the silly melodrama. But today the jokes have stopped. Not just because they've gotten old, but because Hans has turned to legal representation. 

After weeks of compounded discourse and Chess world events that have rocked the stability of his, still-growing, career; Hans Neimann has thrown down the gauntlet with a 100 Million Dollar lawsuit against Magnus Carlson, Chess.com and Hikaru Nakamura, an increadibly well known Chess Grand Master who I haven't mentioned up until now because he has literally no significant part to play in any of this. There was no reason for him to be included in the lawsuit and that's a strange play by Hans, who simultaneously alleges himself to be a tactical genius who beat the best in the world, after which he bragged how he wasn't even trying all that hard. (The oxymoron makes my head hurt.) But before I delve into the specifics I will say this much; there is no way to really tell who is telling the truth here unless one side is pressured into revealing everything in a Perry Mason confession scene; and as that is exceedingly unlikely to happen; this lawsuit, provided it's picked up, might just be the closet thing to closure this sordid tale could hope for. So who's ready for Depp V Heard round 2?

The real kicker of all these lawsuits is the extent to which they go to paint a massive conspiracy in which Hans Neimann is the victim; to such a point that if these allegations are true we'll have uncovered the Chess illuminati. So first off we have Chess.com as a potential target of legal damages for the way that they came out after Magnus Carlson's silent cheating accusation to verify that Hans had cheated before using their platform and it had been handled quietly behind the scenes. Hans admitted to less than 5 such cheating moments and claimed they were always for low stakes games. After which Chess.com did an internal review and came back saying that he not only cheated a lot more than that, but some of them were during online tournaments. Of course, such a revelation, though not ratified by Hans himself, would be a huge kick to Neimann's credibility as it says that he's not only a cheater but has little respect for tournament sanctity; a standard that all respectable GMs are required to meet because it's the only way that the chess competitive tournament scene can function. But there's a twist.

You see, Chess.com is currently in talks to make a very lucrative deal to buy a company owned and branded to Magnus Carlson for a big sum pushed up, no doubt, by the near-spotless reputation that Magnus has maintained. This somewhat unusual dedication to proving Hans as a disreputable cheat could be seen as a spur on from conflicting interests as Chess.com seeks to ensure the value of their coming investment, as the lawsuit itself alleges. And then there's the whole situation of the follow up online match that Magnus did with Hans Neimann, in which Magnus left after a single move. Now Magnus isn't known as one to rage quit, so abruptly leaving here, just as he dropped out of the competition when he lost to Hans, is a big headline stealer; and a very confusing one; but if this conspiracy holds water than there might be an actual common sense explanation.

You see, by so publicly demonstrating his unwillingness to play alongside Hans Neimann, Magnus Carlson basically said out to the world that he refuses to share a space with a man he considers as dishonest. As such, when competitions come to invite contestants, they'll do so in the knowledge that they can't invite Magnus and Hans to the same event. And who are they going to pick? The man who is arguably the greatest player in the world, or the upstart who is having his character questioned by everyone with a keyboard? (Guilty as charged!) If there's fire to this smoke, that means Magnus has essentially strategically kneecapped Hans' professional growth in the competitive circuit; seriously jeopardising the future of his career! A lawsuit seems almost justifiable at that point!

All of this, however, depends on a jury buying a grand conspiracy to destroy a plucky kid who happened to beat the best player in the world fronted by everyone from a reputable Chess website, A popular twitch streamer who offered his candid thoughts and has no connection to events beyond that, and the man himself who is, by most accounts, typically a fairly level headed individual. Hans wants to argue that Magnus was on track to a very impressive milestone that would have cemented his legacy before his loss, and that might have been the catalyst to drive him over the edge; but as you can hear these are all suppositions and maybes lacking the bite of evidence. I can't even conceive what sort of documents the discovery process would have to conjure to make this sound like anything more substantive than speculative fan fiction, and unless he's got real-life Jimmy McGill fighting like a bulldog in his corner, this is likely going to fall apart the second his counsel gets what they want and realises that people don't pen their mega super villain plans in emails to one another. Unless that lawyer is a hell of a story teller, with great sock-puppet skills to sell the picture, we're going to see one tough jury to budge. (That counter suit is going to be rough, buddy.)