After months of cheating allegations against him, 19-year-old American Chess Grandmaster Hans Neimann has filed a civil suit against Magnus Carlsen and other figures in the professional Chess world alleging libel, slander, and tortious interference. Hans is seeking $100 million in damages. The massive lawsuit comes in response to Carlsen directly accusing the young Grandmaster of cheating during tournaments followed by Chess.com releasing a 72-page dossier which alleged suspicious play patterns as possible cheating. While this is not the only professional chess lawsuit this year, it is the largest in history.
Back in September at the Sinquefield Cup, Neimann upset Carlsen following a tense back and forth involving the unorthodox fourth-line deviation of the Fianchetto Variation. Neimann claimed to be prepared for one of the strangest Chess openings of all time because he watched an old 2018 video of Carlsen performing the same maneuver during the London Chess Classic. Carlsen withdrew from the tournament after his match with Neimann while making vague allusions to cheating, and not lucky preparation, being the reason for the American's victory. Studying famous chess games is excellent research for all levels of players, but in this case, Carlsen was concerned that something was wrong given Neimann's past history of suspected cheating. Hans Neimann had been banned from playing on Chess.com on two separate occasions while a junior player due to suspicious play patterns suggesting cheating using a second browser window to get AI suggestions.
Hikaru Nakamura, 6th-rated player in the world and the most popular chess Twitch-streamer, brought Neimann's history with Chess.com to the public's attention shortly after Carlsen withdrew from the remainder of the Sinquefield Cup. The result was chess players going online and digging into Neimann's history, discovering among other things that his claim to have seen the unorthodox opening during a 2018 Carlsen game at the London Classic was false. The online sleuthing of chess fans encouraged by Nakamura's statements is what resulted in the popular streamer being included in the $100 million lawsuit. Neimann alleges in the lawsuit that Nakamura colluded with Carlsen and Chess.com to amplify the allegations against him.
Part of Neimann's lawsuit states that Carlsen was "enraged that the young Neimann, fully 12 years his junior, dared to disrespect the 'King of Chess' and fearful that the young prodigy would further blemish his multi-million dollar brand by beating him again." Neimann's lawyers laid out the business relationship between Carlsen, once famous for showing up late to an online Chess tournament, and Chess.com, which recently purchased Carlsen's app for $100 million dollars. Lawyers for Neimann point to the timing of the latest Chess.com ban to coincide with Carlsen's allegations. Upcoming tournaments, such as Tata Steel Tournament, have begun withdrawing invitations for Neimann to participate in the wake of the cheating allegations.
Within the lawsuit filing, Neimann does admit to cheating as a child while playing on Chess.com in order to secure better online matches for himself. Despite the confession for online play while a child, no security measures at any tournament have been able to definitively prove that Neimann is cheating during in-person matches. Chess fans and those following the situation have made wild claims online as to how Neimann could have been cheating from vibrating clothing to a device in his shoe that could pick up Morse code. Nothing has been proven to date and Neimann recently was able to finish tied for 5th at the U.S. Chess Championships. It is not just modern games like Call of Duty that incorporate anti-cheat measures, even Chess, one of the oldest games in the world, needs constant care by its governing bodies to keep cheating from impacting major events.
Source: United States District Court