{"id":895,"date":"2026-05-31T13:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=895"},"modified":"2026-05-31T13:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:41:09","slug":"the-crazy-sex-toy-scandal-that-blew-up-the-chess-world-and-its-strange-aftermath-four-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=895","title":{"rendered":"The crazy sex toy scandal that blew up the chess world \u2014 and its strange aftermath four years later"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Chess champ Magnus Carlsen, 32, lost to 19-year-old Hans Niemann at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, sparking Carlsen\u2019s cheating claims.<\/li>\n<li>Niemann, who admitted to prior online cheating, faced a wild \u201canal beads\u201d theory for his win that went viral.<\/li>\n<li>Niemann\u2019s $100 million defamation lawsuit against Carlsen and Chess.com was dismissed, leading to a confidential settlement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In September of 2022, Magnus Carlsen had won 53 consecutive classical chess matches.Then, he sat down across from Hans Niemann.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=893\">Anti-ICE protesters pooling cash for riot gear, military-grade goggles to fuel Newark mayhem<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Carlsen, then 32 and a five-time World Championship, was widely considered the greatest player in the millennium-and-a-half history of the sport. The Norwegian had an Elo rating \u2014\u00a0a system that calculates a player\u2019s relative skill level \u2014 no human being had ever reached.<\/p>\n<p>Niemann was a 19-year old nobody from San Francisco. He hadn\u2019t even been invited to the tournament \u2014 the prestigious Sinquefield Cup \u2014 which pitted him against Carlsen. He was just there as a last-minute replacement, but he was formidable.<\/p>\n<p>When Carlsen tried to throw him off with an unconventional opening \u2014 the Fianchetto Variation, aimed at disrupting Niemann\u2019s Nimzo-Indian defense \u2014 Niemann countered it perfectly. Carlsen started to lose ground and the kid kept winning, despite gazing around the hall spacily and chewing gum.<\/p>\n<p>At move 42, Niemann\u2019s knight escaped a bishop attack that only a handful of players in the world could have avoided. At move 48, he caught Carlsen in a rare error and capitalized. Piece by piece, the teenager was dismantling the greatest player alive.<\/p>\n<p>After 57 moves, Magnus resigned and Niemman won. The stunned silence in the room said everything. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cA 2860 Elo against a 2650,\u201d writes Ben Mezrich in his new book, \u201cCheckmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess\u201d (Grand Central, out Tuesday). \u201cWhite pieces against black. The number one player in the world against the fortieth. It couldn\u2019t be real.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Carlsen rose from the table and stalked out of the hall. He went straight to his father and, according to Mezrich, said, \u201cThis guy was cheating.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t evidence so much as instinct \u2014 Niemann\u2019s near-perfect play, the odd distraction, a 19-year-old who barely glanced at the board yet had an answer for everything. Carlsen couldn\u2019t prove it, but he felt certain.<\/p>\n<p>Niemann had a reputation as the bad boy of chess, known for profanity-laced interviews and a meteoric ratings rise that other grandmasters noted was statistically extraordinary.<\/p>\n<p>Going into the match, the champion had concerns. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMagnus heard rumors about cheating allegations,\u201d Mezrich told The Post in an exclusive interview. <\/p>\n<p>Those rumors had a foundation that the public couldn\u2019t see.\u00a0Chess.com, the dominant online platform valued at over $1 billion, had quietly suspended Niemann\u2019s account for\u00a0cheating in online games years earlier \u2014 something Niemann has publicly admitted and does not dispute \u2014\u00a0and had since monitored him closely. None of that suspension was on any public record.\u00a0It lived in servers and internal reports, known to\u00a0Chess.com\u2018s chief chess officer Danny Rensch and few others.<\/p>\n<p>But Niemann has consistently denied cheating during in-person chess games, including the match against Carlsen. \u201cI have never cheated in an over-the-board game,\u201d he said in a press conference after his victory. He added that if anyone doubted him, he was willing to \u201cstrip fully naked\u201d to prove it. Niemann did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Carlsen went on to win the tournament, but his loss to Niemann and the potential that the teen cheated lingered.<\/p>\n<p>Within days,\u00a0according to Mezrich\u2019s reporting, an anonymous internet troll named\u00a0Steve Smyth, who worked on the railways in Liverpool,\u00a0began\u00a0workshopping theories about how Niemann might\u2019ve cheated. He and his fellow trolls\u00a0on Reddit\u2019s Anarchy Chess forum\u00a0eventually landed on the idea of a hidden device, concealed somewhere on Niemann\u2019s body,\u00a0that would vibrate coded signals indicating the correct moves\u00a0\u2014 a theory that was never proven and that Niemann has called \u201cnot a serious theory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But for Smyth, it was all about maximum impact. \u201cProstate massager\u201d was the first idea, but the group agreed it was too clinical and too vague. Smyth arrived at something simpler, more visual and considerably funnier, and posted it to Twitter: \u201cCurrently obsessed with the notion that Hans Niemann has been cheating at the Sinquefield Cup chess tournament using wireless anal beads that vibrate him the correct moves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He posted it and watched it go nowhere overnight. But then a British newspaper picked it up. Then American outlets. Then Elon Musk retweeted it to 100 million followers, attributing a joke to the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: \u201cTalent hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one can see (cause it\u2019s in ur butt).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=891\">Maine Senate Dem Graham Platner puts wife Amy on video to defend against claims he was posting on creepy hookup app<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The theory that Niemann had cheated at the Sinquefield Cup using wirelessly connected anal beads that vibrated chess moves to him during the game was now major news.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis hilarious internet troll in Liverpool just knew that anything involving the rectum could make this story international,\u201d Mezrich siad. \u201cWithout the anal beads, I believe this story would\u2019ve just disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chess.com\u00a0eventually released a 72-page report on Niemann, which found that he\u2019d likely cheated in more than 100 online games \u2014 identified using anti-cheating algorithms that flagged statistically improbable patterns in his move choices. In many of the online matches, prize money was up grabs. But the report couldn\u2019t establish whether he\u2019d cheated against Magnus over the board at the Sinquefield Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Mezrich sees the question as unresolved. \u201cThere is no smoking gun, so based on the report alone, you can\u2019t say that he cheated at the Sinquefield,\u201d he told The Post. \u201cHe feels that\u2019s exoneration, but it\u2019s simply a failure to prove one way or another whether it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In October 2022, Niemann filed a $100 million lawsuit in the Eastern District of Missouri against Carlsen,\u00a0Chess.com and streaming grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, alleging defamation and unlawful collusion \u2014 claiming the defendants had conspired to blacklist him from chess and rigged the\u00a0Chess.com\u00a0report to destroy his career.\u00a0The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge in June 2023. Two months later, all parties reached a confidential settlement, the financial terms of which were never disclosed. As part of that settlement, Niemann\u2019s\u00a0Chess.com\u00a0account was fully reinstated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a story where there are multiple points of view about what actually happened, and it\u2019s going to be up to people reading it to decide what truth they want to believe,\u201d Mezrich said. \u201cEverything is subjective.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But while the lawsuit\u00a0was working its way through the courts, Niemann\u2019s life was getting uglier by the day. At one tournament, a fellow grandmaster picked up Niemann\u2019s king piece mid-game, snapped the crown off and suggested they settle things in the bathroom. They met in the parking lot instead, but what emerged was less a fistfight than a confrontation between a young man who felt the entire chess world had turned against him and an opponent who seemed to agree that it should.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re toxic,\u201d the grandmaster told him. \u201cEven if you\u2019re clean now. You\u2019re toxic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Niemann didn\u2019t flinch. \u201cThen stop breathing my air,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>Another time, according to an addition to Niemann\u2019s lawsuit, Norwegian grandmaster Aryan Tari \u2014 a close friend of Carlsen\u2019s \u2014 rose at an international tournament\u2019s closing ceremony in Austria and shouted \u201cJukse Hans,\u201d Norwegian for \u201cCheater Hans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The crowd took up the chant, spilling into the village and filling the local pub, the taunt echoing through the rafters. Death threats arrived by the hundreds on social media.<\/p>\n<p>The book ends at Chess.com\u2019s Speed Chess Championship in Paris in September 2024, where Magnus, still ranked number 1 in the world, and Niemann, ranked in the teens, faced each other over computer screens for the first time since the Sinquefield Cup. Magnus beat him efficiently.<\/p>\n<p>Freshly defeated, the young man walked out of the Paris arena and down the Rue de Rivoli, past the glowing glass pyramid of the Louvre.\u00a0\u201cFull speed into the delusion,\u201d\u00a0Mezrich writes,\u00a0\u201cfull speed into the darkness, full speed into \u2014 whatever \u2014 came \u2014 next.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then, the book\u2019s focus shifts. A man named Noland Arbaugh, who eight years earlier had been left unable to move from the shoulders down after a swimming accident, rolls into the arena in a wheelchair. Arbaugh had volunteered to be the first human being to receive a Neuralink brain chip, the device developed by Elon Musk that creates a direct connection between a person\u2019s brain and a computer.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p>By concentrating his thoughts, without touching a keyboard or a mouse or a screen, Arbaugh moves a chess piece. The crowd cheers. Magnus watches and understands exactly what he\u2019s seeing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Neuralink chip in Noland\u2019s head didn\u2019t really need Noland at all,\u201d Mezrich writes. \u201cOne day, that chip alone would be able to move the pieces on the chessboard. One day, that chip alone would be able to beat Magnus as firmly as Magnus had destroyed Hans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=889\">Spurs fan, 17, declared brain dead after horrific accident while celebrating conference final win<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his new book, \u201cCheckmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess,&#8221;  Ben Mezrich  investigates the cheating allegations around Hans Niemann and his win over Magnus Carlsen \u2014 and the anal beads theory that emerged..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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