Perpetual Chess Linkfest #8, October 7 2022
The US Championships and European Club Cup are Underway, while Chess.Com Issues a Report about GM Hans Niemann
Hi again everyone! We had lots of high level chess this week, and one major development in the Carlsen/Niemann story, Chess.com issuing a very detailed report about their handling of the Magnus Carlsen/Hans Niemann controversy. Additionally, important conversations are beginning about how to improve cheating protocols to hope to avoid future scandals of this nature. I couldn’t find too many chess improvement related posts or book reviews this week- perhaps everyone is distracted by the scandal? Anyway, here are this week’s links:
US Championships and European Club Cup
After 2 Rounds, Young Upstarts GM Sam Sevian and GM Hans Niemann lead the US Championship. Jennifer Yu, Megan Lee and Alice Lee lead the US Women’s Championship. (IM James Rizzitano for Chess Life Online)
GM Magnus Carlsen has been playing some beautiful chess at the European Club Cup, and the Novy Bor Chess Club, led by GM Vidit Gujirathi leads after 5 rounds (Peter Doggers for Chess.com)
ASVOe Pamhagen and CSU ASE Superbet lead after 5 rounds in the European Women’s Club Cup (Chess24 Coverage)
Chess Books and Improvement
Think Like a Super GM by GM Michael Adams and Phillip Hurtado has (deservedly) won ECF Book of the Year! (ECF Post)
Correspondence IM, Opening Theoretician and Quality Chess Author Nikos Ntirlis shared some Trendy High Level Opening Ideas on Twitter that have now been turned into a Free PGN! (Link Here, h/t @kramnikstudent)
Martin Justesen aka SayChess uses LiChess insights to Highlight some Areas He Needs to Work on (Say Chess Blog)
The Carlsen/Niemann Scandal and What to Do about Cheating
The much anticipated Chess.com Report about their history with GM Hans Niemann was published. They show convincing evidence that Niemann cheated in over 100 Online games in 2020, including Money Tournaments and demonstrate that he did not admit the extent of his cheating in his Famed Interview (Report here)
“In the effort to determine if Hans Niemann is guilty of cheating, the chess world has moved on to the only thing less reputable than anal beads: statistics. “(FM Nate Solon’s Blog)
“Unfortunately, the results of Chess.com’s analysis are not what the chess world wanted to hear (not Chess.Com’s fault) because it means we are unlikely to ever get a resolution on whether Hans Niemann cheated OTB. “ (GM David Smerdon Twitter thread) (Summary of the Report from FM Dennis Monokroussos on The Chess Mind Blog) (Leonard Barden for The Guardian)
“It’s not just Hans who has cheated online, but quite a lot of strong players as well. So what you have here, potentially, is a kind of scapegoating process – where Hans takes the full heat of the entire systemic problem.”- GM Jonathan Rowson (Sean Ingle Article for The Guardian)
The (former) President of the Norwegian Chess Federation has now Admitted to Cheating During the Pro Chess League, and resigned his position (Peter Doggers for Chess.com)
Renowned Trainer and Author, GM R.B. Ramesh shared some ideas about how to Establish Clear Rules Combating Cheating Going Forward (Twitter Thread)
Good article on cheating from ESPN.com- "The reality is any young chess prodigy -- you take Magnus Carlsen, for example -- they grow really fast, they get good really quickly, they can soak up so much information. They go from being a simple master player to an absolute chess gangster inside one or two years," GM Maurice Ashley says. "Are we going to suspect every last one of them now when we just thought they were geniuses before?" (Aishwarya Kumar for ESPN.com)
This concludes this week’s linkfest, have a good weekend! - Ben