Vibrating crotches, anal beads and suspicious minds: the long, strange history of chess cheats | Sean Ingle

Magnus Carlsen faces the Netflix cameras. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

You may remember what happened. Carlsen shockingly pulled out of the prestigious Sinquefield Cup, posting a gif on X of José Mourinho saying: “If I speak, I am in big trouble.” Niemann then admitted he cheated in online games when he was 12 and 16, but denied allegations that he cheated to beat Carlsen by receiving messages from a vibrating sex toy. Anal beads became a punchline, Niemann a punchbag.

The world had moved on by the time Niemann was cleared of cheating in his over-the-board game against Carlsen. But, four years on, grudges still fester. And while Netflix has unearthed no fresh bombshells, the documentary serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when the dollar signs start flashing, the rulebook is flimsy, and trust evaporates.

“We had our Covid bump, Queen’s Gambit bump,” says Chess.com’s co-founder and chief executive, Erik Allebest, at one point. “Anal beads have been super good to us … don’t use that!” At which points he begins to laugh.

It isn’t the only uncomfortable moment. Chess.com knew that Niemann had cheated online as a kid but kept it to itself – which in other sports would surely be a red flag. Yet its stance suddenly changed when approached by Carlsen’s dad, Henrik, after his son’s defeat – which again is unusual.

Incredibly, in an era where Chess.com’s daily players shot up from one to six million, and the company’s valuation was heading towards a billion dollars, its mentality carried the whiff of a tech-bro start-up.

And what of Niemann? Well, his story is even more complicated, especially for those who see the world in light and dark, goodies and baddies. He insults opponents. He trashes hotel rooms. More than one person who has met him tells me he wants to be Bobby Fischer, the brilliant but hugely controversial and unstable former world champion. And as he admits himself: “I am not a nice guy.”

Hans Niemann tells his side of the story in Untold: Chess Mates. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

He is undoubtedly a brilliant player but also a former cheat. But how long should the sins of youth remain a stain? Some I spoke to in the chess world still don’t trust him at all. Others admire his resilience. As one put it to me: imagine being 19, and seeing the chess world using you for content and drama, and your name being globally associated with a sex toy. Imagine the extreme force of will to get through that.

Carlsen, meanwhile, comes out of it well and pointedly criticises Chess.com for gaslighting him into thinking it had the evidence against Niemann over the board, when it didn’t.

So what does this journey from the Von Neumann to the Niemann affair tell us? First, that the chess landscape has dramatically altered. In 1993, as one grandmaster put it to me, the notion of an amateur trying to cheat was startling, but this was still an era when Garry Kasparov was regarded as a mystical genius and could beat any computer. Nowadays Carlsen would lose to a novice with a phone.

But this isn’t just about vibrating crotches and anal beads but suspicious minds. While online sites such as Lichess and Chess.com have cheat-detection software, it is imperfect. So the question arises: am I playing someone who has discovered a brilliant move with their mind or their computer?

So far grandmasters caught cheating over the board have largely done so in a remarkably low-tech way: usually by hiding a phone in the toilet and checking it between moves. Since the Niemann affair, players now get scanned with wands to check for electrical devices. But no one is entirely sure these methods are watertight.

A final point. Someone really should turn Lucky Devils into a film. Reitzen is still alive, having made and lost several fortunes, but sadly John “The Duke” Wayne died of cancer in 2018. Still, his name should live on in infamy, despite his more famous namesake. After all, he was the first chess cheat of the modern computer age.