After World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen won the Julius Baer Generation Cup, he announced to publish the official statement on the controversial happenings related to his withdrawal from Sinquefield Cup 2022 and resignation against Hans Niemann after only two played moves. Besides saying that we can expect his statement in the coming days, Carlsen added that this will not be the only time we hear from him on the topic.
Shortly after Carlsen’s interview, the fair play specialist Kenneth Regan spoke about the Carlsen – Niemann case for Al Jazeera. After the chess world got hit with speculations and allegations that Niemann has been cheating, Hans confessed he cheated in random online games on chess.com and his account was removed from the platform. Kenneth Regan analyzed Hans Niemann’s over-the-board games concluding that there is nothing suspicious in his play. Professor Regan repeated his findings for Al Jazeera adding that he was screening the Sinquefield Cup tournament for the Chief Arbiter who later on published the official press release on that matter.
Being asked how should players react if they suspect there is cheating in the game Regan explained: “Number one way is of course to launch an official complaint with the organizers of the tournament and with the International Chess Federation which I represent. Then that can be investigated responsible and in my case, often, a very quick manner. As I said, I was screening, I was in daily communication with the organizers of the tournament (Sinquefield Cup). Now, there are two other factors: One – Carlsen may have suspected that his match preparation was leaked, because Niemann himself referred to the ridiculous miracle that he had been able to preview the first 13 moves of the game an hour before the match. The second factor is that Carlsen’s recent action may be a way of trying to say to the chess community that we need to arrive at uniform standards of how we regard people who confessed they were cheating online“. See the complete interview below
