Magnus Carlsen has been the best chess player in the world since 2010. He recently played in the Sinquefield cup when this happened:
After this, Magnus announced on social media he was resigning from the tournament, and included a cryptic message that he would get it trouble if he spoke the truth:
After this there was widespread speculation that Magnus thought Hans was cheating. It was of course unusual for the worlds best player to be destroyed by a 19 year old using the black pieces. Rumors began to be spread and Elon Musk theorized Hans may be cheating using a vibrating sex toy. After this Chess.com banned Hans from online play, citing two incidents from the past where he was caught cheating online. The anti-cheating board of the tournament said they had no evidence Hans was cheating. Hans gave an interview defending himself, saying his performance was due to the good luck of having reviewed the exact line that morning. This would be extremely lucky if so as its a very uncommon lines and Magnus has either never played it before or hasnt in years. To address his past cheating he said he did it once when he was 12 years old and once when he was 16 years old, and has never done it over the board(in real life).
Hikaru mentioned this is strange because if he knew the line so well he should have blitzed out the first 20 moves, yet after 20 moves it has Hans who was behind on time. Analysis by the stockfish engine shows that all of Hans' moves were top 3 engine recommendations, which is improbably for a human to do but not impossible.
Nobody was sure who to believe, but in the absence of hard evidence against Hans, people shifted towards giving him the benefit of the doubt. However the drama raged on.
Things were just getting started though, as Magnus and Hans were both already scheduled to be in the Julius Baer Generations Cup, and Magnus had ties to the sponsor so was unlikely to pull out. Then this happened:
This was Magnus doubling down, and shows he felt strong enough in his conviction to let losses drastically reduce his rating. While many noted that cheating by some kind of radio device was unlikely because they are all scanned and there is a 15 min broadcast delay, an alternate theory is that Magnus had a rat in his camp who had leaked his preparations to Hans. This would perfectly explain why Magnus played an obscure line, he likely suspected a leak when previously playing against Hans, and set a trap this time by picking a line very unlikely to have been reviewed to see if Hans would crush him and claim it was just prep, and thats exactly what happened.
Meanwhile, Hans went on to have a not-so-strong performance in the rest of the Sinquefiend cup and Magnus has been dominating the Generations Cup besides the resignation. Today Magnus finally broke his silence somewhat on the issue in an interview:
He refuses to accuse Hans openly of cheating, as for a grand master chess is their career, and calling them a cheater amounts to defamation and will end up in court. Hikaru has already stated someone has threatened him with legal action and Im sure Magnus has been too. However, he did make a very intentional statement saying, Hans is playing so well, his coach Maxim Dlugy must be doing a very good job. Not only does this seem to support the leaked prep theory, as Carlsen seemingly thinks Dlugy is the contact of the rat, but also Dlugy turns out to be a shady character with a history of cheating. A reddit thread from 5 years ago shows he was banned from Chess.com and had to make a new account. While Chess.com didnt come out openly explaining the ban as for cheating, perhaps for the same legal reasons, the account banned and never reinstated. Another poster from the thread notes that in an interview he gave a few years before that, Dlugy comments on how easy it would be for an elite player like him to cheat, only needing to consult a computer a few key times and otherwise just play naturally:
"If I had this gadget I would be killing people left and right, and nobody would know. This is the real danger, because if a 2600 player has this thing, he knows exactly how to behave, he knows exactly when to think, and he doesn’t to use it more than four times during a game. That’s plenty to destroy anyone. At the critical junction you switch it on and find out which way do I go: oh, this little nuance I didn’t see, okay, fine, boom, goodbye! That’s it. At that point you may think for a long time, although you know the move."
Dlugy never made any public statement about his ban.
