World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup 2022. With no detailed explanations, Carlsen said that Saint Louis Chess Club is one of the places he’s always enjoyed playing, and that he hopes to be back in the future. On short notice, social medias were overwhelmed with rumors and Carlsen’s possible reasons for withdrawal. Magnus started a tournament pretty well. He defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in a great style, and drew against Levon Aronian. The upset came in the third round when the World Chess Champion suffered a loss to Hans Niemann who played a perfect game. With his first-ever victory over a player rated 2800+, Niemann took the sole lead in the tournament, passed 2700 rating on the live rating lists and broke Magnus’s strike of 53 unbeaten classical games. Replay the game here
After his victory over Magnus Carlsen, Niemann said in the post-game interview that he feels bad for the World Champion: He (Magnus Carlsen) was so demoralized because he was losing to such an idiot like me. It must be embarrassing for the World Champion to lose to me. I feel bad for him (Magnus Carlsen)”. Was the interview the straw that broke the camel’s back or it was something else that affected Carlsen?
Unsubstantiated Chess Rumors posted that Hans Niemann was banned at least twice by Chess.com for engine cheating in the last few years. They say that the top-level players are familiar with that and reacted with deep suspicion to his recent success. See the post below
Meanwhile, Hikaru Nakamura spoke about Carlsen’s withdrawal in his live stream and confirmed that Niemann has done “unallowed things” at the tournaments: “Magnus would never do this in a million years….if he really didn’t strongly believe it. I think he thinks that Hans is cheating. Straight out. (…) I’ll just say that he (Hans Niemann) has done some things that are not allowed in tournaments. Let’s leave it at that.“. See the video below
Sinquefield Cup 2022: Live games / Day 4 LIVE video coverage / Round 3 results & recap
Interviews and videos: Hans Niemann: It’s not a surprise for me that I am beating the top-level players