Biggest scandal in chess history?

Hello everyone I assume youve heard about the situation of Magnus Carlsen Withdrawing from the sinquefield cup after playing hans niemann. Currently There is massive debate as to whether or not Hans niemann cheated against magnus. Magnus indirected stated that he believes hans cheated by posting the football clip of "if i speak i will get in trouble" he has also misstated his prep in the postgame interview by claiming his prep was of the 2018 london game from magnus and wesley, the problem is this game was nothing like the game he had and this is a massive detail to mess up. So I am asking the chess community what they think about the issue? Do you think hans cheated? or do you think magnus is overreacting or has a different reason for withdrawing?

I feel like magnus might believe hans cheated not sure if he actually did though...

So you do believe magnus withdrew because he believes hans niemann cheated? and what do you think about it? do you think he cheated? or just happend to have a good game regardless of his history?

I think Carlsen doesn't feel like playing chess at the moment but he had to say something so he went with "I can't say why I quit the tournament".

So you dont think he is accusing hans of cheating

Also, there have been examples in history where after a loss which impacts a player psychologically, that player losses a lot of games in the rest of the tournament. Maybe Carlsen feared that would happen to him, so he decided to quit and save his reputation and rating points.

no, that's my hot take

Also, I don't understand why he would quit the tournament because he believed somebody cheated against him. He was going to play other players in the rest of the tournament and Carlsen has no reason to believe that they cheat.

My only guess is maybe if he believed hans cheated this was a from of "protest"?

Very possible

Magnus has a problem with motivation.
He seems more into poker than chess now.
Magnus lost to Niemann, but also to Nepo and Aronian.
Most strong players are sore losers.

Whether Niemann cheated or not will show in the remainder of the tournament.
If he gets caught, or if his performance drops... then.
Otherwise innocent until proven guilty.

I am just curious how can people cheat OTB?

I read that they can check their phones in the toilet? Or have an earpiece?

Wouldn't it be impossible to cheat in such a high profile event

This is a good question, I was curious about this too...

I was reading some comments on YouTube, there was a theory that someone from Carlsen's inner circle could have leaked his gameplay  to the opponent. Hans even said in an interview it was a miracle he studied this particular opening the morning of the game

I really want to believe that Niemann is playing brilliantly just because he is in great form.
Ok, the fact that he prepared exactly the g3 Nimzo line that Magnus eventually played sounded very strange but it could still be a lucky coincidence.
But the last interview he gave after the game vs Firouzja convinced me there is definitely something fishy going on. He wasn’t able to give a consistent explanation to ANY of his moves. I mean when asked about his thought process for the ‘star move’ Qg3, sacrificing the Knight on c4, he stopped at Bxh6 blatantly saying there was no need to look at any variation after that because white is just winning. When asked further he seemed to improvise some moves on the board and hope for the engine to substantiate his evaluation.

If the guy is indeed cheating, in such a top level event, putting his career at stake, he must be really fearless.
Or really dumb.

@15
Look at it from another angle. The young and coming player is allowed to play a tournament with the big guys. After a tense game he even wins. So tired and relaxed he fulfills his contractual obligation to a post game interview. Good game, bad interview does not mean cheating.

There's no doubt that Carlsen thinks Niemann cheats. Losing rating like this will be frustrating for Carlsen, because it seems like that's all he has left to care about. After watching Niemann's post match analyses, I'm very suspicious, not because I particularly understand the analysis but his manner looks very much like someone who is blagging. Also, he relies too heavily on being technically wrong while claiming to be practically correct.

@18
The real scandal is Carlsen losing 3 games in a row and withdrawing.

Niemann winning 2 games, drawing 2 and being poor in post game interviews does not matter.

He didn't. He beat Nepo and drew with Aronian.

@tygxc. I don’t think that his ‘being poor’ in the interviews fully explains his behaviour.
You mean he couldn’t explain why a move which sacrifices a piece gives him an advantage because he was tired.
But I guess he was tired by playing that same move at the board and having to calculate the possible continuations that gave him the advantage (or at least didn’t make him lose on the spot).
Doesn’t quite make sense to me.