New book examines 'biggest scandal in chess'

[Frank Dixon]

Earlier today, I bought the new book by Ben Mezrich, titled 'Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess'.

The book is published by Grand Central Publishing, June 2016. Its ISBN is: 978-1-5387-7303-1. It is also available as an ebook.

The title is grandiose, to be sure. I didn't even leaf through the book before purchasing it, for $40 (Canadian). Its main subject is the so-called Carlsen -- Niemann situation, from 2022.

Its author, Ben Mezrich, is known as the writer of high-selling books, such as 'The Accidental Billionaires' (adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the David Fincher film 'The Social Network'), 'Bringing Down the House' (adapted into the box office hit film '21'), and 'The Antisocial Network.' I believe this is his first book on chess.

The book looks to be very heavy on narrative and very light on actual chess moves.

I don't feel ready to offer an opinion or a verdict, except to say that I am very keen to read it!

[Rene Preotu]

Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess is a nonfiction book by Ben Mezrich, the bestselling author behind The Accidental Billionaires (which became The Social Network) and Bringing Down the House (adapted into 21). The ebook was released April 7, 2026, with the hardcover following on June 2.

The book chronicles the 2022 cheating scandal that erupted when nineteen-year-old Hans Niemann defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. Within days, Carlsen accused Niemann of cheating, launching a scandal involving Chess.com, tournament officials, online investigators, enormous egos, and some famously strange theories about how the cheating might have happened.

Beyond the scandal itself, Mezrich uses the saga to tell a bigger story. He traces the two players' divergent ascents—Carlsen became the youngest ever grandmaster at age 13 with the support of a committed father; while alienated, struggling Niemann became notorious for baiting his opponents. Running alongside that is the business angle: the growth of Chess.com from an upstart gaming site dismissed by Peter Thiel to a billion-dollar valuation. The drama escalates through hotheaded interviews, threats in parking lots, and a staggering $100 million lawsuit.

Mezrich had real access to the people involved. He covers the saga from the inside, drawing on interviews with key figures, including significant time spent with Niemann himself. The book also details how Chief Chess Officer, IM Danny Rensch, spent thousands of dollars purchasing spy-tech to figure out how Niemann could possibly have cheated during the Sinquefield Cup.

Reception has been mixed. Reviewers praise Mezrich's storytelling craft but some found the substance thin. The Wall Street Journal noted that at its core is a mystery—of what exactly happened at Sinquefield—that not even this well-sourced author can solve, with the narrative coming to seem padded and repetitive. One critic pointed out that the subject at the heart of the story — chess — is not one that the author knows well, and in those sections of the book where he tries to explain the events of individual games, he can go wildly astray.

A Hollywood adaptation is reportedly headed into development for 2027.

[David Ottosen]

I really enjoyed Mezrich's early works, and his writing style that takes known facts and extrapolates them to a dramatized version as seen in the book that became the Social Network. His subsequent books haven't been as good as he jumps on a lot of kind of hot topics, but doesn't seem to be doing the same level of research, nor are the subjects that deep. This is a perfect example; I can't imagine it will have anything that wasn't already said in the Netflix doc Untold: Chess Mates.

[Frank Dixon]

The new book may be as complete an account that the general public will ever receive on this matter. I enjoyed the book, learned a lot while reading it, and would recommend it.

I believe it is significant that Mezrich, a successful author on topics other than chess, has taken this on for his first major effort in chess. Mezrich, born 1969 and a graduate of Harvard, does NOT say anything about his own chess background or playing ability, if any. He would have been at Harvard concurrent with IM Danny Edelman, and is the same age as GM Patrick Wolfe, who played for Yale in the 1987 PanAms.

Mezrich is very strong on inter-relating the background and details of the business deal between chess.com and GM Carlsen's company Play Magnus, as vitally important context to the cheating accusation and situation involving GM Niemann, who had been banned from chess.com for months, with this situation kept secret. These two developments became connected right at that time; GM Carlsen had apparently NOT known of this situation when he lost to GM Niemann at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, but apparently learned of it soon afterwards, according to the book. GM Carlsen then withdrew from that event. His new knowledge, obtained from Danny Rensch of chess.com, thus explained his resignation on the second move the next time GMs Carlsen and Niemann met in a classical game, as a protest against GM Niemann's prior conduct. The fact that Magnus had never done anything remotely like that before was what really exploded the situation into world-wide media beyond chess.

That said, as praise for the main strengths of Mezrich's book, I did find some of Mezrich's conclusions and interpretations to be somewhat flawed. This is especially so concerning previous historical upsets of very strong players by virtual unknowns. Mezrich essentially completely ignores this vital comparison area, whether through laziness, or lack of knowledge, or both. He states that GM Niemann's win over GM Carlsen, then the World Champion, at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup was virtually unprecedented in chess history. A bit of digging would have uncovered a game such as World Champion J.R. Capablanca's loss, as White, to Alexander Iljin-Genevsky at Moscow International 1925; the game, where Capa is White in a Closed Sicilian, is an ultra-complex strategical and tactical battle, where Capa may have missed some wins in the middlegame, before AIG sacked his Queen and won beautifully. The game has been world-famous for a century. Another similar game is GM Bobby Fischer's loss with White to Cesar Munoz of Ecuador, in a Dragon Sicilian, at the Leipzig Olympiad 1960; Fischer, at 17, was already a multiple USA champion and had been a 1959 Candidate. Munoz simply outplayed Bobby in a very tactical game. In the Sinquefield Cup game Carlsen 0-1 Niemann, the World Champion simply gets outplayed; there is nothing special about the game; it is simply an encounter between two very strong players, and White was a bit off his game, and lost.

Mezrich repeatedly mentions GM Niemann's exceptional rise in playing strength, and this does have some merit as part of his argument. However, he does ignore the details of the American prodigy with the fastest improvement in chess history: GM Bobby Fischer!!! Fischer's USCF rating in May 1956 was 1726, at age 13 and two months (source: 'The Complete Games of Robert J. Fischer', Batsford 1972). Less than two years later, Fischer won the USA Championship (Dec. 1957 -- Jan. 1958), thereby earning the IM title in the first event where he could possibly have done so, two months short of his 15th birthday. Later that year, IM Fischer qualified, still at age 15, as a Grandmaster and Candidate from the 1958 Portoroz Interzonal, in a tie for 5th-6th places, in a field of 21. Mezrich does reference Fischer in other ways, but he missed this really big comparison.

Certainly, the central argument of the book is that cheating in top-level chess (and at other levels; I believe I have been defeated at least a couple of times by players using outside assistance) is a major threat to its future development. Mezrich does outline in significant detail the steps which major chess online platforms, such as chess.com, have been taking to combat this, and this topic is another important strength of the book.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Frank, how do you think these people cheated? Might be helpful for the rest of us to avoid getting scammed.

Maybe I am lucky or naive but I've never gotten the sense during a game that any opponent has cheated against me, either OTB or online.

I did once play in an event in the US about 30 years ago where an opponent took back a move without my knowledge then played another move instead that turned out to be a blunder. I only learned of this in the post-mortem when my opponent admitted to it.

[Frank Dixon]

Thanks to IM Tom O'Donnell for his inquisitive post. He is asking me if I know how people cheated against me.

My answer is: I certainly know the details of one case. With another, I am fairly certain, but can't prove anything. I will leave out names, and concentrate on circumstances. Here is the first one; I will put the second one in a separate post on this thread.

1) PanAmerican Intercollegiate Team Championship, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, December 1988.
I was playing board four, with the Black pieces, for Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, against Brooklyn College, of New York City. The format used was: teams of four, in matches, facing each other, over eight rounds (I believe that this long-running annual event [originally begun before the year 1900] now consists of fewer rounds.). Similar to a chess Olympiad, if one is seeking comparison; it was and is a team Swiss system format; each team has two Whites and two Blacks in a match, with colors alternating. (I added significantly to the article on wikipedia.org, for the Pan American Intercollegiate Team event, mainly on the early years.) The PanAms are open to any post-secondary team in the Americas.

My game was unfolding into the early middlegame, in an interesting fashion, in a Tarrasch French Defense. My opponent's rating was a little lower than mine, but he was concentrating intently on the game; evidently a serious player. My rating was about 1900, and my three teammates were in the 2000 to 2200 range So we had a pretty decent team, but not a threat to win the championship. University of Toronto was there with a strong team, and for many years they were among the title challengers in this event, with several titles to their credit!! Brooklyn had an average rating similar to ours.

It took me quite a while to realize what was going on. There were about forty teams in the event, with the play hosted by a large hotel, and matches were taking place in two large conference-style rooms. Our team was among many also staying in the hotel for the tournament. I had a good position, in a line I know well, and we departed from ECO theory, insofar as my knowledge went, in the early middlegame. I was also building a good lead on the clock, with the control 50 moves in two hours, then finish the game in one hour; no increments (this was before clocks offering this option were invented). By move 18, I was ahead on the clock by 45 minutes, with my opponent having about half an hour to reach move 50 in a very complex position.

I eventually noticed that an older gentleman was in the habit of viewing our game up close for several minutes at a time, and then he would step away, back to the side of the room. My opponent would then walk over and speak quietly to him. I didn't attach any significance to this. However, a player from another team told me, in the hall outside the room, as I visited the washroom, that this man was a Grandmaster, who was coaching the Brooklyn College team!!! I didn't know who it was, but I was not very familiar with the American chess scene. I went back to the board, unsure on next steps. The pattern repeated; my position went from good to exceptionally unclear and sharp, when my opponent offered a very deep sacrifice, which startled me. I did speak to a tournament Arbiter about the possible coaching, asking only that the GM be removed from the room, and this was done. I fought hard, but my position proved beyond saving, and I resigned, with my opponent having three minutes left on his clock for the first control. We shook hands, then moved to the analysis area, and this older man joined us. He introduced himself, and I then recognized the name. He said he had reached a position from our game in a game he had played in a Soviet event in the 1950s, and recommended a different move to me, in what turned out to be the critical position. I wrote this down, with some of the analysis we came up with, and then looked at it later in some detail; his recommendation would have given me an equal game!!! I didn't make any formal complaint concerning the game and circumstances; for heaven's sake, it was a college event!!! After the round I informed my teammates, and we decided to let it go. I believe we won the match anyway!! It WAS a very nice game, BUT...

I was playing through the game score of this game the other day, as it happens. I may post it here sometime!!!