CHENNAI: Arjun Erigaisi enjoyed an almost perfect day to be on top of the leaderboard after eight rounds of the Julius Baer Generation Cup, an online Rapid event.
But all the drama, not for the first time, was again reserved for what happened or did not in the match between Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen (the event is part of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour).
Just because of the previous recent history between the two players (the Norwegian had withdrawn from the Sinquefield Cup a day after the US player beat him before the former, in a thinly veiled tweet, hinted at some kind of foul play), this was the most exciting match-up on Monday.
True to form, the Classical world Champion, with black pieces, made one move (Nf6) before staging a protest resignation. Later in the day, he logged back on to beat Levon Aronian before holding R Praggnanandhaa.
His protest act set off another round of feverish speculation in the chess world. While a fair few Grandmasters called on the Norwegian to come out with evidence against the 19-year-old Niemann, Carlsen’s Norway teammate, Jon-Ludvig Hammer, wasn’t in the mood for any niceties.
He labelled Carlsen’s move as ‘most unsportsmanlike thing’ ever. “It’s the most unacceptable behaviour to lose on purpose,” he said on Norwegian TV. “The most unsportsmanlike thing you can do.”
Aronian claimed that the 31-year-old Carlsen may have a case. “I understand that frustration of Magnus,” he was quoted as saying by chess24.com. “Now I am somewhere in the middle. I do believe Hans has not been the cleanest person when it comes to online chess. But he’s a young guy, hopefully, this will be a lesson to him not to do any bad things online. Generally, I think this is a problem that requires a solution and there are solutions.”
Post Carlsen’s tweet, Hikaru Nakamura, world No 6, revealed that Niemann has been banned before from online games on chess.com for cheating (Niemann confirmed this in an interview but denies further wrongdoing).
Some others questioned why Niemann was even featured in this event but Tour Director, Arne Horvei, had explained their position.
“It says that if you are amongst the top eight players from the last tournament you are automatically invited to the next tournament. In Miami, we had eight players there and Hans participated. So he was automatically sent an invite to this event. That invite was sent well before the tournament in St Louis (Sinquefield Cup) started so it means that we sent that invite to him."
"After the commotion, which of course we have been following closely, we saw that there has been no indication of Hans Niemann being involved in any sort of cheating in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour so there was no reason for us whatsoever based on allegations back and forth to revoke his invitation."
Horvei also gave a clean chit to Niemann as far as games on Tour are concerned. “We have been closely analysing many games in the Tour so far and there has been no indication in his games that he has been involved in any cheating.”