Chess.com vs Hans Niemann, The Emerging Monopoly

When I first heard the news of chess.com’s upcoming acquisition of the Play Magnus Company, I must admit I was excited. Excited to see chess’s biggest superstar Magnus Carlsen team up with the most influential company in chess. I was eager to see the production quality of chess.com, combined with Carlsen consistently competing in top online events against other Grandmasters, such as the American superstar Hikaru Nakamura. I was certain that this coming together of titans would help grow the game of chess. However, over the last few days, my excitement has faded into fear.

The incident that led me to rethink my position on this merger, was the recent cheating scandal involving Grandmaster Hans Niemann. Carlsen recently withdrew from a tournament for the first time in his career after losing against 19-year-old Niemann in the Sinquefield Cup, held in St. Louis. Carlsen tweeted saying he’d withdrawn accompanied by a video of Jose Mourinho. The video is an old clip of José Mourinho saying: “If I speak I am in big trouble. Big, big trouble.” For those familiar with football, you would know this was Mourinho’s way of accusing the opposition and referees of cheating. This insinuation from Carlsen was leapt on by Nakamura who brought up the fact that Niemann had been previously banned from chess.com. Nakamura stated that Niemann was “probably cheating”. Other Grandmasters playing in the Sinquefield Cup, Levon Aronian and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, have stated there is no evidence that Niemann cheated against Carlsen. This being said, I am not writing this to speculate whether Niemann cheated, instead I am writing this to demonstrate how dangerous chess.com’s monopoly may be.

In a recent interview with the St. Louis chess club, Niemann brought forth information that alarmed me. Although he admitted that he cheated when he was 12 and 16 on chess.com, he vehemently stated that he has never cheated in over-the-board chess and has learned from his past mistakes. He said he spoke to chess.com CCO Danny Rensch and was given another chance. Right after he defeated Magnus he was banned from chess.com with no explanation. Chess.com never thought he would expose himself for cheating in the past and therefore wouldn’t bring up this new ban right after Carlsen joined chess.com. “I am not going to be scared, to be manipulated and to be conspired against to try and ruin my chess career,” Niemann said. “I am not going to let chess.com, I am not going to let Magnus Carlsen, I am not going to let Hikaru Nakamura, the three arguably biggest entities in chess simply slander my reputation”. Nakamura has been closely affiliated with chess.com for a long time.

Regardless if you believe Niemann cheated or he is innocent, this whole situation brings to light a scary situation. Chess.com has almost a complete monopoly over chess. Their only remaining competitor is Lichess, a nonprofit chess website. They are affiliated with the majority of chess content creators. They can control who gets invited to the vast majority of online events. They will be an uncontested broadcaster of all the major over-the-board events. Fide will be chess.com’s pawn. They can completely ruin someone’s chess career if they so choose. The future of chess is in chess.com’s hands and all we can do is pray they don’t abuse their power.