Carlsen resigns on move 2

[MJMcCready]

DO we know why he won't do that?

[NickFaulks]

DO we know why he won't do that?

Repeating myself, yes we do. He is a teenager whose only interest in life is studying and playing chess. He would be horrified by the prospect of being tied up for months or longer by highly paid lawyers.

[MJMcCready]

There has to be more to it than that. What you've stated are personal reasons. What about his professional side?

[Paul Heaton]

DO we know why he won't do that?

Repeating myself, yes we do. He is a teenager whose only interest in life is studying and playing chess. He would be horrified by the prospect of being tied up for months or longer by highly paid lawyers.

Nakamura said he had got legal threats in some clip. Since then he has toned down his language a lot.

[NickFaulks]

What about his professional side?

Based on the famous interview, he doesn't seem to have one.

[MJMcCready]

Strange.

[NickFaulks]

Strange.

What are you talking about? Neimann is a teenager, a complete loner with, as he says himself, far less experience of the real world than would be normal for someone of that age. You are saying that he should singlehanded take on the combined financial, legal and PR power of two of the three biggest organisations in world chess.

Credit where due, Carlsen has chosen his victim well.

[MJMcCready]

I'm not saying anything, I find the whole thing deplorable.

[Matt Bridgeman]

I'm not sure if this is on an earlier thread, but here is a clip posted today of Danny Rensch talking with Hikaru about how chess.com is treating their vast amount of player data now. One presumes that in terms of online play, Hans is falling foul of this type of analysis on some level; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIMIfjYNZ1A

[Matt Mackenzie]

Based on their past record, I am rather hesitant to "presume" anything.

[Paul Heaton]

You are saying that he should singlehanded take on the combined financial, legal and PR power of two of the three biggest organisations in world chess.

Credit where due, Carlsen has chosen his victim well.

I would think the St Louis Chess Club could buy chess.com and Play Magnus ten times over. I did wonder if Rex is providing support to Hans.

[Stephen Westmoreland]

You say that, but when was he cheating and when was he removed?

I don't think you will get an answer to that. My impression is that chess.com has dossiers on a large number of top players, ready to be released as required.

Niemann is obviously not going to bring a lawsuit against Carlsen - he is just a teenager who wants to do nothing with his life but study and play chess. I hope someone does though, because then all of this stuff will have to be made public, in one go rather than selectively drip-fed.

If Chess.com is releasing data relating to other people, won't that fall foul of data protection laws? So, if they shared information with Carlsen and others, it would be a breach. Happy to be corrected here but having worked in Financial Servies for a long time, we would get hammered if we did this.

[Chris Rice]

'The Niemann saga featured heavily on tonight's Have I Got News For You, predictably much of the focus was on anal beads which became a running joke for the rest of the show.

[Keith Arkell]

Meanwhile congratulations to Magnus Carlsen on reaching the final of the very strong 16 player Julius Baer Generation Cup.

The match should be very interesting, as he takes on one of the many super-talented young Indian GMs who have emerged in recent years - the amazing Arjun Erigaisi.

It's great to see that he doesn't appear to be too badly affected by his central role in alerting the chess world to the presence of someone he is sure is a serial cheat.

As Fabiano Caruana said a few days ago, Magnus has risked his own reputation in making the stance he has made. The World number 1 has also sacrificed a tournament and harmed his chances in another.

He has received a great deal of hate and vitriol, simply because he has shown that he is not an expert in dealing with these unpleasant matters. And why should he be an expert? He has up until lately spent his life playing chess against honest opponents. Chess is his business, not legal stuff.

It seems to me that his only mistake was not to withdraw immediately that a known cheat was drafted into the Sinquefield Cup at the last minute. Fabi made clear that Magnus contemplated doing so at the time.

I believe Magnus has kept quiet on the matter since his protest withdrawal from that event, at the advice of his lawyers, but I'm very much looking forward to the eventual denouement, when it does come, and I hope that he is brave enough / legally permitted to expose some of the goings on which more and more of us are hearing about, and which do not only involve online chess.

[Stephen Westmoreland]

Keith - as a risk manager, I am finding all the fascinating. Especially how controls can be bypassed and potential ways of cheating. There are humans at the end of this though.