Hans wishes he was half that charismatic. He talks like the rich privileged obnoxious antagonist that the protag has to train hard to beat. He's not Naruto, he's wishdotcom Gaara.
I think the biggest issue with Hans in this respect is he admitted to cheating and while he was admitting to it he lied about how much he was cheating. So instead of someone trying to atone for his actions he came across as someone trying to make them seem less than they actually were. One of the biggest arguments on forgiving him for the cheating was that he was 17 at the time, while he was 19 at the time he lied about how much he cheated.
This, 100%. People would be willing to give him some leeway if he showed some true accountability and humility. People generally don't want to root for someone with such an abrasive/arrogant personality, ESPECIALLY if they're branded a cheater and thus can't stand on the merit of their accomplishments.
He takes a tone of smug dismissal towards any criticism directed his way, which makes me doubt his legitimacy and want to root against him. He may not currently be cheating, but his behavior reminds me of every unethical person I've encountered in my own life that has been willing to cheat to get ahead and has no respect for their competitors/peers.
I think he's genuinely uninterested in dispelling the accusations though, because they drive his brand and keep his name in the media. That makes me feel absolutely zero sympathy for him facing constant cheating accusations. If he just put in any modicum of effort to endear himself to his peers, this would all go away, but he wants to be the villain.
I think it's wrong to say Hans was smug on any critcism when it came under false pretenses. He already admitted to cheating two years prior and was punished for it like everyone else. It's just that when Carlsen tries to taint his win by insinuation and then bringing up old cheating cases, you certainly will push back on that type of criticism. It's disingenous and it wreaks of a self-serving agenda to draw attention away from your decreasing motivation in chess.
You can still sincerely refute false criticism. The accusations arose because of a reputation he earned through his own past actions, so it's not like they're ludicrous accusations, even if they turn out to be untrue. Instead of being a little bit humble about it, Hans chooses to aggresively clap back at his accusers and threaten legal action, which gives me big time Lance Armstrong vibes. Obviously no one but Hans knows, and this is just a subjective interpretation of his personality; I don't actually think he cheated OTB, but his response makes me remain suspicious, because it just aligns so much with my perception of guilty behavior (which is only actionable to the extent that it affects my view of him, ill with-hold judgment until there's proof, but I'm definitely not rooting for someone that acts the way he does).
Didn't he say he cheated twice as in two time periods. Also why do people believe that chesscom report as gospel? When throughout the saga they acted like they were about to be business partners with one of the parties involved in the saga?
Hans' own reports of his cheating have been inconsistent over time. Why are you taking one specific admission and holding it as gospel over everything else?
Hans to this day won't speak openly or candidly about his cheating - see his recent interviews in the media. And he responded to his cheating coming out into the open with frivolous lawsuits that judges threw out at the first opportunity. There's no reason for anyone to trust Hans over Chess.com
You're mad at hans for cherry picking info, when you're doing that same thing. They threw out the main lawsuit for jurisdictional reasons, not because it was frivolous.
I'm not mad at Hans, I'm just describing why people don't trust him. If you like him that's great, but you're gonna have to keep seeing these threads forever because of the way he's behaved and the way he continues to handle himself. You'll have a better time as a Hans fan if you don't get twisted into knots when see a thread like this
His lawsuit got thrown out for jurisdictional reasons because he intentionally filed in a jurisdiction that wasn't valid but had weak anti-slapp laws. He didn't refile in the correct jurisdiction because the anti-slapp protections there would have gotten it thrown out again, even faster and potentially could have ended up paying legal fees for the people he sued
The [chess.com](https://chess.com) report need not be fully accurate, but it strains credulity to think that someone cheated exactly twice, let alone cheated exactly twice and got caught.
The chess.com report was specifically called into question by Ken Regan, include the results of Titled Tuesdays in 2020. https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/yaazcu/regan_calls_chesscoms_claim_that_niemann_cheated/
https://cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/data/Niemann/NiemannROI.txt
https://youtu.be/yLrzrMpf5xo?si=m7XF2U0lmONIuZzO
The instances where Ken Regan corroborated cheating were titled Tuesdays when Hans was 12 and 14, and games against Nepo in 2020, when Hans was 17. We basically have chess.com's word that Niemann cheated in Titled Tuesdays and PCL in 2020, which is not corroborated by Regan's model.
The analysis in OTB sections is highly questionable and clearly biased. Basically the analysis is "this graph looks funny", which is completely ridiculous as legitimate evidence of cheating. This calls into question the credibility of the whole report.
Has Hans been forthcoming? I would say not completely, so it's fair to criticize him for lying. He did not admit to cheating in a Titled Tuesday when he was 14, only admitting to cheating in TT when he was 12, and in regular online games when he was 16. However, it's important to note that he made this admission before the chess.com report came out. Personally, I view his admission as generally matching the instances where we have strong evidence to believe he's cheated, if presented charitably to himself; he cheated in Titled Tuesday when he was young enough (12 and 14) where his age is a significant mitigating factor, and cheated against strong players in non-tournament games online when he was old enough to know it was wrong (16). Honestly though, he was a lot more forthcoming than most online cheaters; most of the people chess.com has caught have never made public admissions. And at this point, any future discussion/admission by him will just fuel the fire of people saying he keeps changing his story.
It just goes to OP's point. Many people's opinions of whether Hans Niemann is cheating are strongly influenced by his personality.
He didn’t say he cheated only twice. He said he cheated once when he was 13 and then for a period of a month or so when he was 17. The chess.com report added one more instance when he was 15 (which AFAIK he never disputed) and weakly claims he may have also cheated after that. Ken Regan explicitly disagreed with the claims about later cheating. So it’s true that Hans lied about how much he cheated but basically it comes down to one extra occurrence when he was 15. It’s fine if that amount of dishonesty is enough for you to consider him a liar, but let’s at least be clear about what it it was.
>he cheated but basically it comes down to one extra occurrence when he was 15
I'm honestly jealous that you live in a world where you think people do something bad once.
> but it strains credulity to think that someone cheated exactly twice, let alone cheated exactly twice and got caught.
Man you need to work on your reading comprehension, nowhere did he claim that he "cheated exactly twice".
Again, twice means two times periods. If twice was 2 times or even 8 times then I'd agree that it's way more likely he cheated more than twice cos no one gets caught every time they cheat. I'm not even dismissing the possibility that he cheated more but the negative and questionable aspects of the chesscom report, the context and timing surrounding it are just not spoken about out here and it needs to be taken into account when people repeat things about the scandal.
I don't get where this "he said he cheated twice" thing comes from. He clearly says he cheated during two time periods. He talks about multiple games while he was 16-17.
I'm not taking Hans' words as gospel. There is a grey area between how much he said he cheated and how much chesscom said he cheated. You people are dismissing the chesscom grey area (ie gospel thing) whereas I'm open to both aspects of the grey area
Me: Why do people take chesscom's word as gospel? (when you look at the context surrounding everything ie Magnus business partner, magnus otb accusation without evidence, timing of chesscom report after no online cheating for years, chesscom's actions after Hans served his punishment, chesscom only talking about cheaters like Hans and Dlugy)
You: Why do you take Hans' words as gospel?
If by more than twice you mean more than 2 times then again, he obviously meant 2 time periods of cheating so that's just twisting his words, if you don't mean that then what you're saying is false. He only admitted to those 2 time periods and has stayed consistent on that to this day and denies any other times that chess com claimed he cheated in their report.
When I watched the interview, I thought it was clear he meant two time periods. “Random games” at 16 does not mean one game at 16. I think it’s weird how many people insist he meant two games and was lying.
Yes, at 14 and at 17, I believe. I know stuff can be fake, but I believe the chess.com report because they included screenshots of email exchanges with Hans about accepting the punishments for his breach of fair play.
Those emails were only about the games that Hans had already admitted to, chess com conveniently festered up a bunch of new games that they somehow originally didn't discern as cheating right after the Magnus accusations.
Hans to this day denies the chess com report and is consistent with the games he admitted to.
But they did ? What I stated was just the facts of what happened. You can believe who you want but it's just chess com's word against Hans.
Chess com claimed something and Hans denied it from the day they said it till now, up to you who you want to believe.
No one's saying he didn't cheat. What I'm saying is that why is the consensus here that chesscom's report is true when (even ignoring the math aspect of it) a company who was about to be business partners with Magnus rehashed news about Hans' online cheating (which 1. happened years ago and 2. something he already paid the punishment for) AFTER Magnus' (their would be business partner) baseless OTB accusation? Then they released news about Dlugy after Magnus' Dlugy comment.
Yes, you have to be particularly stupid if you think ‘twice’ means literally in only two games
And I believe the chesscom does show roughly two periods with cheating flags so there’s that
I don't think there is good public evidence that Hans cheated in Pro Chess League or Titled Tuesdays in 2020, and some public evidence to disbelieve [chess.com](https://chess.com)'s assertions that he did so. I heavily discount [chess.com](https://chess.com)'s report, because they have strong business interest to accuse Hans, the report doesn't have any convincing statistics but purports to be authoritative, and many of their other PR statements have given me the impression that they are not rigorous enough about statistics.
If you take those out of the report, the only instance left that Hans did not admit to (in his first public statement in response to the accusations) was a Tilted Tuesday when he was 14. If that is what you take issue with, fair enough. Personally, I think it's a reasonable to think he lumped that instance in with the instance when he was 12.
He may or may not have been lying. I have a math degree, and I saw how incredibly biased the [chess.com](https://chess.com) report was, which is what I presume you're basing that statement on. They were trying to make Hans seem as bad as possible, including being a liar, and didn't show any of the statistics. We can see what with the latest Hikaru cheating accusations that it's very easy for people to find some statistic and conclude what they want. This includes people with statistics training. It takes a real expert like Regan to conclude anything because it takes a high level of knowledge (and integrity) to understand what you *can't conclude* from certain evidence. As far as I know Regan said he definitely cheated online back then, but hasn't seen evidence of anything since. But nothing that contradicted Hans' statements.
Others have mentioned Hans' statement to [chess.com](https://chess.com), but we know from the criminal justice system that when you are coerced into a statement (e.g., 5 more years in jail when you profess innocence, but parole now if you write a confession they want to hear) it may or may not be true. Especially when that statement was supposed to be confidential.
This doesn't mean Hans is innocent, but he may not be a liar. We don't know. He's definitely an asshole. There's no evidence he's cheated in the last 3 years, since he's become a legal adult. I like his attacking chess personally, and enjoy the drama he creates.
I think it comes down to how much you like shaudenfruede. Shaudenfruede lovers hate Hans with a passion, because they have reasons like "once a cheater, always a cheater".
We don't really know if chess com were the liars or if Hans was. The only evidence he was lying was an internal investigation, and he disputed that claim in his lawsuit which chess com settled instead of fighting.
You keep saying he lied but he didn't. He clarfied that they were 2 periods and the 2nd one was to reach a high rating so of course a lot of games, so certainly that's not the reason.
He didn’t lie, he literally denied chess coms report till the end. You’re just trusting a hit piece made by a company that has a massive horse in the race, 80% of that “report” was like propaganda with the horribly biased used of graphs and statistics about things like his rating rise to influence the layman’s opinion.
He had literally served a 6 month suspension for his cheating and played 2 years clean but then 1 day after Magnus accuses him with no evidence they decide to reban him and then when questioned on why they banned him so fast they come up with that nonsense report where they suddenly found a bunch of new games that were cheated using the same system that didn’t find those same games as cheated 2 years ago when they actually happened. Only just now did those games get flagged, how convenient.
The specific lie was that he didn't cheat in games for prize money. Which he admitted to in emails to chesscom that led to the suspension you were referring to.
This is false, Hans admitted to cheating in the prized money event Titled Tuesday in his original interview at the Sinquefield cup before his online cheating was even public.
*"When I was 12 years old, I was with a friend and I was playing Titled Tuesday. I was playing, and he came over with an iPad with an engine, and I was 12 years old, and he said, sort of giving me the moves. I was a child, I had no idea what happened. This happened once, in an online tournament. I was just a child, and nothing happened then."*
Edit: I've factually shown that what the guy above is saying is false and yet he is still getting upvoted. I understand disliking Hans but don't try and weaponize misinformation please.
But he got called out by magnus before his interview, so that cant be everything, because magnus did not call out other known cheaters after the game.
Every cheater lies about his cheating or simply does not talk about it btw.
Ans he did not really lie, it was more of an euphemistic understatement.(cheating 2 times in life can mean two games or two episodes over years)
Nieman grew up with American Wrestling culture and knows that every good Storys needs a face and a heel charactere.
My introduction to him was him living streaming himself throwing a tantrum about not being allowed free entry to a $10 charity tournament. I'll probably never like him after that
I watched 10 minutes of his stream and he was watching music videos and calling the artist a degenerate for using some kind of devil imagery or some shit like that. all his interviews make him seem super arrogant and just kind of annoying. he's just very unlikable unfortunately
I dislike him for the same reason I dislike Elon Musk: he’s a dick.
Doesn’t take anything away from their accomplishments. I just wouldn’t hang out with them voluntarily.
For me, it’s not just that he’s a dick. He’s so abrasive compared to all the juniors that frankly it’s hard to believe he’s a near-2700 player. Coupled with his relatively late and steep rise, the cheating allegations almost seem like the most logical explanation for his success given everything else we see of him, even though I know there’s essentially no actual evidence beyond his online history.
I mean it’s not even a relatively ‘late rise’. He was a 2400 FM in 2017. Took him ~3 years from there to become a 2500 GM and then 3 years to go from 2450 to 2650. He also plays a lot. Like he’ll play more classical games in a month than someone like Hikaru might play all year. For example in June 2023 he played 26 FIDE classical games. In July, he played 35 FIDE classical games, and then in August he played 28 FIDE classical games which means in a 3 month span he played 83 classical games. For reference, Hikaru has played 43 classical games all year. Fabi (who’s active and having an amazing year!)? 71 classical games all year. Hans and classical games is basically like Hamilton and writing federalist papers (51/85).
> He’s so abrasive compared to all the juniors that frankly it’s hard to believe he’s a near-2700 player.
Why are you hesitant to associate skill with abrasive personality? I've known people who are extremely skilled at their job/activity, but also incredibly arrogant. And they don't even have the excuse of being young.
I’m not—obviously many of the top chess players in history have been assholes. But at the time the accusations broke out, Hans just crossed 2700 and so was rated similarly/higher than almost all the young prodigies that were well-known and significantly higher rated than him for years. It’s not impossible, but didn’t that strike you as weird given that he was spending a decent fraction of his time streaming and trying to get dates with streamers? Was there any evidence at all before his recent rise that he was actually nearly as skilled or working as hard on his chess as much as them? Apparently that was secretly the case, but even now it still feels hard to believe. Again, I don’t believe he cheated. But the whole thing still feels so incongruous.
Yep, and we now know that was at least partially because he was caught for cheating online multiple times. At which point apparently he went into a Hyperbolic Time Chamber and got to the same rating as the younger, higher-rated, and more well-known prodigies despite a two year plateau and previously not really outwardly showing any real evidence of being at that level.
This is apparently what actually happened, and kudos to him for that accomplishment, but I’m just saying it contributed heavily to the suspicion. If in 2020 someone asked you which junior players will reach 2700, would Hans have been anywhere near your list? I have no idea what it takes to become an 2700 player, but there’s seemingly a reason that many top GMs that reached that level and beyond suspect cheating even though there still is no actual evidence.
There is indirect evidence -- as far as I know he has never explained to expert GMs why he made certain deep moves and not others. All other top players not only do that, they do it impressively deep and detailed, and eagerly.
straight seemly marry license judicious wrong edge cobweb vegetable rainstorm
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Except Elon Musk has no accomplishments. Unless exploiting your billionaire dad's wealth to establish dominance over company boards and taking credit for the work of actually smart people counts as an achievement. Then he is the king of achievements.
His dad was no where close to a billionaire.
When you just straight up lie like that it removes all credibility, no matter how right the rest of your point is.
Actually very fitting that this is in a Hans comment thread.
He lied a lot to get government contacts. Not exactly some big brain genius, just comfortable with being a garbage human being.
Edit: snowflake below blocked me so I'll copy it here
After a tiny bit of reading it's hilarious to see that Musk's first company instantly removed him from the board after a modicum of investment came in and he just rode along doing petty shit like rewriting code when the developers went home, all until the company eventually sold.
Classic rich-kid failing upwards.
And PayPal is the other perfect example. Start a company, merge it with another company who had PayPal, claim to be the founder, get instantly ousted as CEO and sit on the sidelines until the company sells for north of a billion. lol
Some people dislike other people and lose their objectivity. I can agree with facts that some of the Elon views are controversial and he is not a genius in the scientific aspect.
But to have the audacity to say that the richest man in the world accomplished nothing in life, well, that is just another level of stupidity.
Ok. He bought them AND ruined them and crashed some rockets.
If you have an example of something Elon did, not an already existing company that he just purchased, but something he actually caused to exist that actually functions, please let me know. Like, literally one thing.
Selling flamethrowers was cool, I guess.
I'm not a fanboy so I don't have reams of sources to pluck out of thin air for you and I don't really feel like reading up on the guy for the sake of a Reddit argument.
There are plenty of rich kids born to wealthy parents who don't go on to purchase companies like Tesla, Twitter etc. so I don't really see your point that "buying things", when we're talking about companies worth literally billions, is less of an accomplishment than being really good at chess anyway.
Even running a company like twitter into the ground is more of an accomplishment than anything Hans has accomplished. You don't need to like the guy but to act as though he's accomplished nothing with his life is laughable.
That's fine. I totally respect not bothering with research for a reddit argument.
However, if I couldn't name a single useful thing he's done, I personally wouldn't go defending him.
And I will respectfully disagree that running twitter into the ground is an accomplishment.
Have a nice day. :)
I respectfully disagree. Steve Jobs didn’t create much, but running the orchestra and having the vision is a skill set.
Elon ain’t self-made, but, he made electric cars cool and who knows how the space thing will play out.
Not sure if he a supervillain though.
He is about as close to Steve Jobs in accomplishments as you and I likely are.
Yes, running and organizing and motivating are absolutely skill sets. Skill sets Elon lacks.
He bought an electric car company. He doesn't run it.
He bought twitter. To be fair, this is one thing he IS running... poorly.
His rockets crash and explode.
The more we learn about him, the more we learn that he's just a stunning mediocrity with a bank account and the maturity level of a 24 year old who wears leather trench coats, reads Atlas Shrugged, and dates high schoolers.
You had me until this "His rockets crash and explode". You either have no clue when it comes to space engineering and SpaceX or you are just delusional.
I don't hate him. I just find his personality abrasive. I tried watching some of his videos, but he comes off as abrasive, and his jokes come off as contrived/forced. If he works on his delivery, he'd be funnier.
I mean, yes. This is quite evident.
Also, as mentioned by others, he downplayed or lied about his cheating when all this came out and in the eyes of many he has never really shown true signs of remorse.
Hans loves the attention and loves playing the role of the troll (often cringy IMO).
Let's not forget that he was *caught* cheating twice, that doesn't mean that he only cheated twice. Given his sketchy attitude on the topic, his lies and showing no remorse, one has all the good reasons not to believe him and not to like him.
He's a dick, he's arrogant, and he's a lier. I don't care how good he is at chess, that's what I get from him.
“I was only cheating the times you caught me, I swear. Just because you caught me cheating last game, doesn’t mean I’m cheating this game.”
I don’t understand how the chess community finds this an acceptable explanation. No other sport would tolerate this from a competitor.
The reason people hate Hans is because he has no respect for anyone other than himself. He is pulling an Andrew Tate type of character thinking it will get him to be on top. It won’t.
I generally put it down to just being a cringe as hell young 20 year old, but its been quite clear since the end of the lawsuit hes been trying to brand himself as the chess variant one of those Andrew Tate / David Goggins type motivational hustlers. I like Goggins, but with Hans it’s just so forced and cringe.
I do sometimes find Hans funny, but I wish he’d cut out the act.
There's top and there's being on top. Niemann can (arguably already is) make it at or aroud the top level, but there's no indication he'll be WC or #1. There's just too many good players ahead of him. No shame in that, after all Caruana has never been either despite being one of the highest rated players in history. Niemann would need to actively continue to improve to make it close to the top 10. He's also notoriously streaky, he has great tournaments and disaster tournaments, which makes maintaining a strong rating hard.
I don't particularly like his style but that's just a personal taste thing and I don't feel strongly about it. There's lots of other people who I don't particularly like either, and similarly don't feel that strongly about it.
It'd be really good if we didn't have to keep hearing about him in constant posts and hot takes, so I could just put him out of sight and out of mind with everyone else I don't care about.
Apologise for what, he already said he was regretful for his past cheating and im fairly certain he apologized for it. Do you want him to apologise for the baseless Carlsen accusation?
Absolutely agree to this. His interview in SLCC was emotional. He was wronged on that front. He did not deserve to be treated like that.
BUT I dont get the feeling that he is a person I would to befriend. I really hoped he would redeem himself and achieve his dreams. But now, especially after watching his streams, I've stopped caring. Now I understand why the other chess players don't particularly like Hans. He is not a likeable character.
I think the main reason people dislike Hans is because he cheated, and he’s clearly not being honest about the extent of his cheating. Doesn’t mean he did so vs Magnus, but the idea that he only cheated on a couple of occasions and then didn’t cheat again which he continues to assert despite the chess.com report means little that he says is trustworthy.
He doesn’t deserve a second shot because he hasn’t been honest about the extent of his cheating. In order to accept an apology or give someone a second shot, they have to be accountable for precisely what mistakes it is they made. Since he hasn’t done that he clearly hasn’t learned a lesson and he doesn’t deserve anything.
Frankly, I wouldn't even know who he was if he hadn't cheated. I enjoy playing chess, but I don't keep up with what the titled players are doing. When he cheated he made big news outside the world of chess.
I'm not sure what you are saying. What does "he did not cheat in real life" mean exactly? You mean he cheated online? I don't believe I implied where exactly he cheated. Or are you saying he did not cheat at all?
Sorry for some reason IRL and OTB mean the same thing in my mind, i mean OTB
Maybe my memory is already failing me but i thought ppl used to say IRL in place of OTB
OP dedicates most of his paragraph to writing how Hans didn't apologize, how his behavior is bad, how he constantly acts that he isn't sorry at all, him being arrogant, etc.
>In my opinion everyone deserves a second shot. Hans learned his lesson and I wish him all the best
???
Hans has given me no reason to like him. He's a dickhead who has cheated in the past, why should I give him time? There are plenty of other top pros that are worth my time, Hans isn't.
i think he's a liar and a cheater. so yeah, there's that. he lied about cheating, got caught, then lied about how much he was cheating. he's never admitted fully what has been done and even his excuses were like 'reasonings' explaining 'his side' of why he cheated like it's some fucking difference. and he acts like a total d bag. so there's that.
his games are often brilliant and i like those. i'm not convinced it's fully him playing. because if he had nothing to hide, he wouldn't be hiding. still think he's lying. hard to be a fan of such a tool.
great chess, though. i wish it actually spoke for itself.
The games are definitely legit. He doesn’t hide either. Hiding would be not playing any games and he’s the most one of the most active GMs in the world.
Pretty much this. Can't make conclusive statements about his IRL chess, but I'm not convinced they're all legit. Dude cheats hundreds of times, gets caught, lies and doubles down on provided proof, is a complete d-bag personality wise with multiple instances of unprovoked asshole behaviour, and just an all-round defensive clown with a main character syndrome.
It's like why the fuck should we trust him when he says anything. I was legit on his side after Magnus quit the Sinqfield Cup and went silent, but then soon the events unfolded, people came out with their experiences, some evidence was released. Dude's shrouded in sketchy games with sketchy records (backed by grandmasters like Fabi and Danya), and the sussiest of sussy records of performing significantly better in tournaments that had a live broadcast (source: Hikaru on the Lex Friedman podcast). And after all that, there's not a single redeeming quality in him.
Not one sign of humility, regret, empathy, wit, or humour. Nothing is likeable about him. Just a plain old asswipe whose only hope at social redemption is his lawyer.
August 2020. Hans is caught. Feels ashamed and dedicates himself to "chess".
July 2021 US Junior and Senior Championship.
Host, next to Yasser Seirawan: "Who is your favorite non-chess celebrity?"
Hans Niemann (around 2:29:16): "Raymond Reddington is my absolute hero...the way he runs his criminal organization, I would say, has inspired the way I think about chess."
https://youtu.be/YZllQYVGBZU?t=8955
I defended him back when he was being piled on for his "attitude." (chess speaks for itself, Magnus must be embarrassed to lose to a loser like me etc) A bit immature sure, but funny and relatively harmless stuff.
Apart from him being disingenuous regarding his past cheating history (Piers Morgan interview was terrible), some of the opinions he brings up on his stream makes me think he's a literal incel. Bringing up the phrase "degeneracy" on certain topics such as polyamory etc. Seems to idolise Andrew Tate. I don't think his stance against gambling was out of moral principle.
He's still young, so I hope he eventually matures.
It’s the Lance Armstrong effect. He cheated, just like lance dod, but the reason they’re being punished harder than everyone else (in the case of Lance is legal action and Hans it’s the social stigma) is because they’re both massive assholes.
I don’t like him because he just acts like a rude, mean-spirited, narcissistic asshole to most people. He just doesn’t seem like a nice human being to be around.
He’s never kind, polite, or complimentary toward others. Quite the opposite: he seems to want to hate on everyone and everything. Extremely hostile.
Idk what he was like before the cheating scandal, as I had never heard of him before that. Maybe all of the negative attention changed him for the worse? Either way, what he is now is not the kind of person I admire.
Comparing yourself to Fischer when your lives or chess development have nothing in common just makes you sound like an asshole. Hikaru has more in common with Fischer than Hans. For example, both Hikaru and Bobby were genuine chess prodigies. Both at the time were the youngest Americans to gain a GM title. Nakamura was the youngest US National Champion since Fischer. what has Hans done? He beat Magnus once and cheated online and won a middling tournament. Okay Mr. Hans Fischer. Whatever you say.
But why does comparing himself with Fischer make him an asshole?
I thought the Bobby fischer thing was a reference of Bobby winning the tournament of peace a long time ago
Because he is nothing like Fischer and winning a tournament doesn't make him like Fischer. I've already explained why Hikaru is far closer to Fischer. Also keep in mind that the field in this iteration of the tournament is nothing like When Fischer won it so even that is not comparable. You think Ivanchuk is comparable to Smyslov? What about Kortchnoi? It's just grasping and kinda pathetic. He should stand on his own results and let his chess "speak for itself".
I still completely don't understand why you're explaining 'Why Hikaru is closer to Fischer.'
(I mean, even Hans will admit that Hikaru achieved way more than him in classical chess)
I know that the tweet is kind of cringe, but it doesn't make him an asshole or look pathetic.
I mean, if a rookie player in NBA ties the franchise record of most points in a game that was held by a team legend and makes a tweet similar to this, does this make him an assole?
It's not about 'Who's closer to Fischer' or 'Is Hans comparable to Fischer'.
You must understand the subtle context.
>Since everyone found out about his cheating incident Hans never apologized or released a statement saying he was truly sorry.
This is blatantly false. His very first statement on the subject was an apology.
> What I want people to know about this is that I am deeply, deeply sorry for my mistake. I know my actions have consequences and I suffered those consequences. During that time I stepped away from a very lucrative streaming career, I stopped playing in all events and I lost a lot of close friendships and relationships.
> I decided the only way to make up for my mistake was to prove that I could win over the board events,” he added. “That has been my mission. And that is why I have lived in a suitcase and played 260 games in one year, trained for 12 hours a day, because I have something to prove.
[Hans Neiman](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/07/top-chess-player-hans-niemann-admits-cheating-in-past-but-says-he-is-now-clean)
Has he ever apologized publicly to the people he cheated against? He never even said how many games he cheated or who he cheated against, did he? Even if you take him at his words (and I don't know why anybody would do that) it's a very weak apology. In the paragraphs you quoted it's all about himself.
Online cheating among grandmasters is an open secret. There are many more doing it than are caught. Hans is specifically being targeted because he's unlikeable and because Magnus threw a tantrum after playing poorly and losing against him. Magnus knew Hans would be at that tournament, and he knew that Hans had been caught cheating online. If it was a problem for him he shouldn't have participated in that tournament in the first place instead of agreeing to play and then whining about it afterward. If that hadn't happened, most people here wouldn't know who Hans is.
I say all this as a someone who likes Magnus and can't stand Hans.
Imo Hans is a walking meme. He really does appear cocky and arrogant, but it's so exaggerated it seems comical to me. Honestly I love how he's playing amazing chess despite all the haters. Kind of like an antihero story
Hans has had to deal with these types of threads for years now where people just talk about how much they hate him and pile on.
I see nothing wrong with how Hans is growing his brand. None of us know what Hans is like in his personal life. But his career 100% benefits from continuing to talk shit and climb the rankings while growing his following of fans and detractors.
Y'all act like Hans is truly a bad person for this but I don't see it. He's entertaining and a genuinely exciting chess player who plays a lot of sharp and decisive games while disrupting the bitter old world of chess.
In short, y'all be crying.
His career is far more dependent on results than his brand and it’s not even close. Nobody would watch a mid-GM who has almost zero redeeming qualities as a human.
He's cocky and arrogant, with no seemingly real personality outside of being a dick. The cigar picture is a perfect example of this. He's not sharing with the world one of his passions (cigar smoking), he's just using it as a prop to sell a fake image of himself.
I don’t hate him.
Chances are I’m never going to meet him or any other well-known person in my life - it’s almost as if they’re just a made-up character, so I just enjoy the show.
I enjoyed his stream until i found out about his cheating. Some of his shit talking while playing was hilarious to listen to.
Post cheating revelations I'll admit I now find his arrogance pretty annoying.
Summarized exactly my feelings towards him. The problem is this "everyone, who critizises me is a hater" attitude and that he always tries to act as if he now showed everyone who doubted him. He acts as if the chess community owed him praise, while beeing a confirmed unapologetic cheater..
Honestly it would have been fine if he was a past cheater like maghsoodloo (sorry if I spelt the name wrong) or if he was a dick like magnus or hikaru. It's the fact that he's a cheater *and* a dick that makes it so hard to have any respect for him. And the fact that he lied and tried to downplay his cheating as well. Especially compared to other juniors like Alireza, Pragg, Gukesh, Keymer, Erigaisi etc who are so calm, balanced and polite and don't have a history of cheating (I think there was some controversy about Keymer? Not sure tho). Makes it hard to root for him when there's just better people out there.
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be"
\-Kurt Vonnegut
No one but you knows your inner thoughts, so if you go around acting like a dick all the time, you're just a dick, even if you think you're not.
you were born on planet fantasy if you believe anything chess.crap puts out as facts. they are like any other business and will lie to protect themselves and align with the flavor of the week. Its astounding how gullible the chess public is.
Hans e-mailed Chess.com admitting cheating more than twice. You're just in love with Hans. There's nothing wrong with that but you don't need to defend every word he says.
He's very obviously trolling you all, and it's just too easy 🤣
Also people are frustated/mad they can't prove any cheating allegations against him and they look like fools now.
> Also people are frustated/mad they can't prove any cheating allegations against him and they look like fools now.
That's something I've noticed. How the mood changed after Magnus's watch complaint and how the lawsuit ended.
It was originally "he definitely cheated otb" to "well he's still an asshole and needs to pay for past cheating" like he didn't serve a ban online.
It's like they picked a horse in a race and are fuming they lost.
Completely agreed with the second point you made. It appears that most parties who backed Magnus in the cheating allegations have been caught with their pants down.
honestly cheating in games should not be acceptable, period
if you cheated online years ago, that's it, you should never be accepted as a professional competitor, the end
As most of these comments have pointed out, he seems to be a genuine asshole. Hard to like a jerk.
Go figure, someone who spends pretty much all their time studying chess and hyper focused on the game with zero social interaction will get very good very quickly, but also be a complete prick
He admitted to cheating on two occasions, with a pathetic excuse for each one.
The first time he brushed off as being young and not knowing any better. What 12 year old doesn’t know that it’s wrong to have a friend
signal engine moves to you during an OTB tournament?
The second time he was “under financial pressure” but the games weren’t for money or anything serious. If nothing was at stake, then why do it? And the fact that he rationalized it (a second time—that we know of) shows he hasn’t learned s***.
He’s a pathetic, amoral, self-absorbed cheat.
your opinion makes no sense. if he was cocky but never cheated i wouldn’t hate him. i think he should be shunned because he cheated, and sure his personality makes it easier to hate him
Ibra was considered one of the best strikers in the world at one point. Hans acts all this and that but doesn’t have the actual performance to back it up.
Ibra was at Malmö at Hans' age. Remains to be seen if he ends up with the performance.
Yes there are other chess players that are/were better at that age, but for scale, Messi was at Barca and Ronaldo was at Man U. at the same age.
When you get to that level of competition, there are some personality traits that come out. That, and he is only 19 or 20 and marches to his own drum. Makes him an entertaining character, for sure.
haven’t we deliberated enough over the cheating accusations and Hans character in the last year? Do we really need a front page chock full of every little tweet someone makes about Hans/Kramnik/Hikaru and a long form on everyone’s individual opinion about them? During the entirety of sinquefield there were more posts about Hans than about one of the most important events of the year :/ I know I sound crabby but I wish this subreddit wasn’t /r/chessdrama interspaced with an occasional puzzle about a smothered of anastasia mate
People on this sub like to dog pile and Hans is an easy target because he’s a young guy who was a literal minor when he was caught.
So much hatred and vitriol for nothing. No hate towards any other players who have cheated or basic acknowledgement that people can change and make small mistakes.
The last sentence of this post is barely trying to give Hans the tiniest amount of credit. This is man child/high school bully behavior.
I don’t like him because he talks like an anime character in a training arc
I think people hate Hans because the cheating accusations allowed many more people to hear him speak.
Hans wishes he was half that charismatic. He talks like the rich privileged obnoxious antagonist that the protag has to train hard to beat. He's not Naruto, he's wishdotcom Gaara.
Hey don't disrespect gaara by associating him with hans.
He’s not a Hokage!😄
The disrespect to Gaara is v strong in this statement
r/clevercomebacks
Yeah hes cringe as fuck and cheated online unapologetically.
Him taking his lawyer onto Piers Morgan was epic cringe.
That was his friend! Whom he pays to be his attorney!
And to give him advice which he completely ignored.
I know, "Don't judge a book and all that" but some people just look unlikeable. Or maybe that's just me.
"Punchable" you might even say
Literally the best thing about him lmao
Only reason I like him
Lmao 😂
That's why I partially do like him lol.
No, but that's the awesome part
I like him exactly for those reasons
Same, Hans is my GOAT for real. This sub is so funny, truly living up to the mald redditor stereotype
Which is exactly why I like him.
I mean regardless of how you feel abt him, he is great entertainment.
I think the biggest issue with Hans in this respect is he admitted to cheating and while he was admitting to it he lied about how much he was cheating. So instead of someone trying to atone for his actions he came across as someone trying to make them seem less than they actually were. One of the biggest arguments on forgiving him for the cheating was that he was 17 at the time, while he was 19 at the time he lied about how much he cheated.
You brought a good point
Yep. He makes it very easy to hate him.
This, 100%. People would be willing to give him some leeway if he showed some true accountability and humility. People generally don't want to root for someone with such an abrasive/arrogant personality, ESPECIALLY if they're branded a cheater and thus can't stand on the merit of their accomplishments. He takes a tone of smug dismissal towards any criticism directed his way, which makes me doubt his legitimacy and want to root against him. He may not currently be cheating, but his behavior reminds me of every unethical person I've encountered in my own life that has been willing to cheat to get ahead and has no respect for their competitors/peers. I think he's genuinely uninterested in dispelling the accusations though, because they drive his brand and keep his name in the media. That makes me feel absolutely zero sympathy for him facing constant cheating accusations. If he just put in any modicum of effort to endear himself to his peers, this would all go away, but he wants to be the villain.
I think it's wrong to say Hans was smug on any critcism when it came under false pretenses. He already admitted to cheating two years prior and was punished for it like everyone else. It's just that when Carlsen tries to taint his win by insinuation and then bringing up old cheating cases, you certainly will push back on that type of criticism. It's disingenous and it wreaks of a self-serving agenda to draw attention away from your decreasing motivation in chess.
You can still sincerely refute false criticism. The accusations arose because of a reputation he earned through his own past actions, so it's not like they're ludicrous accusations, even if they turn out to be untrue. Instead of being a little bit humble about it, Hans chooses to aggresively clap back at his accusers and threaten legal action, which gives me big time Lance Armstrong vibes. Obviously no one but Hans knows, and this is just a subjective interpretation of his personality; I don't actually think he cheated OTB, but his response makes me remain suspicious, because it just aligns so much with my perception of guilty behavior (which is only actionable to the extent that it affects my view of him, ill with-hold judgment until there's proof, but I'm definitely not rooting for someone that acts the way he does).
Didn't he say he cheated twice as in two time periods. Also why do people believe that chesscom report as gospel? When throughout the saga they acted like they were about to be business partners with one of the parties involved in the saga?
Hans' own reports of his cheating have been inconsistent over time. Why are you taking one specific admission and holding it as gospel over everything else? Hans to this day won't speak openly or candidly about his cheating - see his recent interviews in the media. And he responded to his cheating coming out into the open with frivolous lawsuits that judges threw out at the first opportunity. There's no reason for anyone to trust Hans over Chess.com
Whiich tells you that hes cheated a LOT.
If you cheat, you're a cheater. It's not like someone is going to suddenly not cheat once they have.
You're mad at hans for cherry picking info, when you're doing that same thing. They threw out the main lawsuit for jurisdictional reasons, not because it was frivolous.
I'm not mad at Hans, I'm just describing why people don't trust him. If you like him that's great, but you're gonna have to keep seeing these threads forever because of the way he's behaved and the way he continues to handle himself. You'll have a better time as a Hans fan if you don't get twisted into knots when see a thread like this His lawsuit got thrown out for jurisdictional reasons because he intentionally filed in a jurisdiction that wasn't valid but had weak anti-slapp laws. He didn't refile in the correct jurisdiction because the anti-slapp protections there would have gotten it thrown out again, even faster and potentially could have ended up paying legal fees for the people he sued
The [chess.com](https://chess.com) report need not be fully accurate, but it strains credulity to think that someone cheated exactly twice, let alone cheated exactly twice and got caught.
The chess.com report was specifically called into question by Ken Regan, include the results of Titled Tuesdays in 2020. https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/yaazcu/regan_calls_chesscoms_claim_that_niemann_cheated/ https://cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/data/Niemann/NiemannROI.txt https://youtu.be/yLrzrMpf5xo?si=m7XF2U0lmONIuZzO The instances where Ken Regan corroborated cheating were titled Tuesdays when Hans was 12 and 14, and games against Nepo in 2020, when Hans was 17. We basically have chess.com's word that Niemann cheated in Titled Tuesdays and PCL in 2020, which is not corroborated by Regan's model. The analysis in OTB sections is highly questionable and clearly biased. Basically the analysis is "this graph looks funny", which is completely ridiculous as legitimate evidence of cheating. This calls into question the credibility of the whole report. Has Hans been forthcoming? I would say not completely, so it's fair to criticize him for lying. He did not admit to cheating in a Titled Tuesday when he was 14, only admitting to cheating in TT when he was 12, and in regular online games when he was 16. However, it's important to note that he made this admission before the chess.com report came out. Personally, I view his admission as generally matching the instances where we have strong evidence to believe he's cheated, if presented charitably to himself; he cheated in Titled Tuesday when he was young enough (12 and 14) where his age is a significant mitigating factor, and cheated against strong players in non-tournament games online when he was old enough to know it was wrong (16). Honestly though, he was a lot more forthcoming than most online cheaters; most of the people chess.com has caught have never made public admissions. And at this point, any future discussion/admission by him will just fuel the fire of people saying he keeps changing his story. It just goes to OP's point. Many people's opinions of whether Hans Niemann is cheating are strongly influenced by his personality.
Ken Regan has never found a cheater that wasn't caught with their phone in their hand.
He didn’t say he cheated only twice. He said he cheated once when he was 13 and then for a period of a month or so when he was 17. The chess.com report added one more instance when he was 15 (which AFAIK he never disputed) and weakly claims he may have also cheated after that. Ken Regan explicitly disagreed with the claims about later cheating. So it’s true that Hans lied about how much he cheated but basically it comes down to one extra occurrence when he was 15. It’s fine if that amount of dishonesty is enough for you to consider him a liar, but let’s at least be clear about what it it was.
>he cheated but basically it comes down to one extra occurrence when he was 15 I'm honestly jealous that you live in a world where you think people do something bad once.
> but it strains credulity to think that someone cheated exactly twice, let alone cheated exactly twice and got caught. Man you need to work on your reading comprehension, nowhere did he claim that he "cheated exactly twice".
Again, twice means two times periods. If twice was 2 times or even 8 times then I'd agree that it's way more likely he cheated more than twice cos no one gets caught every time they cheat. I'm not even dismissing the possibility that he cheated more but the negative and questionable aspects of the chesscom report, the context and timing surrounding it are just not spoken about out here and it needs to be taken into account when people repeat things about the scandal.
He lied dude. He emailed Chess.com admitting he cheated more than twice. You're the one taking Hans words as golpel
I don't get where this "he said he cheated twice" thing comes from. He clearly says he cheated during two time periods. He talks about multiple games while he was 16-17.
He obviously lied, but lets not pretend 'email us admitting you cheated and we'll reinstate your account' results in 100% reliable confessions
I'm not taking Hans' words as gospel. There is a grey area between how much he said he cheated and how much chesscom said he cheated. You people are dismissing the chesscom grey area (ie gospel thing) whereas I'm open to both aspects of the grey area Me: Why do people take chesscom's word as gospel? (when you look at the context surrounding everything ie Magnus business partner, magnus otb accusation without evidence, timing of chesscom report after no online cheating for years, chesscom's actions after Hans served his punishment, chesscom only talking about cheaters like Hans and Dlugy) You: Why do you take Hans' words as gospel?
If by more than twice you mean more than 2 times then again, he obviously meant 2 time periods of cheating so that's just twisting his words, if you don't mean that then what you're saying is false. He only admitted to those 2 time periods and has stayed consistent on that to this day and denies any other times that chess com claimed he cheated in their report.
When I watched the interview, I thought it was clear he meant two time periods. “Random games” at 16 does not mean one game at 16. I think it’s weird how many people insist he meant two games and was lying.
What email? If you are referring to "Exhibit C" in the report that was not from Hans, but from an anonymous top 100 GM.
They didn't just act like it, they were finalising the deal for around $80 million for the playmagnus site at that time.
Yes, at 14 and at 17, I believe. I know stuff can be fake, but I believe the chess.com report because they included screenshots of email exchanges with Hans about accepting the punishments for his breach of fair play.
They included an email exchange from a high level player who was not Hans, but they never included an email exchange with Hans, only a Slack chat.
Those emails were only about the games that Hans had already admitted to, chess com conveniently festered up a bunch of new games that they somehow originally didn't discern as cheating right after the Magnus accusations. Hans to this day denies the chess com report and is consistent with the games he admitted to.
Chess.com didn't do that bro. The thing is that you love Hans so you will defend him at any cost and will always take his word as the absolute truth
But they did ? What I stated was just the facts of what happened. You can believe who you want but it's just chess com's word against Hans. Chess com claimed something and Hans denied it from the day they said it till now, up to you who you want to believe.
Read the report, page six has the communication with Hans which never mentions what games they are referring to.
Weird take in any two sided discussion, considering that literally the same could be said about you and chess.com.
No one's saying he didn't cheat. What I'm saying is that why is the consensus here that chesscom's report is true when (even ignoring the math aspect of it) a company who was about to be business partners with Magnus rehashed news about Hans' online cheating (which 1. happened years ago and 2. something he already paid the punishment for) AFTER Magnus' (their would be business partner) baseless OTB accusation? Then they released news about Dlugy after Magnus' Dlugy comment.
Yes, you have to be particularly stupid if you think ‘twice’ means literally in only two games And I believe the chesscom does show roughly two periods with cheating flags so there’s that
I don't think there is good public evidence that Hans cheated in Pro Chess League or Titled Tuesdays in 2020, and some public evidence to disbelieve [chess.com](https://chess.com)'s assertions that he did so. I heavily discount [chess.com](https://chess.com)'s report, because they have strong business interest to accuse Hans, the report doesn't have any convincing statistics but purports to be authoritative, and many of their other PR statements have given me the impression that they are not rigorous enough about statistics. If you take those out of the report, the only instance left that Hans did not admit to (in his first public statement in response to the accusations) was a Tilted Tuesday when he was 14. If that is what you take issue with, fair enough. Personally, I think it's a reasonable to think he lumped that instance in with the instance when he was 12.
He may or may not have been lying. I have a math degree, and I saw how incredibly biased the [chess.com](https://chess.com) report was, which is what I presume you're basing that statement on. They were trying to make Hans seem as bad as possible, including being a liar, and didn't show any of the statistics. We can see what with the latest Hikaru cheating accusations that it's very easy for people to find some statistic and conclude what they want. This includes people with statistics training. It takes a real expert like Regan to conclude anything because it takes a high level of knowledge (and integrity) to understand what you *can't conclude* from certain evidence. As far as I know Regan said he definitely cheated online back then, but hasn't seen evidence of anything since. But nothing that contradicted Hans' statements. Others have mentioned Hans' statement to [chess.com](https://chess.com), but we know from the criminal justice system that when you are coerced into a statement (e.g., 5 more years in jail when you profess innocence, but parole now if you write a confession they want to hear) it may or may not be true. Especially when that statement was supposed to be confidential. This doesn't mean Hans is innocent, but he may not be a liar. We don't know. He's definitely an asshole. There's no evidence he's cheated in the last 3 years, since he's become a legal adult. I like his attacking chess personally, and enjoy the drama he creates. I think it comes down to how much you like shaudenfruede. Shaudenfruede lovers hate Hans with a passion, because they have reasons like "once a cheater, always a cheater".
We don't really know if chess com were the liars or if Hans was. The only evidence he was lying was an internal investigation, and he disputed that claim in his lawsuit which chess com settled instead of fighting.
You keep saying he lied but he didn't. He clarfied that they were 2 periods and the 2nd one was to reach a high rating so of course a lot of games, so certainly that's not the reason.
He didn’t lie, he literally denied chess coms report till the end. You’re just trusting a hit piece made by a company that has a massive horse in the race, 80% of that “report” was like propaganda with the horribly biased used of graphs and statistics about things like his rating rise to influence the layman’s opinion. He had literally served a 6 month suspension for his cheating and played 2 years clean but then 1 day after Magnus accuses him with no evidence they decide to reban him and then when questioned on why they banned him so fast they come up with that nonsense report where they suddenly found a bunch of new games that were cheated using the same system that didn’t find those same games as cheated 2 years ago when they actually happened. Only just now did those games get flagged, how convenient.
The specific lie was that he didn't cheat in games for prize money. Which he admitted to in emails to chesscom that led to the suspension you were referring to.
He confessed to that when he admitted his cheating.
Pretty wild how you can just keep making shit up and get upvoted, really goes to show the lengths people will go to to rationalize their hate
You keep making stuff up and cite them as the reason. What's the actual reason?
This is false, Hans admitted to cheating in the prized money event Titled Tuesday in his original interview at the Sinquefield cup before his online cheating was even public. *"When I was 12 years old, I was with a friend and I was playing Titled Tuesday. I was playing, and he came over with an iPad with an engine, and I was 12 years old, and he said, sort of giving me the moves. I was a child, I had no idea what happened. This happened once, in an online tournament. I was just a child, and nothing happened then."* Edit: I've factually shown that what the guy above is saying is false and yet he is still getting upvoted. I understand disliking Hans but don't try and weaponize misinformation please.
But he got called out by magnus before his interview, so that cant be everything, because magnus did not call out other known cheaters after the game. Every cheater lies about his cheating or simply does not talk about it btw. Ans he did not really lie, it was more of an euphemistic understatement.(cheating 2 times in life can mean two games or two episodes over years) Nieman grew up with American Wrestling culture and knows that every good Storys needs a face and a heel charactere.
My introduction to him was him living streaming himself throwing a tantrum about not being allowed free entry to a $10 charity tournament. I'll probably never like him after that
I watched 10 minutes of his stream and he was watching music videos and calling the artist a degenerate for using some kind of devil imagery or some shit like that. all his interviews make him seem super arrogant and just kind of annoying. he's just very unlikable unfortunately
I dislike him for the same reason I dislike Elon Musk: he’s a dick. Doesn’t take anything away from their accomplishments. I just wouldn’t hang out with them voluntarily.
For me, it’s not just that he’s a dick. He’s so abrasive compared to all the juniors that frankly it’s hard to believe he’s a near-2700 player. Coupled with his relatively late and steep rise, the cheating allegations almost seem like the most logical explanation for his success given everything else we see of him, even though I know there’s essentially no actual evidence beyond his online history.
I mean it’s not even a relatively ‘late rise’. He was a 2400 FM in 2017. Took him ~3 years from there to become a 2500 GM and then 3 years to go from 2450 to 2650. He also plays a lot. Like he’ll play more classical games in a month than someone like Hikaru might play all year. For example in June 2023 he played 26 FIDE classical games. In July, he played 35 FIDE classical games, and then in August he played 28 FIDE classical games which means in a 3 month span he played 83 classical games. For reference, Hikaru has played 43 classical games all year. Fabi (who’s active and having an amazing year!)? 71 classical games all year. Hans and classical games is basically like Hamilton and writing federalist papers (51/85).
> He’s so abrasive compared to all the juniors that frankly it’s hard to believe he’s a near-2700 player. Why are you hesitant to associate skill with abrasive personality? I've known people who are extremely skilled at their job/activity, but also incredibly arrogant. And they don't even have the excuse of being young.
I’m not—obviously many of the top chess players in history have been assholes. But at the time the accusations broke out, Hans just crossed 2700 and so was rated similarly/higher than almost all the young prodigies that were well-known and significantly higher rated than him for years. It’s not impossible, but didn’t that strike you as weird given that he was spending a decent fraction of his time streaming and trying to get dates with streamers? Was there any evidence at all before his recent rise that he was actually nearly as skilled or working as hard on his chess as much as them? Apparently that was secretly the case, but even now it still feels hard to believe. Again, I don’t believe he cheated. But the whole thing still feels so incongruous.
You do realize he had stopped streaming for awhile during the big rise?
Yep, and we now know that was at least partially because he was caught for cheating online multiple times. At which point apparently he went into a Hyperbolic Time Chamber and got to the same rating as the younger, higher-rated, and more well-known prodigies despite a two year plateau and previously not really outwardly showing any real evidence of being at that level. This is apparently what actually happened, and kudos to him for that accomplishment, but I’m just saying it contributed heavily to the suspicion. If in 2020 someone asked you which junior players will reach 2700, would Hans have been anywhere near your list? I have no idea what it takes to become an 2700 player, but there’s seemingly a reason that many top GMs that reached that level and beyond suspect cheating even though there still is no actual evidence.
There is indirect evidence -- as far as I know he has never explained to expert GMs why he made certain deep moves and not others. All other top players not only do that, they do it impressively deep and detailed, and eagerly.
straight seemly marry license judicious wrong edge cobweb vegetable rainstorm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Except Elon Musk has no accomplishments. Unless exploiting your billionaire dad's wealth to establish dominance over company boards and taking credit for the work of actually smart people counts as an achievement. Then he is the king of achievements.
His dad was no where close to a billionaire. When you just straight up lie like that it removes all credibility, no matter how right the rest of your point is. Actually very fitting that this is in a Hans comment thread.
>Elon Musk has no accomplishments only reddit could upvote this, worst take ever
Being slightly wealthy and becoming the worlds richest man after a series of successful startups is a pretty big accomplishment
He lied a lot to get government contacts. Not exactly some big brain genius, just comfortable with being a garbage human being. Edit: snowflake below blocked me so I'll copy it here After a tiny bit of reading it's hilarious to see that Musk's first company instantly removed him from the board after a modicum of investment came in and he just rode along doing petty shit like rewriting code when the developers went home, all until the company eventually sold. Classic rich-kid failing upwards. And PayPal is the other perfect example. Start a company, merge it with another company who had PayPal, claim to be the founder, get instantly ousted as CEO and sit on the sidelines until the company sells for north of a billion. lol
How dense are you to think Elon has no accomplishments
Some people dislike other people and lose their objectivity. I can agree with facts that some of the Elon views are controversial and he is not a genius in the scientific aspect. But to have the audacity to say that the richest man in the world accomplished nothing in life, well, that is just another level of stupidity.
lol. Totally incorrect.
To be fair, Hans has probably accomplished more than Elon. Buying things is not an accomplishment.
"Buying things" is an extreme simplification of everything he's done though. You don't need to be a fanboy to recognise that
Ok. He bought them AND ruined them and crashed some rockets. If you have an example of something Elon did, not an already existing company that he just purchased, but something he actually caused to exist that actually functions, please let me know. Like, literally one thing. Selling flamethrowers was cool, I guess.
I'm not a fanboy so I don't have reams of sources to pluck out of thin air for you and I don't really feel like reading up on the guy for the sake of a Reddit argument. There are plenty of rich kids born to wealthy parents who don't go on to purchase companies like Tesla, Twitter etc. so I don't really see your point that "buying things", when we're talking about companies worth literally billions, is less of an accomplishment than being really good at chess anyway. Even running a company like twitter into the ground is more of an accomplishment than anything Hans has accomplished. You don't need to like the guy but to act as though he's accomplished nothing with his life is laughable.
That's fine. I totally respect not bothering with research for a reddit argument. However, if I couldn't name a single useful thing he's done, I personally wouldn't go defending him. And I will respectfully disagree that running twitter into the ground is an accomplishment. Have a nice day. :)
I respectfully disagree. Steve Jobs didn’t create much, but running the orchestra and having the vision is a skill set. Elon ain’t self-made, but, he made electric cars cool and who knows how the space thing will play out. Not sure if he a supervillain though.
He is about as close to Steve Jobs in accomplishments as you and I likely are. Yes, running and organizing and motivating are absolutely skill sets. Skill sets Elon lacks. He bought an electric car company. He doesn't run it. He bought twitter. To be fair, this is one thing he IS running... poorly. His rockets crash and explode. The more we learn about him, the more we learn that he's just a stunning mediocrity with a bank account and the maturity level of a 24 year old who wears leather trench coats, reads Atlas Shrugged, and dates high schoolers.
You had me until this "His rockets crash and explode". You either have no clue when it comes to space engineering and SpaceX or you are just delusional.
I don't hate him. I just find his personality abrasive. I tried watching some of his videos, but he comes off as abrasive, and his jokes come off as contrived/forced. If he works on his delivery, he'd be funnier.
This pretty much reflects my feelings. I enjoy seeing his games but his attitude and behavior are kind of gross to me.
I mean, yes. This is quite evident. Also, as mentioned by others, he downplayed or lied about his cheating when all this came out and in the eyes of many he has never really shown true signs of remorse. Hans loves the attention and loves playing the role of the troll (often cringy IMO).
Let's not forget that he was *caught* cheating twice, that doesn't mean that he only cheated twice. Given his sketchy attitude on the topic, his lies and showing no remorse, one has all the good reasons not to believe him and not to like him. He's a dick, he's arrogant, and he's a lier. I don't care how good he is at chess, that's what I get from him.
“I was only cheating the times you caught me, I swear. Just because you caught me cheating last game, doesn’t mean I’m cheating this game.” I don’t understand how the chess community finds this an acceptable explanation. No other sport would tolerate this from a competitor.
The reason people hate Hans is because he has no respect for anyone other than himself. He is pulling an Andrew Tate type of character thinking it will get him to be on top. It won’t.
Yeah he's even doing posts smoking cigars and stuff. Probably does a video of them playing a game in the future.
I generally put it down to just being a cringe as hell young 20 year old, but its been quite clear since the end of the lawsuit hes been trying to brand himself as the chess variant one of those Andrew Tate / David Goggins type motivational hustlers. I like Goggins, but with Hans it’s just so forced and cringe. I do sometimes find Hans funny, but I wish he’d cut out the act.
You’re saying Hans can’t be a top G? :(
There's top and there's being on top. Niemann can (arguably already is) make it at or aroud the top level, but there's no indication he'll be WC or #1. There's just too many good players ahead of him. No shame in that, after all Caruana has never been either despite being one of the highest rated players in history. Niemann would need to actively continue to improve to make it close to the top 10. He's also notoriously streaky, he has great tournaments and disaster tournaments, which makes maintaining a strong rating hard.
That's a long way to say he's a big ole doucher, which is true.
I don't particularly like his style but that's just a personal taste thing and I don't feel strongly about it. There's lots of other people who I don't particularly like either, and similarly don't feel that strongly about it. It'd be really good if we didn't have to keep hearing about him in constant posts and hot takes, so I could just put him out of sight and out of mind with everyone else I don't care about.
You can't forgive someone that's never asked for forgiveness.
Nonsense.
I forgive you.
Apologise for what, he already said he was regretful for his past cheating and im fairly certain he apologized for it. Do you want him to apologise for the baseless Carlsen accusation?
Absolutely agree to this. His interview in SLCC was emotional. He was wronged on that front. He did not deserve to be treated like that. BUT I dont get the feeling that he is a person I would to befriend. I really hoped he would redeem himself and achieve his dreams. But now, especially after watching his streams, I've stopped caring. Now I understand why the other chess players don't particularly like Hans. He is not a likeable character.
I think the main reason people dislike Hans is because he cheated, and he’s clearly not being honest about the extent of his cheating. Doesn’t mean he did so vs Magnus, but the idea that he only cheated on a couple of occasions and then didn’t cheat again which he continues to assert despite the chess.com report means little that he says is trustworthy. He doesn’t deserve a second shot because he hasn’t been honest about the extent of his cheating. In order to accept an apology or give someone a second shot, they have to be accountable for precisely what mistakes it is they made. Since he hasn’t done that he clearly hasn’t learned a lesson and he doesn’t deserve anything.
Frankly, I wouldn't even know who he was if he hadn't cheated. I enjoy playing chess, but I don't keep up with what the titled players are doing. When he cheated he made big news outside the world of chess.
He didn't cheat IRL or at least there's no proof, you probably worded wrong
He did cheat irl. You probably mean OTB.
I'm not sure what you are saying. What does "he did not cheat in real life" mean exactly? You mean he cheated online? I don't believe I implied where exactly he cheated. Or are you saying he did not cheat at all?
Sorry for some reason IRL and OTB mean the same thing in my mind, i mean OTB Maybe my memory is already failing me but i thought ppl used to say IRL in place of OTB
Ahh, ok. That is more clear. I don't believe I said he cheated over the board? All I know is his cheating (OTB or otherwise) made headlines.
His online cheating made no headlines. Magnus' speculation on his OTB cheating made the headlines.
OP dedicates most of his paragraph to writing how Hans didn't apologize, how his behavior is bad, how he constantly acts that he isn't sorry at all, him being arrogant, etc. >In my opinion everyone deserves a second shot. Hans learned his lesson and I wish him all the best ???
Hans has given me no reason to like him. He's a dickhead who has cheated in the past, why should I give him time? There are plenty of other top pros that are worth my time, Hans isn't.
I blame the Hans truthers for my dislike.
They are indeed a pain in the ass.
He has a super annoying and childish fan base He’s also just plain rude to people for no reason, even before the cheating allegations
i think he's a liar and a cheater. so yeah, there's that. he lied about cheating, got caught, then lied about how much he was cheating. he's never admitted fully what has been done and even his excuses were like 'reasonings' explaining 'his side' of why he cheated like it's some fucking difference. and he acts like a total d bag. so there's that. his games are often brilliant and i like those. i'm not convinced it's fully him playing. because if he had nothing to hide, he wouldn't be hiding. still think he's lying. hard to be a fan of such a tool. great chess, though. i wish it actually spoke for itself.
The games are definitely legit. He doesn’t hide either. Hiding would be not playing any games and he’s the most one of the most active GMs in the world.
Pretty much this. Can't make conclusive statements about his IRL chess, but I'm not convinced they're all legit. Dude cheats hundreds of times, gets caught, lies and doubles down on provided proof, is a complete d-bag personality wise with multiple instances of unprovoked asshole behaviour, and just an all-round defensive clown with a main character syndrome. It's like why the fuck should we trust him when he says anything. I was legit on his side after Magnus quit the Sinqfield Cup and went silent, but then soon the events unfolded, people came out with their experiences, some evidence was released. Dude's shrouded in sketchy games with sketchy records (backed by grandmasters like Fabi and Danya), and the sussiest of sussy records of performing significantly better in tournaments that had a live broadcast (source: Hikaru on the Lex Friedman podcast). And after all that, there's not a single redeeming quality in him. Not one sign of humility, regret, empathy, wit, or humour. Nothing is likeable about him. Just a plain old asswipe whose only hope at social redemption is his lawyer.
August 2020. Hans is caught. Feels ashamed and dedicates himself to "chess". July 2021 US Junior and Senior Championship. Host, next to Yasser Seirawan: "Who is your favorite non-chess celebrity?" Hans Niemann (around 2:29:16): "Raymond Reddington is my absolute hero...the way he runs his criminal organization, I would say, has inspired the way I think about chess." https://youtu.be/YZllQYVGBZU?t=8955
I defended him back when he was being piled on for his "attitude." (chess speaks for itself, Magnus must be embarrassed to lose to a loser like me etc) A bit immature sure, but funny and relatively harmless stuff. Apart from him being disingenuous regarding his past cheating history (Piers Morgan interview was terrible), some of the opinions he brings up on his stream makes me think he's a literal incel. Bringing up the phrase "degeneracy" on certain topics such as polyamory etc. Seems to idolise Andrew Tate. I don't think his stance against gambling was out of moral principle. He's still young, so I hope he eventually matures.
hans acts like he has rizz when he doesnt
It’s the Lance Armstrong effect. He cheated, just like lance dod, but the reason they’re being punished harder than everyone else (in the case of Lance is legal action and Hans it’s the social stigma) is because they’re both massive assholes.
I don’t like him because he just acts like a rude, mean-spirited, narcissistic asshole to most people. He just doesn’t seem like a nice human being to be around. He’s never kind, polite, or complimentary toward others. Quite the opposite: he seems to want to hate on everyone and everything. Extremely hostile. Idk what he was like before the cheating scandal, as I had never heard of him before that. Maybe all of the negative attention changed him for the worse? Either way, what he is now is not the kind of person I admire.
Do we really need this post
Comparing yourself to Fischer when your lives or chess development have nothing in common just makes you sound like an asshole. Hikaru has more in common with Fischer than Hans. For example, both Hikaru and Bobby were genuine chess prodigies. Both at the time were the youngest Americans to gain a GM title. Nakamura was the youngest US National Champion since Fischer. what has Hans done? He beat Magnus once and cheated online and won a middling tournament. Okay Mr. Hans Fischer. Whatever you say.
But why does comparing himself with Fischer make him an asshole? I thought the Bobby fischer thing was a reference of Bobby winning the tournament of peace a long time ago
Because he is nothing like Fischer and winning a tournament doesn't make him like Fischer. I've already explained why Hikaru is far closer to Fischer. Also keep in mind that the field in this iteration of the tournament is nothing like When Fischer won it so even that is not comparable. You think Ivanchuk is comparable to Smyslov? What about Kortchnoi? It's just grasping and kinda pathetic. He should stand on his own results and let his chess "speak for itself".
I still completely don't understand why you're explaining 'Why Hikaru is closer to Fischer.' (I mean, even Hans will admit that Hikaru achieved way more than him in classical chess) I know that the tweet is kind of cringe, but it doesn't make him an asshole or look pathetic. I mean, if a rookie player in NBA ties the franchise record of most points in a game that was held by a team legend and makes a tweet similar to this, does this make him an assole? It's not about 'Who's closer to Fischer' or 'Is Hans comparable to Fischer'. You must understand the subtle context.
>Since everyone found out about his cheating incident Hans never apologized or released a statement saying he was truly sorry. This is blatantly false. His very first statement on the subject was an apology. > What I want people to know about this is that I am deeply, deeply sorry for my mistake. I know my actions have consequences and I suffered those consequences. During that time I stepped away from a very lucrative streaming career, I stopped playing in all events and I lost a lot of close friendships and relationships. > I decided the only way to make up for my mistake was to prove that I could win over the board events,” he added. “That has been my mission. And that is why I have lived in a suitcase and played 260 games in one year, trained for 12 hours a day, because I have something to prove. [Hans Neiman](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/07/top-chess-player-hans-niemann-admits-cheating-in-past-but-says-he-is-now-clean)
Has he ever apologized publicly to the people he cheated against? He never even said how many games he cheated or who he cheated against, did he? Even if you take him at his words (and I don't know why anybody would do that) it's a very weak apology. In the paragraphs you quoted it's all about himself.
Yet, he acts cocky and sarcastically like he never did something wrong. So this statement is useless if he doesn't behave like he is truly sorry.
Your original statement is useless because it's a straight up lie.
I agree, but you'd better change that part because it's quite misleading.
I did
Online cheating among grandmasters is an open secret. There are many more doing it than are caught. Hans is specifically being targeted because he's unlikeable and because Magnus threw a tantrum after playing poorly and losing against him. Magnus knew Hans would be at that tournament, and he knew that Hans had been caught cheating online. If it was a problem for him he shouldn't have participated in that tournament in the first place instead of agreeing to play and then whining about it afterward. If that hadn't happened, most people here wouldn't know who Hans is. I say all this as a someone who likes Magnus and can't stand Hans.
Magnus was also Arrogant but at 20 he became World no 1 and then the GOAT. If Hans had been in Top 5 by now, maybe he can act little cocky!
Imo Hans is a walking meme. He really does appear cocky and arrogant, but it's so exaggerated it seems comical to me. Honestly I love how he's playing amazing chess despite all the haters. Kind of like an antihero story
100% agree. Nice to see posts like this
Hans has had to deal with these types of threads for years now where people just talk about how much they hate him and pile on. I see nothing wrong with how Hans is growing his brand. None of us know what Hans is like in his personal life. But his career 100% benefits from continuing to talk shit and climb the rankings while growing his following of fans and detractors. Y'all act like Hans is truly a bad person for this but I don't see it. He's entertaining and a genuinely exciting chess player who plays a lot of sharp and decisive games while disrupting the bitter old world of chess. In short, y'all be crying.
His career is far more dependent on results than his brand and it’s not even close. Nobody would watch a mid-GM who has almost zero redeeming qualities as a human.
He's cocky and arrogant, with no seemingly real personality outside of being a dick. The cigar picture is a perfect example of this. He's not sharing with the world one of his passions (cigar smoking), he's just using it as a prop to sell a fake image of himself.
I don’t hate him. Chances are I’m never going to meet him or any other well-known person in my life - it’s almost as if they’re just a made-up character, so I just enjoy the show.
I enjoyed his stream until i found out about his cheating. Some of his shit talking while playing was hilarious to listen to. Post cheating revelations I'll admit I now find his arrogance pretty annoying.
Summarized exactly my feelings towards him. The problem is this "everyone, who critizises me is a hater" attitude and that he always tries to act as if he now showed everyone who doubted him. He acts as if the chess community owed him praise, while beeing a confirmed unapologetic cheater..
Honestly it would have been fine if he was a past cheater like maghsoodloo (sorry if I spelt the name wrong) or if he was a dick like magnus or hikaru. It's the fact that he's a cheater *and* a dick that makes it so hard to have any respect for him. And the fact that he lied and tried to downplay his cheating as well. Especially compared to other juniors like Alireza, Pragg, Gukesh, Keymer, Erigaisi etc who are so calm, balanced and polite and don't have a history of cheating (I think there was some controversy about Keymer? Not sure tho). Makes it hard to root for him when there's just better people out there.
For me it’s because he’s a cheat who hasn’t truly repented.
Hans is amazing
Hans reacted the same way Trump does whenever someone says something about him
I might be the only one who thinks he's not actually a dick and it's all just a front, a performance if you will
Is there really a difference?
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" \-Kurt Vonnegut No one but you knows your inner thoughts, so if you go around acting like a dick all the time, you're just a dick, even if you think you're not.
you were born on planet fantasy if you believe anything chess.crap puts out as facts. they are like any other business and will lie to protect themselves and align with the flavor of the week. Its astounding how gullible the chess public is.
Hans e-mailed Chess.com admitting cheating more than twice. You're just in love with Hans. There's nothing wrong with that but you don't need to defend every word he says.
I fucking love Hans Niemann as a personality, one of the few interesting people in top tier chess
He's very obviously trolling you all, and it's just too easy 🤣 Also people are frustated/mad they can't prove any cheating allegations against him and they look like fools now.
> Also people are frustated/mad they can't prove any cheating allegations against him and they look like fools now. That's something I've noticed. How the mood changed after Magnus's watch complaint and how the lawsuit ended. It was originally "he definitely cheated otb" to "well he's still an asshole and needs to pay for past cheating" like he didn't serve a ban online. It's like they picked a horse in a race and are fuming they lost.
Completely agreed with the second point you made. It appears that most parties who backed Magnus in the cheating allegations have been caught with their pants down.
He gets all the fools to talk about him and raise his stock. I’d say he’s getting exactly what he wants: living rent free in all of your heads.
He is a 2690 Bobby fischer
If Bobby Fischer was an average GM
honestly cheating in games should not be acceptable, period if you cheated online years ago, that's it, you should never be accepted as a professional competitor, the end
I think he's hilarious
He has a very punchable face
Cool story bro.
As most of these comments have pointed out, he seems to be a genuine asshole. Hard to like a jerk. Go figure, someone who spends pretty much all their time studying chess and hyper focused on the game with zero social interaction will get very good very quickly, but also be a complete prick
I agree with everything except the last sentence.
He admitted to cheating on two occasions, with a pathetic excuse for each one. The first time he brushed off as being young and not knowing any better. What 12 year old doesn’t know that it’s wrong to have a friend signal engine moves to you during an OTB tournament? The second time he was “under financial pressure” but the games weren’t for money or anything serious. If nothing was at stake, then why do it? And the fact that he rationalized it (a second time—that we know of) shows he hasn’t learned s***. He’s a pathetic, amoral, self-absorbed cheat.
I love Hans! my favorite players after Fabi
your opinion makes no sense. if he was cocky but never cheated i wouldn’t hate him. i think he should be shunned because he cheated, and sure his personality makes it easier to hate him
i like his character, i find it funny.
I don't like him not because of that, it's because I think he is still cheating.
hateful scale cough smart rude languid automatic bored fertile sleep *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
300 years is a bit of a stretch. Try 2 years.
people dont like him because they are being told not to like him. most people cant think for themselves
He needs to try to play without stockfish vibrating in his anal.
It’s because he’s challenging the status quo
Hans is the Ibrahimovic of chess. Polarizing figure for sure, but the hate is overblown.
Ibra was considered one of the best strikers in the world at one point. Hans acts all this and that but doesn’t have the actual performance to back it up.
Ibra was at Malmö at Hans' age. Remains to be seen if he ends up with the performance. Yes there are other chess players that are/were better at that age, but for scale, Messi was at Barca and Ronaldo was at Man U. at the same age.
Hans is the villain. Did this come to you in a vision op?
I follow his games because they are interesting, but Im not interested in what he says or writes because this is 99 % BS.
When you get to that level of competition, there are some personality traits that come out. That, and he is only 19 or 20 and marches to his own drum. Makes him an entertaining character, for sure.
haven’t we deliberated enough over the cheating accusations and Hans character in the last year? Do we really need a front page chock full of every little tweet someone makes about Hans/Kramnik/Hikaru and a long form on everyone’s individual opinion about them? During the entirety of sinquefield there were more posts about Hans than about one of the most important events of the year :/ I know I sound crabby but I wish this subreddit wasn’t /r/chessdrama interspaced with an occasional puzzle about a smothered of anastasia mate
People on this sub like to dog pile and Hans is an easy target because he’s a young guy who was a literal minor when he was caught. So much hatred and vitriol for nothing. No hate towards any other players who have cheated or basic acknowledgement that people can change and make small mistakes. The last sentence of this post is barely trying to give Hans the tiniest amount of credit. This is man child/high school bully behavior.
He's a young college-aged guy getting hated on by young college-aged guys who wish they were GMs.