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Leaked email between chess.com and Niemann accusing Hans of lying.

This email has all the interesting stuff from the Niemann report and is phrased much more dramatically.

TLDR: Hans blatantly lied in his first public confession to cheating, going as far as contradicting statements he made to chesscom in private.

Enjoy:


Dear Hans,

I’m sending this letter with three important goals:

  1. To clarify factual inaccuracies in the statements you’ve recently made regarding your fair play violations on Chess.com;

  2. To justify my reasons for withdrawing our invitation to Chess.com prize events, including the upcoming Chess.com Global Championship (CGC); and

  3. To talk about a path back to Chess.com events.

First, regarding the comments you made concerning when and why you cheated on Chess.com: In your interview you mentioned (paraphrased) that you “cheated when you were 12” and then “later when you were 16 in an unrated game”. This directly contradicts our statistical evidence, as well as the conversation you and I had in our private call when you confessed to cheating, and there is written evidence from you that substantially corroborates this. You also contradicted your own statement that you had only cheated in unrated games in the interview by later stating that you did it to gain rating points, which obviously indicates cheating in rated games.

As you indicated in your interview, Chess.com has the best Fair Play detection in the world. Using that system we have identified many clear instances of cheating. While there are other potential events, games and evidence that reinforce the untruth of your public claims, specifically for the purposes of this letter, we are informing you that some of our strongest data suggests you violated Fair Play on the following dates:

  • Titled Tuesday Qualifier | July 7 2015

    • Of particular note in this event is that you played against and lost to someone we eventually closed for cheating in that very same event, and that your game reflected clear “engine vs engine” play.
  • Titled Tuesday Qualifier | April 4 2017

  • PRO Chess League | 2020 Season

    • Numerous games and performances
  • Speed Chess Grand Prix | June 2 2020

  • Speed Chess Grand Prix | June 16 2020

In addition to the direct monetary benefit that a top standing / prize position in those events would earn you, the rating points gained were significantly beneficial to you, as you admitted to me in our call where you confessed that “having a higher rating would mean people tune in more to my streams when I’m battling Hikaru, Danya or Eric (Hansen). I need people to believe that I’m a worthy rival to follow and subscribe”.

On that note, there were several matches during the year 2020 in which you farmed your fellow chess peers for higher rating. Specifically, the following matches feature blatant cheating throughout:

  • Match vs Krikor Mekhitarian | June 18 2020

  • Match vs Yan Nepomniatchtchi (playing under an anonymous account) | June 20 2020

  • Match vs Daniel Naroditsky | July 28 2020

  • Match vs David Paravyan | July 25 2020

  • Match vs Benjamin Bok | August 9 and August 11 2020

We are prepared to present strong statistical evidence that confirm each of those cases above, as well as clear “toggling” vs “non-toggling” evidence, where you perform much better while toggling to a different screen during your moves.

Moving on to my second point, I want to address both the reasons and timing for freezing your account and rescinding your CGC invite. When I received your confession back on August 12th of 2020, in light of your age, I allowed you to create a new account with no fair play markings to continue to stream chess. You’ll remember that I worked hard to both advise you on this process and to protect you as much as I could. I would do that again for you or any young player I deemed to have lost their way and wanted to choose a better path forward.

For my team, however, there always remained serious concerns about how rampant your cheating was in prize events. As you know, we’ve closed the accounts of hundreds of titled players (including 4 of the top 100 Grandmasters who have confessed to cheating), and we carefully monitor and help all of them as they rehabilitate into participating in our events. You and I had many subsequent discussions in our Slack DMs where we openly cooperated on the right way for you to rebuild your reputation.

In finalizing the field for the upcoming CGC, and based on a growing concern regarding ensuring fair play in Chess.com’s first million dollar prize event, my team did a deep review of your past history, and encouraged me to rethink my position of letting you continue to play in prize events on Chess.com. I ultimately made the decision that too much was at stake given our ongoing suspicions and past violations.

Considering the above, we made this decision to close your account privately and uninvite you from the CGC. I regret the timing, but the timing between the Sinquefield Cup and the CGC required me to move quickly to replace your spot. I believe I acted in the best interest of the game and all participants to reconsider our invitation with so much at stake.

I’m going to bring my letter to a close with an offer to have a call. If you are willing to correct the false statements you made about having never cheated when it mattered (now that you have said these untruths publicly), acknowledge the full breadth of the above violations, and cooperate with us to compete under strict Fair Play measures, Chess.com would be happy to consider bringing you back to our events. In fact, I think it would be a wonderful redemption story for the full truth to come out, for the chess world to see this and acknowledge your talent regardless of your past, and give the community what they deserve: The truth.

I look forward to talking more.

Sincerely,

Danny

Chess.com

11
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What are people saying about this? Link the drama and inject it into my veins :marseyjunkie:

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https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/xvthue/the_hans_niemann_report_chesscom/?sort=controversial

the drama was two weeks ago this is pretty much the last nail in the coffin for Hans

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Weeb? Skyrim and elder scrolls are American made video games based on European lore and history. I had too google the weeb word. I actually don't like anime I just happened to like medieval fantasy genres which is pretty different than what you are suggesting and it was developed in the USA by a USA based studio. Learn what words mean and what about the subjects before you start talking shit you look like a 12 year old little boy btw get the frick out of here you little c*nt

Snapshots:

Chess.com:

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