*World Champion chess player Magnus Carlsen, the Accuser
The Bead controversy began in a chess match that shocked the game’s online following. In an upset within the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, a tourney based in St. Louis, Missouri, five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen was defeated by young grandmaster Hans Niemann. When this happened on September 4th, allegations of cheating were immediately thrown out, launched by the defeated champion himself. Carlsen has since released several statements against Niemann and dropped out of tournaments to avoid facing him, claiming that Niemann’s in-person play has developed suspiciously quickly. Niemann’s record is far from clean, with him simultaneously confessing guilt of using computer assistance during digital matches of Chess.com, getting him suspended from the site and a later championship in Toronto. These allegations, however, beg the question; how would Niemann have cheated? Chess tournaments are notorious for their thorough security, and speculation and conspiracy theories circled the affair until the emergence of the infamous rumor came to dominate social media.
*The accused party, Hans Niemann
The idea came up on the Twitch stream of Grandmaster Hikaru “GMHikaru” Nakamura, a prominent name in the digital chess scene. The joke of anal beads was tossed up, and the idea stuck. If a code was established, wireless vibrations of the beads could allow a third party to communicate with Niemann. The possibility of the idea blew up on Nakamura’s platform, and the sheer absurdity of it caused it to leak over to other sites. Like an absurdist game of telephone, the myth built up force and sheer ridiculousness. A heavily circulated Reddit post claimed that Carlsen had used anal beads his entire career and that Niemann’s beads interrupted the signal, setting Carlsen off his game. Unsurprisingly, the self-proclaimed bard Elon Musk threw his hat into the ring, posting a clip of Nakamura discussing the theory with some quip that only served to further fan the fast-moving flames. No actual evidence has been provided to back up any accusations of over-the-table cheating, but that didn’t stop hundreds of thousands of posts over the following month.
Despite being months old, the controversy is still ongoing. Near the end of October, Niemann sued Carlsen and Chess.com for collaborating to destroy his reputation and livelihood, claiming that "Carlsen, having solidified his position as the 'King of Chess,' believes that when it comes to chess, he can do whatever he wants and get away with it". Carlsen has refused to personally respond, saying that he “focus[es] on chess”. If his claims of libel are true, then the $100 mil lawsuit is reasonable; since the controversy began, Niemann has been blacklisted from several major competitive games and denounced continuously online. No conclusion has been reached, and this lawsuit remains in the air.