The Viral Chess Cheating Scandal with Anal Beads: Ben Mezrich Reveals the Full Story
About this episode
James Altucher interviews Ben Mezrich about the chess cheating scandal involving Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen.
A Note from James: Oh my gosh, one of my favorite guests ever: Ben Mezrich. Ben wrote Bringing Down the House , which became the movie 21 . He wrote The Accidental Billionaires , which became The Social Network . And now his latest page-turner, Checkmate , is about one of the most explosive scandals in modern sports: the Hans Niemann chess cheating controversy that took over the world. You remember the story. Magnus Carlsen, the greatest chess player of all time, loses to this completely arrogant, egotistical 19-year-old bad boy of chess. Then Magnus accuses him of cheating. This had basically never happened before at that level in chess. What followed was a viral meltdown: the infamous anal beads tweet, death threats, lawsuits, chess.com, Netflix documentaries, and a chess world at war with itself. Ben spent over a year with Hans Niemann. He got access to Magnus’s camp, chess.com, and the drama behind the chessboards. So we talk about whether Hans actually cheated that day, the insane rise of online chess during COVID, the world of prodigies, the generational clash inside elite chess, and how one suspicious game nearly destroyed a young player’s career. So welcome to one of my…
Topics covered
- chess cheating scandal
- Magnus Carlsen
- Hans Niemann
- online chess
- high-stakes competition
- sports controversy
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