Amid Cheating Controversy, the Chess.com Global Championship Is on Lockdown

A chess tournament is not the kind of place where one would normally look for signs of controversy or the feeling of watching a top streamer carry a Call of Duty win. But, if you've been paying attention, you'd know that things haven't really been normal in the chess world of late. 

The 2022 Chess.com Global Championship in Toronto, Canada, kicked off on Wednesday and is the first in-person event put on by Chess.com in 4 years, and comes after it was sued last month by 19-year-old chess player Hans Niemann amid a cheating controversy (more on this in a moment). Competitors played in a large room filled with the usual esports equipment: Razer gamer chairs and headsets, screens, keyboards, and mice, all surrounded by a crew wielding camera rigs with feeds broadcasting over Twitch. The presenters were celebrities in their own right, like chess champion and Twitch streamer Nemo Zhou. It could have been a DOTA tournament, but the competitors were there to move black and white pieces on a digital board. 

All of this reflected how the game of chess has become a streaming phenomenon like video games over the pandemic, with Chess.com in particular leading the way by streaming play on Twitch. The game's popularity has exploded among viewers and new players alike. 

"In the last few years, chess has really blown up; it's a global game where you don't have to be one of the top 10 or 20 grandmasters in the world to make a living with the game," said Zhou. She likes the esports format because she enjoys watching it—and streams games like League of Legends herself—and the popularity of rapid game types has made chess more accessible, she said.

"Online chess is just a video game," said Chess.com's VP of Esports, Michael Brancato, who is a former top Super Smash Bros. player and a Twitch alum. "Video games are very young—I was involved with Smash for 15 years, and chess is 1,500 years old."

Another seismic shift could be sensed in the "fair play" security measures that Chess.com has implemented, like other tournaments around the world in recent months. This is because the Global Championship is taking place in the middle of an ongoing cheating controversy where Chess.com is a central party. 

It all began in early September, when when 19-year-old Hans Neimann defeated 31-year-old grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in an upset during an over-the-board (i.e., in real life) match at a prestigious tournament. Days earlier, on August 24, Chess.com had acquired Carlsen's company, Play Magnus Group, for $82.9 million. Carlsen refused to play Neimann going forward, even dropping out of a match, and formally accused him of cheating later that month. 

Despite there being no evidence that Neimann played unfairly in the matches against Carlsen (Niemann has admitted to cheating in other online matches, however), Chess.com and other organizations have taken extreme measures against possible cheating. 

"I think the controversy would not be as big a deal a couple years ago," said Zhou. "We're coming out of the initial PogChamps boom on Twitch and The Queen's Gambit, and now the Magnus Carlsen and Hans Neimann thing going on—a couple years ago there's no way this many people would have cared about the game or the personalities in it."

As a result of the allegations against him, Neimann sued Carlsen, Chess.com, and other chess players for no less than $100 million. One of those players is Hikaru Nakamura, who is competing in Chess.com's championship but declined to be interviewed for this story. 

The security measures at the Chess.com Global Championship meant that I had to arrive at Hotel 1 in downtown Toronto before 9 a.m. to see the player's hall before it was locked down for the day. Once play began, the only people allowed in the room were the competitors, necessary crew, security personnel, and a few presenters. Everyone else watched a video feed in an adjoining room.

"Video games don't have a communications cheating concern, at least not nearly to the extent that chess does," said Brancato, explaining that cheating in video games typically uses software like aimbots. "In gaming, it's usually much more relaxed as far as who can be in the production area, who can be in the room, it doesn't have to be as locked down."

A security firm had already done a full inspection of the space to make sure no devices were transmitting anything that could be used for cheating, and were on-site to inspect players entering the room. "It's police and military-level detecting of devices," Brancato said. "We brought them in to make sure the location is secure from any unauthorized communication devices or methods. When they're scanning players, they're doing it in a way that chess hasn't seen before; not just metal detector wands, which don't pick up a lot of things."

Staff were screensharing with the computers used in play to make sure that no unauthorized programs or tools were running. Because about half of the competitors were playing remotely in Belgrade, Serbia due to visa issues, they were also in a sequestered room similar to the one in Toronto overseen by Chess.com. Players in Toronto could retire to a "secure" room on the 10th floor in between matches. 

Despite this, Zhou said that most competitors just aren't interested in cheating, and it would be difficult to do in a competition with a small number of players like Chess.com's Global Championship. "There is much more to lose by cheating at a top level than there is to gain, really," she said.

Brancato, however, said the chess world has probably changed forever.

"I think the higher security concerns are here to stay," he said. "Recent events were a wake-up call to a lot of organizers that fair play at in-person events needs to be taken a little more seriously, and there are a lot of cheating vectors that we're maybe not doing the best job of dealing with right now."

"Chess is at a crossroads right now, we're figuring out: how does the online ecosystem coexist with over-the-board?" he added. "It's yet to be seen how both of those worlds coexist in a way that makes a lot of sense."