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Hans Niemann, the controversial US grandmaster whose game with Magnus Carlsen at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup led to cheating allegations, a $100m lawsuit, an out of court settlement, the Netflix documentary Untold: Chess Mates, and a forthcoming book, scored the most important success of his career last weekend.
Niemann, competing as a wildcard, won the $50,000 first prize at the Warsaw Rapid & Blitz in Poland, ahead of the US champion and the world No 3, Fabiano Caruana, India’s reigning world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, and the Candidates winner, Javokhir Sindarov. The event was part of the St Louis-backed Grand Chess Tour, which ends in August and includes the prestigious Sinquefield Cup.
The 22-year-old world No 12 scored 22.5/36, finishing half a point ahead of Caruana, with Wesley So on 21 in third on an all-American podium. Niemann dominated the rapid section, where he was unbeaten, so was able to survive a run of three successive defeats in the blitz.
Niemann’s best game featured an imaginative rook for knight sacrifice at move 27 against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, which led to the Polish No 1’s resignation eight moves later.
Niemann is absent from the next event, the Super Chess Classic at Bucharest, starting on Thursday, where the only wildcard will be a Romanian. The question now is whether he will receive a wildcard for the 2026 Sinquefield Cup, which takes place in mid-August.
Three years ago, Niemann damaged his hotel room after a defeat in the US Championship, and was banned by the St Louis Club, but he competed in the 2024 and 2025 US title contests at the club, for which he qualified by rating, without incident.
Warsaw was the first time that Niemann had been invited to a Grand Chess Tour event since the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. He called it “a great honour and privilege” to win the tournament.
He is also a strong candidate for the US Olympiad team, who will compete at Samarkand in September, where they will be expected to contend for the gold medals against India, China and their Uzbekistan hosts. For Niemann personally, the immediate target is a place in the classical world top 10, from which he is only 12 points away in the live ratings.
The author Ben Mezrich’s June publication book Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess, is already available as a Kindle e-book. It includes numerous interviews with the key personalities involved. A Hollywood film adaptation is planned for 2027.
Mezrich says he spent many hours with Niemann, whom he described as “both fascinating and polarising, a genius laced with paranoia and this feeling that the world is against him”. The author also noted that Niemann believed from an early age that he was destined for greatness: Niemann said to another interviewer: “If things go my way, I will become world champion at some point.” His chess hero and role model is Bobby Fischer.
Four years after their St Louis confrontation, Mezrich says Carlsen has not changed his mind about what happened: “I think he fully believes that Hans cheated. I don’t think that he accepts that he could have been beaten in that way.” However, in his Netflix interview Carlsen insisted that his standpoint was only based on what he knew at the time and, in a statement following the out of court settlement, acknowledged “there is no determinative evidence” of wrongdoing in the game against Niemann.
The reality is that many analyses of the St Louis 2022 game have shown that Niemann made several imprecisions in the endgame, while Carlsen played well below his normal standard. No one has demonstrated any Niemann moves with suspicions of computer involvement.
Carlsen’s reasons for making the charge against Niemann have never been made fully clear, but it seems possible that he was persuaded by Niemann’s casual stance at the board and by his hesitant answers when questioned by interviewers about his play. Although the game lasted 57 moves, from move 21 onwards Carlsen was a pawn down with little or no compensation.
What now for Niemann? His career is advancing, but not at the rate where world No 1 is a realistic possibility. However, the road is opening up for him to aim to become the US No 1 and perhaps a world championship candidate before 2030.
Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and So are ranked ahead of him, but all of them are a decade or more older. Caruana may try again to win the Candidates in 2028, but Nakamura and So appear to be winding down their classical careers. There are also two younger US contenders than Niemann, but Abhimanyu Mishra and Andy Woodward are both rated more than 100 points lower.
If Niemann can perform strongly in the US Championship and the Sinquefield Cup this summer, that would be his springboard for a place in the world top 10, or even higher.
4024: 1…c5! 2 Rxc5 (other moves lose at least a piece) 2…Rxc5 3 Qxc5 Qf3! 4 Nxf3 Rxd1+ 5 Ne1 Rxe1 mate. A trap for the incautious is 1…Qf3?? 2 Nxf3 Rxd1+ 3 Ne1! and White wins.
