Since the controversial year-ending World Rapid and Blitz Championships, Hans Niemann has begun to attack Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura on social media. The attacks are mainly due to their 2022 chess cheating scandal, which got further triggered by Carlsen’s jeans scandal during the Rapid competition and when he shared the Blitz title with Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Now in his latest post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Niemann revealed that he had challenged the likes of Carlsen, Nakamura and Arjun Erigaisi in matches, where the winner would win 100k Dollars, but they declined.
He wrote, “After 3 matches in the Hans Niemann against the World Series I have tried to arrange matches with Erigaisi, Caruana, Nakamura, Carlsen, and Dubov. I offered Erigaisi and Caruana 100k to the winner (they put up no money), they have not accepted the offer yet. Chess should be like the UFC or Boxing. Pure meritocracy. I have no tournaments for the next 2 months and would happily play matches against any top player. Chess must evolve!”
Niemann, Carlsen and Nakamura have a long history together, which goes back to September 2022. Niemann and Carlsen took on each other in their third round fixture at the Sinquefield Cup. The World No. 1 crashed to a defeat vs Niemann, and then immediately withdrew from the competition. Meanwhile, Carlsen also accused Nieman of cheating after their next tournament meet-up which was an online event.
The Norwegian Grandmaster resigned after only one move. Then, in an interview, Niemann revealed he cheated in online chess as a child, but didn’t do so in the match against Carlsen or in any over-the-board game. Carlsen had his own response, as he released a statement where he accused Niemann of cheating more often than he admitted. Niemann was also removed from Chess.com, who also released a report accusing him of cheating in online games.
FIDE investigated the matter and Niemann filed a lawsuit against Carlsen, his company Play Magnus Group, Hikaru Nakamura and Chess.com chief officer Daniel Rensh for unlawful collusion and defamation. The lawsuit was later dismissed and it was also revealed later that all parties involved had settled, followed by Chess.com reinstating Niemann on their platform. Also, Carlsen promised that he would play against Niemann, if they were ever paired.
