A check without moving the pieces

2022-09-21T10:39:00.737Z

The 'Niemann scandal' is shameful and refers to other great issues of our time: the slippery accusation, the incomplete slander, saying things without saying them with the intention of not getting your fingers caught

January 16, 2023. Rafa Nadal, the last winner of the Australian Open, returns to Melbourne, but decides to retire in the first game of the first set because he suspects that his rival is cheating.

Can you imagine the scandal?

The example has been given on Twitter by the journalist Manuel Azuaga, founder of Andalusian Social Chess, because something similar is happening in world chess with two protagonists, the champion Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann, a young grandmaster whose vertiginous rise is suspected and who has acknowledged cheating twice, when he was 12 and 16 years old.

Today he is 19, he already beat Carlsen two weeks ago (when Carlsen reacted by suggesting that he was cheating) and unfairly names a scandal (the

Niemann scandal)

which has a peculiarity: there is no proof that he has cheated and the organization of the tournament has reported that he has not found anything suspicious.

Carlsen is supposed to have slipped that he has "enough indications" that this is so, but he does not explain which ones, and those who support the world champion imply that Carlsen has evidence that he has not yet made public.

Everything in the air, even the finger that he points.

More information

Carlsen encourages cheating accusation against Niemann without providing evidence

The matter is shameful and refers to other great issues of our time: the slippery accusation, the incomplete slander, saying things without saying them with the aim of not getting your fingers caught.

And none of this changes, not even the meaning of the article, if tomorrow Magnus Carlsen or whoever shows evidence against Niemann, as if the sentence had to arrive with a timer.

It happens everywhere and at all times, almost always in the worst of ways.

Suddenly, someone has an intuition or suspicion that you have done something terrible, even a crime, and you want to put it into circulation, but without a clear accusation: drop it, smile when asked, mysteriously quote (“if I speak, they arrest me ”, said Carlsen, a Real Madrid fan, quoting Mourinho), arching his eyebrows… In this way, it is intended not only to evade responsibility,

And something even more delicate: that his name be the subject of debate, as if certain facts could be;

you can be for or against a certain way of playing chess (or soccer, or basketball), but you cannot be for or against someone cheating, or for or against someone steal or kill, or for or against someone who has assaulted or abused someone.

You can believe, in any case, if someone did or did not do it, and that is where the debate is: that without any evidence there are constantly people positioning themselves on whether or not another person committed a despicable act.

For the sole reason that the accuser has not even said it, but rather suggested it.