The latest weapon in a chess grandmaster’s armory: vibrating anal beads
It takes a lot to dethrone Magnus Carlsen: a strategic mind, a calm temperament and – apparently – vibrating anal beads.
That’s according to rumours circulating after the Norwegian chess God lost to an abrasive 19-year-old upstart who has a history of cheating in online matches.
Carlsen pulled out of the tournament after his defeat to Hans Niemann, and posted a video of Jose Mourinho saying “if I speak, I am in trouble”, leading to speculation that his opponent was somehow cheating.
The theory is that someone was watching, pitting Carlsen’s moves against a supercomputer and then communicating the best riposte to Niemann remotely.
Security frisk the players before matches, which rules out any more obvious devices, but it does raise the possibility that the 19-year-old had something in his prison pocket, and thus the anal beads theory was born.
Niemann denied using the ruse, telling an interviewer: “They want me to strip fully naked? I’ll do it.”