For the irrepressible Hans Niemann, August is no time to chill. The 21-year-old American grandmaster began the month by defeating his compatriot Wesley So by 13-10 in the quarter-final of the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship. He gave a vitriolic interview after the match, railing against the ‘chess establishment’ and those he perceives as trying to ruin his career. Evidently, his relations with Chess.com, Magnus Carlsen and others have hardly thawed since last year’s conclusion of their legal dispute which arose in response to unsubstantiated cheating allegations after Niemann’s win against Carlsen at the Sinquefield Cup in 2022.
‘America’s brightest talent’ (by his own description), has complained of a lack of invitations to top-tier events. But he has blotted his own copybook: an incident involving damage to a hotel room prompted the St Louis Chess Club, which organises many elite events in the US, to state in February that Niemann would receive no further invitations in 2024.
Undeterred, Niemann has packed his calendar with a series of matches against top grandmasters, dubbed ‘Hans Niemann against the World’, apparently organised on his own initiative. Each match in the series lasted five days, with an unforgiving schedule of six classical games spread over three days, with the other days seeing six rapid games and 12 blitz games respectively.
The first, against Dutch grandmaster Anish Giri in Utrecht, was a seesaw affair. They began with the blitz, which Niemann won convincingly by 7.5-4.5. Giri took the lead in the classical games, but Niemann won two games in the middle for a 3.5-2.5 victory. The diagram below shows the moment Giri erred in the fourth game. The rapid games were wild, with three wins apiece, but the overall tally was a comfortable win for Niemann.
Anish Giri-Hans Niemann
Hans Niemann against the World, Utrecht, 2024
Giri is on the backfoot, but his next move, trading rooks, was the crucial error. 97 Kf3 should suffice for a draw, e.g. 97…Rc6 98 Re8 Rxa6 99 Rf8 with counterplay, since 99…Rb6 100 Rxf6! even wins. 97 Re4? Rxe4+ 98 Kxe4 Kc5 99 Kf4 Kd6 Giri would have checked that 99…Kd5 100 Kg4 Ke5 101 Kh5 Kxf5 102 Kh6! leads to a draw. But surprisingly, by careful manoeuvres, Niemann’s king emerges on the h-file, and outflanks from the other direction. 100 Ke4 Bg7 101 Kf4 Ke7 102 Kg5 Bf6+ 103 Kf4 Bh8 104 Kg5 Bg7 105 Kf4 Kf6 106 Kg4 Bh6 107 Kh5 Bf8 108 Kg4 Bd6 109 Kf3 Be5 110 Ke4 Bb2 111 Kf4 Ba1 112 Kg4 Kg7 113 Kg5 Bb2 114 Kh5 Bf6 115 Kg4 Kh6 116 Kf4 Kh5 117 Ke4 Kg5 White resigns since 118 Kd5 Kxf5 119 Kc6 Kxg6 120 Kb7 Bd4 is just in time for a trivial win.
The next match was played in London against Nikita Vitiugov, the formerly Russian grandmaster who now represents England. It was another convincing win for Niemann, who won the mini-matches in all three time limits. By the time this goes to press, his match against the strong French grandmaster Etienne Bacrot will be underway at the Blitz Society bar in Paris. As fate would have it, Niemann’s opponent in the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship semi-final will be Carlsen himself. The final four (including Nakamura and Firouzja) will convene in Paris 6-8 September. Carlsen stated matter-of-factly: ‘He’s playing quite well. I think if I have a decent day I’ll probably win without too many issues.’ The world no. 1 is a heavy favourite, but Niemann should not be underestimated.
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