The Shocking Chess Cheating Scandal YouTubers Put to the Test
Last September, the chess world was rocked by a cheating scandal after former world champion Magnus Carlsen suggested that grandmaster Hans Niemann used foul play to defeat him at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri. Now, a group of British YouTubers has put one of the most bizarre theories arising from the scandal to the test: Could someone use anal beads and a computer to beat a much better chess player? The answer seems to be yes.
The popular Josh & Archie YouTube channel recently released a video demonstrating what might happen if a novice played a grandmaster with the help of a chess computer feeding him instructions through a vibrator controlled via smartphone. Co-hosts Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, known for their pranks on celebrities and political groups, devised a code to let the player know which moves to make. Manners would watch a chess computer simulation and communicate instructions to Pieters, who would be playing against grandmaster Daniel Fernandez.
The code was simple. Pieters would send buzzes to indicate the location of the piece to be moved and then the square it should move to. Fernandez believed he was participating in a TV show about whether people could study something enough to master it in three months. While observing the chess computer analyze the grandmaster’s moves, Manners revealed that Fernandez had played perfectly up until about the thirtieth minute when the program exploited a small mistake and ultimately checkmated him.
The theory of using anal beads to cheat in chess originated during a Chessbrah Twitch stream as a joke about how Niemann could have snuck a device into his match unnoticed. Although it was never taken seriously, it highlighted how baseless Carlsen’s insinuation of foul play seemed at the time. A report later detailed past cheating by Niemann on Chess.com, leading to lawsuits, counter lawsuits, and eventually a settlement, but there was never evidence of in-person misconduct. Nevertheless, Niemann received extensive security checks at later tournaments. The theory also inspired an entire episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, in which the character Frank Reynolds does something similar to what the Josh & Archie channel did. Several other YouTubers have explored the theory, and host Piers Morgan even asked Niemann on live TV if he ever used anal beads to cheat. “Your curiosity is a bit concerning, you know – maybe you’re personally interested, but I can tell you, no,” the grandmaster replied.
We may never know if Niemann actually did, but now we know he could have.
