This is an excerpt from Please Like Me, BuzzFeed News’ newsletter about influencers and internet culture. You can sign up here. In our column, Niche Drama, we discuss online community micro dramas.A conspiracy theory about a player using vibrating anal beads to cheat has rocked the world of professional chess players for weeks — but the serious allegations are just as eyebrow-raising.In a shock upset, 19-year-old Hans Niemann from the US defeated 31-year-old world champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway on Sept. 4 in the Sinquefield Cup, a $350,000 tournament in St. Louis. Carlsen withdrew from the tournament the following day — the first time he has ever dropped out of a competition — and tweeted a video of Portuguese soccer manager José Mourinho saying, “If I speak, I am in big trouble.” But Carlsen wasn’t convinced.“His over-the-board progress has been unusual,” he wrote in his statement. “And throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.”Carlsen called cheating an “existential threat” to chess and said he would…
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The Anal Beads Cheating Conspiracy About Chess Player Hans Niemann – BuzzFeed News
