BicycleRepairMan wrote on Sep 28, 2023, 08:22:
The buttplug story is so, so ridiculous. Niemann DID cheat, has admitted to some of it, and very strong evidence of much more.

But the whole vibrator thing started as literally a joke twitch comment on GM Eric Hansens stream, where someone jokingly said something like "maybe he used a vibrator buttplug" and Hansen jokingly went "Haha, sure, that would work".

And thats it, thats the basis of the whole story.

It was then picked up by some trash media as "speculation" that he had cheated that way, Elon Musk then got involved an cracked a joke on twitter about it, and now the poor guy has to deny it publicly....

Niemann admitted to cheating online when he was younger. Still not good, but not the same as cheating over the board with Carlsen, which there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence of. The statistical analysis which was done of his over the board games was far from conclusive, one stat expert basically said it was much ado about nothing. Carlsen is a prima donna, he was upset he lost and made an accusation of cheating probably knowing he could get away without it because of Niemann's online cheating. Carlsen essentially said the other day he has no rivals, which isn't entirely unreasonable, but it is conceited as hell. Niemann has gotten far more grief than he deserved and Carlsen far less than he deserved for making an unsubstantiated accusation.