Chess is the oldest and most respected board game on the planet. It has been played for over 1,500 years and is today played by an estimated 600 million people worldwide.
It is a game built on pure logic, fair play, and mental strength, with no referees, no contact, and nowhere to hide. And yet, for all its dignity, chess has a surprisingly dramatic history, which is full of cheating scandals, political conspiracies, bizarre accusations, and moments that shocked the entire sporting world.
Players have hidden smartphones in bathrooms, received coded signals from teammates, accused computers of being secretly human, and walked out of matches in protest.
Here are the 10 biggest controversies in chess history.
1. Magnus Carlsen vs Hans Niemann (2022)
At the Sinquefield Cup in September 2022, American grandmaster Hans Niemann defeated World Champion Magnus Carlsen using the Nimzo-Indian defence, ending Carlsen’s 53-game unbeaten streak. The very next day, Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the tournament without a single word of explanation. But the chess world immediately suspected that Carlsen was accusing Niemann of cheating. When the two met again in an online tournament shortly after, Carlsen resigned after making just one move.
He later released a statement saying he believed Niemann had cheated “more and more recently.”
2. The Russians Have Fixed World Chess (1962)
In 1962, a 19-year-old Bobby Fischer finished fourth at the Candidates Tournament in Curacao, which was the competition that determined who would challenge for the World Championship. Five of the eight players in the tournament were Soviet. Fischer was the only non-Soviet contender.
He wrote an explosive article in Sports Illustrated titled “The Russians Have Fixed World Chess.” In it, he accused three Soviet grandmasters, Tigran Petrosian, Efim Geller, and Paul Keres, of secretly agreeing to make quick draws among themselves to save energy, so they could focus all their effort on beating Fischer. It was not a random conspiracy theory. Chess historians generally believe the accusation was correct.
Years later, Anatoly Karpov wrote in his 1991 autobiography that Soviet player Viktor Korchnoi had complained about being left out of the colluding group.
The, years later as a result of Fischer’s article, FIDE changed the Candidates Tournament format to one-on-one knockout matches.
3. Bobby Fischer’s Win Eding Soviet Dominance(1972)
The 1972 World Chess Championship between Bobby Fischer of the USA and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union was not just a chess match; it was a Cold War confrontation, and it became the most-watched chess event in history.
Bobby Fischer nearly did not show up. He missed the opening ceremony and forfeited Game 2 over a dispute about camera placement. He was so deep in crisis that US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger personally called him to persuade him to play. Spassky, meanwhile, was under enormous pressure from Soviet authorities to win for the honour of the USSR.
When the match finally began properly, Fischer played brilliantly and won, becoming the first American-born World Chess Champion and ending 24 years of Soviet dominance.
But the drama surrounding it, the boycotts, the demands, the political pressure, the near-collapse before a single real game was played made it the most controversial championship in chess history.
4. Garry Kasparov Accused IBM Computer of Cheating (1997)
In 1997, World Champion Garry Kasparov played a six-game rematch against IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue in New York. Deep Blue won, becoming the first computer to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under tournament conditions.
Garry Kasparov was not a gracious loser. After losing Game 2, he accused IBM of having a human grandmaster secretly feed moves to the computer during the game. He called the moves ‘too human.’ IBM denied any cheating, saying all human input happened between games, which was permitted under the rules.
The controversy deepened when IBM refused to hand over Deep Blue’s log files and then dismantled the machine entirely, denying Kasparov a rematch.
5. Vladimir Kramnik-Veaselin Topalov Restroom Controversy (2006)
The 2006 World Chess Championship between Vladimir Kramnik and Veaselin Topalov in Elista, Russia, descended into chaos over something. Topalov’s manager, Silvio Danailov, filed a complaint alleging that Kramnik was making an unusually high number of trips to his private restroom during games and suspected he was consulting a hidden computer.
The Appeals Committee responded by closing Kramnik’s private bathroom and forcing both players to share a common restroom. Kramnik was furious. He forfeited Game 5 in protest rather than accept the new conditions, putting himself behind in the match.
He then won back-to-back games, eventually winning the tournament, and no evidence of cheating was ever found.
6. The French Team Cheating Scandal (2010)
The 2010 Chess Olympiad produced one of the most controversial cheating scandals. Three French players, including Grandmaster Sebastien Feller, team captain Arnaud Hauchard, and International Master Cyril Marzolo, were caught running a coordinated operation.
Cyril Marzolo would sit outside the venue, analyse the positions on a computer, and send moves in secret code via text message to Arnaud Hauchard. Hauchard would then stand inside the playing hall in a specific physical position to signal the move to Sebatien Feller, who was sitting at the board.
The entire scheme was uncovered through the text messages on their phones.
Feller received a 33-month ban from FIDE. In 2019, a French court sentenced him to six months in prison for the offence, and Hauchard was also banned.
7. Bobby Fischer Forfeits the World Title (1975)
After winning the World Championship in 1972, Bobby Fischer became increasingly erratic and difficult. When it came time to defend his title in 1975 against young Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov, Fischer presented FIDE with a list of demands about the match format, including that the first player to win 10 games would be champion, with unlimited games allowed.
FIDE agreed to the first condition but refused to give the reigning champion draw odds in the event of a 9-9 tie.
Bobby Fischer refused to play. He forfeited the World Championship without a single game being played, making Karpov the champion by default.
8. Viktor Korchnoi’s Hypnotists ‘ Accusations on Anatoly Karpov (1978)
The 1978 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi in Baguio City, Philippines, was more of a psychological war.
Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union two years earlier, making him a political enemy of Karpov, who had publicly condemned the defection. The two genuinely despised each other.
The match produced a series of disputes, including Karpov having a hypnotist, Dr Vladimir Zukhar, seated prominently in the front rows, who was reportedly disturbing Korchnoi psychologically. Korchnoi responded by wearing reflective sunglasses so he could not make eye contact with Zukhar.
Korchnoi’s team also formally complained that the specific flavour of yoghurt being sent to Karpov during games was to send him secret coded messages.
Security officials reportedly X-rayed the chairs of both players looking for hidden devices. At the end, Karpov won the match.
9. Gaioz Nigalidze’s Cheating in the Bathroom (2015)
At the 2015 Dubai Open, Georgian grandmaster Gaioz Nigalidze was caught cheating in the most straightforward way possible. His opponent became suspicious after noticing Nigalidze making repeated trips to the same bathroom stall.
Tournament officials investigated and found a smartphone hidden behind a toilet, wrapped in tissue paper. The phone was logged into a chess analysis account and had the exact game Nigalidze was playing loaded on it.
He was caught red-handed, stripped of his results, and banned by FIDE.
10. The Endless 1984 Championship between Karpov and Kasparov
The 1984 World Chess Championship between Anatoly Karpov and the young Garry Kasparov used a unique format: the first player to win six games would be champion.
Draw games counted for nothing. Karpov raced to a 4-0 lead after just nine games and looked set for a quick victory. Then both players went into an extraordinary defensive mode, producing draw after draw after draw. The match dragged on for five months, through 48 games, with Karpov still stuck on five wins. By the end, both players appeared physically exhausted.
FIDE president Florencio Campomanes then made a decision that stunned everyone: he cancelled the match entirely, declaring it null and void, with no winner
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