To be fair it is those who cheat who do the dragging and unfortunately modern technology helps. To ignore it is to wish for simpler times. It is a shame he has become preoccupied with it. He remains the highest ranked GM, so not yet past his prime.
Genuine question: How would the watch help the opponent? Presumably the watch could only relay a very limited amount of data to the opponent that he could utilise without arousing suspcion? And presumably with the way tech is going, you could probably have some kind of implantable or worn device that could relay the same information that you'd struggle to detect. For example, you could have some kind of small device implanted or worn over the calf that gave off some kind of morse code style vibrations to indicate where to move the piece to, first giving off a number:
1 - pawn
2 - rook
3 - knight
4 - bishop
5 - queen
6 - king
Followed by a pause, followed by another vibration series between 1 - 8 for column, followed by a pause, followed by another 1 - 8 vibration series for row. I don't see how such a device would be feasibly detected. I'm not a radio engineer so I don't know but wouldn't you have to have every chess match played in a Faraday cage to protect against it?
Chess experts say you don’t need to telegraph full moves. Simply indicating that a certain position is crucial or that they should spend more time on a specific move (because there’s some pattern they haven’t detected yet) might be enough. You only need a simple signal to do that.
In the past, folks have cheated by having audience plants cough at specific times so that’s a similar amount of potential bandwidth.
After the game Carlsen wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I was completely crushed in my game today. This is not to accuse my opponent of anything, who played an amazing game and deserved to win, but honestly, as soon as I saw my opponent was wearing a watch early in the game, I lost my ability to concentrate. I obviously take responsibility for my inability to deal with those thoughts properly, but it’s also incredibly frustrating to see organisers still not taking anti-cheating seriously at all (no transmission delay, spectators walking around the playing hall with smartphones).”
You left out the punchline that comes in a following paragraph:
> However, the joint leaders after two of the 11 rounds were a big surprise: the youngest player Abhimanyu Mishra, 14, and the most controversial, Hans Niemann, 20.
All I was saying is that the truly great make do with the situation and innovate and press on. Corrupt referees in a basketball game? Shoot more 3s, adapt, try and take the refs out of the calculus. In chess why would it be different?
So they might be cheating. Play as best you can. The allegation or even accusation of cheating is such a high bar that rubicon should only be crossed if there’s legit strong evidence. As I recall Hans Neimen was never shown or proven to have cheated in his matches against Carlsen even while he admitted to cheating online in the past.
And it's psychological, I feel like when you're at the top, cheaters feel like a house break in, that's your job that someone's dragging through the mud.
I think therapy is the only way to deal with this type of mental block.
