This week’s episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with American grandmaster Max Dlugy. Max Dlugy has had a rich and varied chess career: he was Junior World Champion, became president of the United States Chess Federation at the young age of 24, worked for IBM on the groundbreaking Deep Blue chess computer project, and today runs his own successful chess school, the Chess Max Academy in New York. Two years ago he got into the news for a different reason, when he was dragged into the cheating story involving Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen, when the world’s number one insinuated his involvement as Niemann’s ‘mentor’. The allegation had serious consequences, when in addition to being publicly named a cheater, his chess.com account was temporarily suspended by chess.com, a decision Dlugy considered ‘immoral and illegal’.

Interviewed by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam in Budapest during the Chess Olympiad, Max Dlugy talks about his Chess Max Academy, but the lion’s share of the conversation focuses on his role in Hans Niemann’s career and his view of the cheating story, a story that brought (and continues to bring) near-unprecedented levels of mainstream attention to the chess scene.

Enjoy this week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast!

0:00 – Intro

3:38 – Max’s background and the beginning of the Chess Max Academy

19:31 – Max’s first meeting with Hans Niemann

25:21 – Max’s past coaching of Hans

29:18 – AD BREAK

34:51 – The infamous Magnus vs Hans game

36:36 – The “set-up” to implicate Max in the drama involving lawyer Richard Conn

42:55 – Max’s conflict with chess.com, online cheating allegations

46:27 – The Borislav Ivanov story

48:24 – Chess.com leaking Max’s communications “for the sake of public interest”

49:04 – AD BREAK

50:13 – How does the “cheating situation” affect Max these days?

51:30 – Why chess.com is doing a bad job at detecting cheaters

53:39 – Hikaru Nakamura calling out cheaters without good evidence

55:07 – The problem with online accuracy scores and chess.com’s immoral way of obtaining cheating “confessions”

58:15 – Max considering legal action against chess.com

59:51 – Max’s solution to the cheating problem

1:03:04 – How does Max assess the damage done to Hans Niemann as a result of this scandal?

1:06:39 – Vladimir Kramnik’s strange antics and unlikely “partnership” with Hans

1:09:00 – Does Max think Magnus regrets making the cheating allegations?

1:10:16 – Max’s future plans for the Chess Max Academy

1:12:30 – Outro