Chess.com Concludes Legal Dispute with Hans Niemann, Niemann to Return Back

Quite anticlimactic - though I guess that's what you get when neither side can prove anything. Regardless, if there is nothing to be seen, I'm happy that it's over. Too bad it has happened, though.

> As Hans returns to Chess.com, he will be allowed to play in any and all events, and will be treated no differently from any other player.

That seems like some wishful thinking. Chess.com might treat him no differently from any other player but I guaranteed a significant portion of the chess.com playerbase won't.

It's bad news that there are no tools to detect cheating, such situation can encourage dishonest players to cheat and nobody will take seriously accusations about cheating from other players.

Interesting quote from the long reddit thread about the settlement [1]:

> As a litigation lawyer, my perspective on this is more likely that Niemann received a cash settlement, and conditions were negotiated between all parties with regard to future disclosure and disparagement.

> We will likely never know what money changed hands, if any, but for it to end this way with the concession that Niemann can return to chess.com and Magnus will play against him OTB, we should probably assume that Niemann got paid.

> The way it works when you're the party filing the Claim is that you're not going to want to drop it without being given a good reason. If you don't like the Defendants' settlement offer, you're just going to continue with the formal Court proceedings.

> It is possible that the Defendants produced evidence that would defeat Niemann's case, but if that were true, why would they make so many concessions to Niemann?

> Remember, he had a defamation claim here. The allegation is that without any evidence of cheating at Sinquefield, Magnus and Chesscom took punitive action against Niemann, which caused him reputational damage and a reduced ability to earn money playing competitive chess. After this settlement, they came out and admitted that they had no evidence of that, and Magnus is going to play against him going forward.

> What did Niemann concede? It was his decision to drop the lawsuit in the end. He didn't get an apology, apparently, but he is almost certainly being compensated with cash in addition to being allowed to return to online play.

> Just because they settled doesn't necessarily make it a draw. Maybe both sides are slightly unhappy, but based on the communications and concessions coming from Magnus/Hikaru/Chesscom, this was probably not a situation where Niemann just dropped the litigation in exchange for the ability to play online and get Magnus to play against him OTB. Those were probably add-ons.

> If Magnus and Chesscom were in the right and they won this case, they would have probably been able to maintain their positions that Niemann is a cheater, and continue to keep him from playing.

> Instead, Niemann is effectively back to being able to play everywhere and everyone as if he never cheated at all. Maybe that's all he won from this, but if he was able to get that much from them, it speaks to the legitimacy of his defamation claim. If he did have a legitimate defamation claim, then he probably got paid some amount that is less than what he claimed in damages.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/163p4hs/chesscom_con...