Chess Mates (Netflix, Tuesday) has an unsettling early gambit: the face of Piers Morgan, looming via archive footage. “Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?” Morgan asks down camera, as if prepping an ill-advised phone-in. “Your curiosity is concerning. Maybe you’re personally interested?” shoots back his interviewee, Hans Niemann (above). The minds of chess masters, as glimpsed in this fantastic documentary, are almost as compelling as any back-passage shenanigans on the table.
It’s worth looking up the whole clip, from when Niemann found himself at the centre of a cheating scandal. The 19-year-old had come from nowhere; in a match at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, he did the impossible and beat the Goat. That’s Norwegian Magnus Carlsen: an undisputed titan who sees lines of play like Neo sees the Matrix, and has held the world No 1 spot, unbroken, since 2011. Suspecting foul play, Carlsen withdrew from the competition. Ever since, suspicion has swirled round his American rival. Which is where the beads enter. So to speak.
