I still remember where I was when I first heard that an American upstart named Hans Niemann had somehow beaten Magnus Carlsen, the world’s no. 1 chess player, without breaking a sweat—and that a humiliated Carlsen responded by implying his foe had cheated in some intangible, totally untraceable way. Okay, so I was sitting at my desk, looking at my laptop; that part of the story is not very exciting. But the rest certainly is, and Ben Mezrich—the bestselling author behind the books that became Dumb Money, 21, and The Social Network—lays it out beautifully in this excerpt from his new book about the controversy, Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess. Mezrich has intel from both Carlsen and Niemann’s camps, as well as a very entertaining side quest involving the unrepentant internet troll who first spread the idea that Niemann relied on...an unorthodox prop to best Carlsen. It’s the best black-and-white drama this side of Chess on Broadway.
Elsewhere, Savannah Walsh speaks exclusively with the director of Trust Me: the False Prophet, which exposes the evil successor of Warren Jeffs. And for a very different type of documentary, Regina Kim goes BTS on BTS: The Return.
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