What do you think?
Rate this book
Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess
Not yet published
Expected 2 Jun 26From the bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down the House comes the cinematic true story about the biggest scandal in modern chess.
In September 2022, the unthinkable nineteen-year-old American chess prodigy Hans Niemann defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen in a stunning face-to-face match. Within days, Carlsen accused Niemann of cheating—a bombshell allegation that rocked the chess world. As the scandal spiraled, Chess.com—the dominant force in online chess—launched a high-stakes investigation igniting a global media firestorm.
But Checkmate is about more than a cheating scandal. It’s the story of a teenager willing to risk everything to rise to the top; a reclusive genius suddenly fighting to protect his legacy; and a centuries-old game transforming into a billion-dollar industry fueled by streaming, sponsorships, and Silicon Valley power players.
With exclusive access to the central figures, Ben Mezrich takes readers deep inside the weird, wild, and cutthroat world of competitive chess—where genius meets ambition, and every move could be your last.
In September 2022, the unthinkable nineteen-year-old American chess prodigy Hans Niemann defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen in a stunning face-to-face match. Within days, Carlsen accused Niemann of cheating—a bombshell allegation that rocked the chess world. As the scandal spiraled, Chess.com—the dominant force in online chess—launched a high-stakes investigation igniting a global media firestorm.
But Checkmate is about more than a cheating scandal. It’s the story of a teenager willing to risk everything to rise to the top; a reclusive genius suddenly fighting to protect his legacy; and a centuries-old game transforming into a billion-dollar industry fueled by streaming, sponsorships, and Silicon Valley power players.
With exclusive access to the central figures, Ben Mezrich takes readers deep inside the weird, wild, and cutthroat world of competitive chess—where genius meets ambition, and every move could be your last.
- GenresNonfictionSports
304 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 2, 2026
105 people want to read
About the author
Ben Mezrich
43 books1,473 followersBen Mezrich has created his own highly addictive genre of nonfiction, chronicling the amazing stories of young geniuses making tons of money on the edge of impossibility, ethics, and morality.
With his newest non-fiction book, Once Upon a Time in Russia, Mezrich tells his most incredible story yet: A true drama of obscene wealth, crime, rivalry, and betrayal from deep inside the world of billionaire Russian Oligarchs.
Mezrich has authored sixteen books, with a combined printing of over four million copies, including the wildly successful Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, which spent sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and sold over 2 million copies in fifteen languages. His book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal – debuted at #4 on the New York Times list and spent 18 weeks in hardcover and paperback, as well as hit bestseller lists in over a dozen countries. The book was adapted into the movie The Social Network –written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher – and was #1 at the box office for two weeks, won Golden Globes for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best score, and was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning 3 including best Adapted Screenplay for Aaron Sorkin. Mezrich and Aaron Sorkin shared a prestigious Scripter Award for best adapted screenplay as well.
With his newest non-fiction book, Once Upon a Time in Russia, Mezrich tells his most incredible story yet: A true drama of obscene wealth, crime, rivalry, and betrayal from deep inside the world of billionaire Russian Oligarchs.
Mezrich has authored sixteen books, with a combined printing of over four million copies, including the wildly successful Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, which spent sixty-three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and sold over 2 million copies in fifteen languages. His book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal – debuted at #4 on the New York Times list and spent 18 weeks in hardcover and paperback, as well as hit bestseller lists in over a dozen countries. The book was adapted into the movie The Social Network –written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher – and was #1 at the box office for two weeks, won Golden Globes for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best score, and was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning 3 including best Adapted Screenplay for Aaron Sorkin. Mezrich and Aaron Sorkin shared a prestigious Scripter Award for best adapted screenplay as well.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 3, 2026
read if you like:
♟️ chess
🤦🏻♀️ competition scandals
📚BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
summary:
I love a good scandal, and BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE is one of my favorite books about the MIT card counting era. Mezrich’s latest book, CHECKMATE, follows a similar genre, focused on the 2022 cheating scandal in chess between Magnus Carlsen and American chess phenom Hans Niemann. I admittedly knew nothing about this when it happened, but the book is an interesting story about the world of competitive chess and what someone will sacrifice to get to the top.
For those who aren’t familiar with the real life story, this scandal played out in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, where Niemann, a wild underdog to World Chess Champion Carlsen, pulled ahead in a face to face game. Rather than losing, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, raising suspicion about what had happened. In a subsequent match between the two, Carlsen walked away after his first move, and formally accused Niemann of cheating a week later. Chess.com, a booming startup out of COVID, led an investigation into Niemann, who admitted cheating as a child, but adamantly denied any actions against Carlsen.
If you like chess, you’ll love this book. The players are quirky and unique, which is a little harder to get into if you aren’t immersed in this world, but are still compelling to follow along with. Their ambition and drive is impressive (as someone who doesn’t play chess!) along with their willingness to be ruthless. The dynamic of online chess vs in person and the challenges associated with the rise in technology are interesting and relatable, and Mezrich does a good job of balancing the technical details with those a casual reader (or player) would understand. The debate around how to prove cheating in a game where it could be invisible is fascinating, and what a reputation means — or doesn’t mean — in the digital gaming era.
While the gaming lingo and environment is harder to understand if you aren’t in that world, it’s still a good book focused on ambition, fallout and the obsession over brilliance. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NEtGalley for the advanced copy, and check this out when it releases on June 2!
♟️ chess
🤦🏻♀️ competition scandals
📚BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
summary:
I love a good scandal, and BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE is one of my favorite books about the MIT card counting era. Mezrich’s latest book, CHECKMATE, follows a similar genre, focused on the 2022 cheating scandal in chess between Magnus Carlsen and American chess phenom Hans Niemann. I admittedly knew nothing about this when it happened, but the book is an interesting story about the world of competitive chess and what someone will sacrifice to get to the top.
For those who aren’t familiar with the real life story, this scandal played out in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, where Niemann, a wild underdog to World Chess Champion Carlsen, pulled ahead in a face to face game. Rather than losing, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, raising suspicion about what had happened. In a subsequent match between the two, Carlsen walked away after his first move, and formally accused Niemann of cheating a week later. Chess.com, a booming startup out of COVID, led an investigation into Niemann, who admitted cheating as a child, but adamantly denied any actions against Carlsen.
If you like chess, you’ll love this book. The players are quirky and unique, which is a little harder to get into if you aren’t immersed in this world, but are still compelling to follow along with. Their ambition and drive is impressive (as someone who doesn’t play chess!) along with their willingness to be ruthless. The dynamic of online chess vs in person and the challenges associated with the rise in technology are interesting and relatable, and Mezrich does a good job of balancing the technical details with those a casual reader (or player) would understand. The debate around how to prove cheating in a game where it could be invisible is fascinating, and what a reputation means — or doesn’t mean — in the digital gaming era.
While the gaming lingo and environment is harder to understand if you aren’t in that world, it’s still a good book focused on ambition, fallout and the obsession over brilliance. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NEtGalley for the advanced copy, and check this out when it releases on June 2!
March 8, 2026
Captivating Chess Cheating Scandal at the Highest Level
Checkmate, by Ben Mezrich, is an action-filled book about the cheating controversy between scrappy, hot-headed up and coming Hans Niemann and the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen. I ripped through this book in a weekend and enjoyed it immensely! It felt like I was reading all the modern chess tea while I was drinking a cup of tea. It's non-fiction, but reads like a novel and the story draws you in with all of its drama.
Hans Niemann was accused of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis in 2022. It was an over the board game in which he seemed bored, distracted, and took down Magnus Carlsen in the first game. This accusation spiraled in light of the fact that Hans had been caught cheating on Chess.com multiple times over the years.
Lawsuits begin swirling from Hans Niemann accusing Magnus, Chess.com, and even Hikaru Nakamura of colluding against him as a sort of “chess mafia” to block Hans from playing at the highest levels of chess. Chess.com released a report called “The Hans Niemann Report” that shows how he cheated multiple times on Chess.com over the years from as early as age 12, but they could not detect any hard evidence of having cheated over the board at Sinquefield.
Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess, delves into this Sinquefield Cup controversy in detail, with backgrounds and histories of all the players such as Magnus Carlsen, Hans Niemann, and Danny Rensch from Chess.com. It is a fast-paced read, and I was hooked because I remember having read the salacious rumors of how Hans had cheated, and watching those rumors blaze like a forest fire through the news media back in 2022. If you want to dive into some intriguing modern chess drama, this is absolutely the book for you.
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing this ARC to review.
Checkmate, by Ben Mezrich, is an action-filled book about the cheating controversy between scrappy, hot-headed up and coming Hans Niemann and the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen. I ripped through this book in a weekend and enjoyed it immensely! It felt like I was reading all the modern chess tea while I was drinking a cup of tea. It's non-fiction, but reads like a novel and the story draws you in with all of its drama.
Hans Niemann was accused of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis in 2022. It was an over the board game in which he seemed bored, distracted, and took down Magnus Carlsen in the first game. This accusation spiraled in light of the fact that Hans had been caught cheating on Chess.com multiple times over the years.
Lawsuits begin swirling from Hans Niemann accusing Magnus, Chess.com, and even Hikaru Nakamura of colluding against him as a sort of “chess mafia” to block Hans from playing at the highest levels of chess. Chess.com released a report called “The Hans Niemann Report” that shows how he cheated multiple times on Chess.com over the years from as early as age 12, but they could not detect any hard evidence of having cheated over the board at Sinquefield.
Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess, delves into this Sinquefield Cup controversy in detail, with backgrounds and histories of all the players such as Magnus Carlsen, Hans Niemann, and Danny Rensch from Chess.com. It is a fast-paced read, and I was hooked because I remember having read the salacious rumors of how Hans had cheated, and watching those rumors blaze like a forest fire through the news media back in 2022. If you want to dive into some intriguing modern chess drama, this is absolutely the book for you.
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing this ARC to review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the advanced copy of Checkmate. This book has a strong opening that really draws you in and feels like a fast-paced TV drama. The pacing is great throughout, making it a total page turner for a subject I previously didn’t have much interest in (chess).
You don’t need to be in the world of chess to understand and find this intriguing. I didn’t want to put it down and read it in 2 days, but would have finished it in one sitting if I had the time.
This is my first book by Mezrich but I’ve read many by Michael Lewis, and if you’re a fan of Lewis, you’ll find this even lighter to read and absorb.
You don’t need to be in the world of chess to understand and find this intriguing. I didn’t want to put it down and read it in 2 days, but would have finished it in one sitting if I had the time.
This is my first book by Mezrich but I’ve read many by Michael Lewis, and if you’re a fan of Lewis, you’ll find this even lighter to read and absorb.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
I've never read Mezrich before, and I think this was a good one for me to start with. I'm fascinated by chess and LOVED Danny Rensch's memoir (he is one of the founders of Chess.com). This book goes into the intricacies of the cheating scandal/dustup between Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen. I had also heard about that from a podcast, so I was eager to find out more updates, and I found that I had been given some misinformation too. If you are interested in chess at all, I highly recommend this book.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Was familiar with the Hans Niemann/Magnus Carlsen chess controversy but this in-depth look at its beginnings, the machinations, and the human toll on all involved was very well done. Amazingly paced it reads like a novel and finished it in little more than a day. (Also made me want to play chess again.)
Random note: as a college administrator this is an excellent case study in development of a young adult mentally, ethically, and social-emotionally. Riveting.
Random note: as a college administrator this is an excellent case study in development of a young adult mentally, ethically, and social-emotionally. Riveting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews