Even if it turns out Niemann cheated, the way Carlsen is acting coy about it puts me off. The tweet was bad enough (unlike Mourinho he's clearly not in "big trouble" from his insinuation), but this resignation is such a publicity stunt.
I can understand that out of an abundance of caution (and on the advice of his lawyers) he doesn't want to name anyone in particular, although seeing so many fingers pointed at Niemann (understandably, given his past) I do think Carlsen should at least release a statement saying "I don't want people accusing Niemann of cheating, that was not my intention".
Someone on Carlsen's team could be encouraging him to focus on lines which they've discovered (through a bug in the hotel room) that Niemann's team is preparing counters for.
In both of these cases, the corrupt team member could be motivated by the possibility of winning a large bet on the outcome of the chess match, without either player being in on it.
(I admit that the idea of Stockfish giving deliberately bad information only to Carlsen, to weaken his prep, is not very plausible, but we don't know how rational Carlsen is being here).
Pretty much every grandmaster who has commented on the prep leak idea has stated it just makes no sense on the face of it.
Maybe he does, or maybe Carlsen thinks he does.
> the prep leak idea makes no sense.
The "malicious person on Carlsen's team" hypothesis I was putting forward didn't involve them leaking the prep to Niemann. I merely supposed that someone in such a position could negatively influence Carlsen's performance, and profit from it through betting.
Has Magnus said he's cheating?
It's easy to say "Just don't tweet anything", and that's advice that we might wish millions of other people would follow too, but Carlsen is now getting criticism for his silence, so it seems like he can't win either way (ironically).
He's being criticized for being silent after having published a vague tweet insinuating his opponent was cheating, not to mention the resignation stunt. If he'd actually been silent about it and just withdrawn from the tournament before the match, there wouldn't have been anything to criticize.