SIMON: I'm sorry for the naivete of this inquiry, but how would someone cheat at chess?

WETHERELL: The moves are broadcast live, so in theory, somebody could be paying attention to that, watching and passing moves into the player that's in the playing hall.

SIMON: Why would getting outside advice help? I mean, presumably somebody playing Magnus Carlsen is pretty good.

WETHERELL: Yes. So there are computer engines, chess engines, that are used as analytical tools that can basically give what we think is the best answer for the position. And us humans are just trying to come up with what we think the best move is, but the computers are much, much stronger and have been for decades.

SIMON: You ran the numbers, I gather, on your website.

WETHERELL: Yeah, so I did an analysis of Hans' performance based on the system used to sort of rate and rank chess players. It's a measurement of how we can expect one player to perform against another. And, you know, a player that's 150 points rated lower than another opponent might win 5% of the time, as an example. And so Hans' rating at the beginning of 2021 was around 2,500, and now his rating is approximately 2,700 - a really significant, almost unprecedented rise for somebody in that period of time. And so basically what I showed is just that, you know, his rating was wrong before, and he's a better player than his rating would suggest, so his rating has moved up over time to follow the fact that he's been performing well. The speed that he's increased his rating is really the draw to suspicion.