I mean, I am not into the chess scene, but...how would that work? Someone running moves through a computer and somehow transmitting the move via signals of some kind?
ooooooh
I like that idea!
Yes it would. I won every chess match when I had a computer program running to help me.
For an over-the-board game, yes, that is what is presumably being implied: the player alleged to be cheating has some sort of access to an engine, either directly or through the help of an accomplice.
But at a tournament like the Sinquefield Cup, the players are scanned ("wanded," actually) before each round in an effort to detect illicit communication devices. As far as I am aware, no one has offered any plausible explanation for how Niemann was supposedly cheating. As it is, Carlsen to date has only cryptically insinuated that Niemann was cheating; he withdrew from the tournament without offering (at least not publicly) any explanation for why he did so. But Carlsen seems more than willing, at this point, to have the "cheating" allegations swirl around Niemann without saying anything himself about them.
To my mind at least, Carlsen comes across here as something of a gutless, entitled punk.
Exactly
It works just like cheating at poker. You hide a couple queens in your pocket and then say “hey, what’s that?”. While everyone is looking somewhere else, you put them on the board.
The current theory on the Chess vblogs and news sites is that Carlsen has a “mole” on his support staff who leaked his “prep” plan, i.e. his “game strategy” and intended “lines,” to Niemann, who ambushed him. Niemann has admitted to cheating before at Chess.com and got banned, but not cheating in professional table-top matches. Still, he seems awfully dodgy. And yeah, Carlsen is also a big man-child.