He has had an impressive but not unprecedented ramp up, from 2400(ish) to 2700 in around 3 years. There are actually other young stars, in particular a trio of

He has had an impressive but not unprecedented ramp up, from 2400(ish) to 2700 in around 3 years. There are actually other young stars, in particular a trio of Indian prodigies who've had a similar surge at the same time. I recommend the work of Nate Solon, a chess master and data scientist, easy to find on Twitter, he's published some interesting analysis. It's surprising for Magnus to lose a White game at all, especially to someone not in the top ten, but really no more than surprising - these sort of things happen. Can Djokovic lose to the world #100? Absolutely, he can have a bad day. The world #100 (in tennis or chess) is 98% (ish) as good as the world #1. Did Niemann cheat against Magnus? Obviously I don't know but I do think extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence and I don't see it in this case.