Man Disguised as Woman Tossed from Chess Tournament After Fooling Officials

A man pretending to be a devout Muslim woman wearing a full niqab was tossed out of a chess tournament in Nairobi, Kenya, after succeeding in making it to the last round.

The man entered the Kenya Open Chess Championship in Nairobi under the name Millicent Awuor and played through the early stages, beating one woman after another, according to an Australian news outlet.

The prize for winning the women’s tournament was a hefty $42,000, a payday that attracted 450 players from 22 African federations. So, a lot was on the line at the event.

During the matches, the player tore through his female opponents without saying a single word. But officials eventually got suspicious when he succeeded in beating former national champion Gloria Jumba and Ugandan top player Ampaira Shakira.

The tournament staff was reported as being averse to challenging the player for fear of finding out he was a woman which would have set them up for accusations of religious discrimination. But, after taking him behind closed doors, he admitted he was a male college student just hoping to win the big cash prize.

This is only the latest strange incident in the world of chess after last year’s cheating scandal at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri, where 19-year-old American Hans Niemann beat chess champ Magnus Carlsen, 31, from Norway.

Niemann — one of the lowest-rated players in the tournament — was accused of cheating and faced the outlandish claim that he was using an electronic chess move generator hidden somewhere on his person that was wirelessly linked to an anal massage device secreted just where such a device might be placed. Accusers claimed that the anal device would buzz in some sequence to tell Niemann what moves to make, though the player’s detractors did not exactly reveal just how that could work.

Whether he did or did not cheat, Niemann filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit over the claims he used a sex toy to cheat.

But despite his protestations, though, Neimann has since had to suffer the indignity of having his rear-end scanned when he enters tournaments.

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