Nostalgics will lament that table-slams after losing a chess match, are not what they used to be once. For Hans Niemann has done the predictable – gently slammed the playing table at the Esports World Cup of chess, to no visible after effect.
The video of the last chance qualifier was put out by chess.com garnered 54.6K views, but didn’t exactly go viral. Niemann was winning the qualifier against Anish Giri, when with 8 seconds to go he seemed to have frozen like mint icecream, the colour of his shirt. Niemann went KingB7 down at six seconds and sacrificed on the pre-game moves as last resort. Giri however was refusing to go Dutch for a draw, and ended up flagging Niemann with a rook check to give Team Secret a quality boost.
Niemann who had been 15 seconds up on the clock with less than a minute to go, imploded and hit a Magnus-Lite table small, more a fist with his left, thereafter.
Hans SLAMS The Table 🤜💥 pic.twitter.com/kbDysxNOpk
— Chess.com (@chesscom) July 26, 2025
The Slam though didn’t quite fetch much aura, like Magnus Carlsen’s against Gukesh, though it recreated the pressure and exhalation after losing from a winning position. “The chess has spoken once again” ran the refrain riffing off Niemann’s diss of Carlsen losses. This format in e chess does not allow time increments. Giri though dawdling through the match, had the recent upperhand over Niemann in blitz before punching his ticket for the World Cup of eSports, and had set up the shootoff after beating Pragg.
The table slam was a restrained fist thump on the computer table, minus the ‘oh my god’ ST. He would remove his earphones, look around at his surroundings where nothing much stirred and walk off with no controversy fallowing in his wake. 27 reposts and 569 likes of the clip on Chess.com made it distinctly unviral.
Niemann had once destroyed and entire hotel room, so this was viewed as a sign of flailing tempest and maturity outcomes. While tables are a routine, common enemy of several chess players, a literal punching bag, Carlsen had elevated slamming tables to level of pro-max frustrate emote, after D Gukesh defeated him. Given the propensity to thump tables, there were calls to add a slam button to the app.
His exit meant no tables turned at Qiddiya.
