By roughly two years after the October 2022 podcast (i.e., by October 2024), Hans Niemann had not become the world’s number one over‑the‑board (classical) chess player. On the September 2024 FIDE rating list he was ranked 16th in the world with a classical rating of 2733, while Magnus Carlsen remained world #1.(chess.com) As of the November 1, 2025 FIDE list, Carlsen is still #1 at 2839 and Niemann is ranked 20th with a rating of 2729; he has never held the #1 spot.(en.wikipedia.org)

However, the prediction was explicitly conditional: “if he’s not cheating, then … he should rapidly become the world’s number one.” Whether Niemann has ever cheated over‑the‑board in elite classical chess has not been definitively established by any authoritative body. The high‑profile Carlsen–Niemann dispute ended in an August 2023 confidential settlement between Niemann, Magnus Carlsen, and Chess.com that included Niemann’s reinstatement and explicitly involved no admission of wrongdoing by any party, with Carlsen stating there was no determinative evidence Niemann cheated in their 2022 game.(grokipedia.com) This resolution leaves the truth of the antecedent ("he’s not cheating") unresolved.

Because the forecast is framed as a conditional on an empirically unsettled premise, we cannot determine its truth value from observed outcomes alone. If one ignores the condition, the implied claim that Niemann would become world #1 within a couple of years is clearly false; but taking the stated conditional form seriously, the prediction is best classified as ambiguous rather than definitively right or wrong.