Enough with the fiction that cheating is a mistake, or that a 16 year old smart enough to be a chess grandmaster is simultaneously so underdeveloped that they have not learned the consequences of cheating.

Your comparison with murder is ridiculous. First of all, teenage murderers are regularly sentenced to life in prison. A murderer is deprived of fundamental human liberties--Niemann is deprived of being able to compete at the highest competitive level in a tabletop board game, without suspicion.

> If someone kills a person at 16. Should the killer be in prison for life?

If you murder somebody at 16, you shouldn't be a free man at 19. Three years is not enough time for somebody to mature and mellow.

Some things matter so little that the penalties can be extremely high; for example, nobody needs to play chess so the penalty for cheating at chess can be a lifetime ban from sanctioned tournaments.

Is it entirely fair to the actually repentant? No. But does it keep out the false-repentant? Yes.

playing competitive Chess is a privilege, not a right like freedom. I'm totally fine with 0-tolerance, because the only penalty is you can't play in competitions. If you want to play chess with your mates, no one is going to stop you.