After the infamous incident between Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann in 2022 the concern of cheating in chess has been a major topic in the chess community.
In this blog, I would like to give my own take on the issue.
Cheating in any sport is not an alien concept. From time to time, people are caught taking illegal measures to gain an edge over their opponents in a competitive match.
Chess is one of the most (if not the most) competitive games on the planet, definitely, there are people who feel the need to cheat in order to win games, especially in prized events where there's money on the line.
The past decade has witnessed its fair share of controversies and scandals. One of them was the incident involving former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik — who we'll get to talk more about later.
Kramnik - Topalov
This controversy happened during the 2006 World Chess Championship between Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov. Suspicions arose due to Kramnik's frequent bathroom visits during games, leading to accusations that he was consulting a computer for assistance.
Vladimir Kramnik, left, Veselin Topalov, right | Photo Source
Speculation went high when computer analysis revealed striking similarities between Kramnik's moves and those suggested by top chess engines. Critics pointed to these uncanny parallels as evidence of foul play. Kramnik vehemently denied the allegations, adamantly maintaining his innocence and dismissing the accusations as baseless. Nevertheless, the cloud of suspicion cast over him lingered.
This will go on to steer up the chess world.
Gaioz Nigalidze
In 2015, a prominent Grandmaster would be disqualified from a prestigious tournament after evidence surfaced of unauthorized electronic communication during games.
Another scandal saw the expulsion of a rising star from a national championship in 2017 amid allegations of collusion and cheating with accomplices.
Although there have been all these scandals over the years, the issue of cheating really exploded more in recent years.
After the pandemic, due to the inability to host physical tournaments, a lot of tournaments were being hosted online. A lot of strong unknown players began to spawn out of the online scene. Many are legit, some false.
Personally, I believe the Pandemic caused a fracture in the Fide rating system as a lot of players improved massively online but weren't playing a lot of physical tournaments. This begs the question as to whether some of these players online truly improved tremendously or are simply cheating.
Carlsen - Neimann
In 2022 came the Magnus Carlsen – Hans Niemann controversy. This one shook the entire international scene, not just the chess world.
It was in the 3rd round of the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. Carlsen after a surprising loss to Hans Niemann withdrew from the tournament. He never stated the actual reason why. But hinted with a post on his Twitter page. And later on, it came to light that Carlsen was uncomfortable with Niemann's participation in the tournament and had relayed this concern to the organisers but was ignored.
Many interpreted his withdrawal as Carlsen tacitly accusing Niemann of having cheated.
Soon after, in another online tournament, Carlsen resigned only after one move, perplexing observers and re-enforcing the speculations that Hans Niemann must be cheating
Soon after, news of Hans Niemann being banned from the Chess.com platform for cheating more than once came to light and this raised the eyeballs of so many people — questioning the legitimacy of players, especially online.
This incident I believe made the issue of Cheating a mainstream topic in the world of chess – especially online chess.
Previously, I made a post on AI and How Machine Learning is Shaping Modern Chess, I talked about how it influences classical chess and if its for the good or bad, one thing I didn't mention however is, as technology continues to evolve, new avenues for cheating potentially emerges.
My Thoughts
My reason for writing this blog however is my inconvenience with the actions of Vladimir Kramnik for the past couple of months.
He has deemed himself the online cheating detective and goes as far as accusing everyone he loses to online as a cheater (though he doesn't say so directly, but he insinuates it by blocking, reporting and posting said players as anomalies on his Twitter)
He has gone on to dub the famous weekly Titled Tuesday event hosted by chess.com Cheating Tuesday.
Claiming that almost everyone who plays the tournament is cheating.
He has previously insinuated that Hikaru Nakamura is amongst the cheaters as he prepared statistics he claimed to show that Hikaru's Streaks on chess.com are an anomaly. "Interesting" he calls it.
At this point, I honestly think Kramnik's actions are causing more harm than good to the online chess community as he proposes no actionable solutions to the issue of online cheating but instead focuses on accusing everyone he loses to.
While I agree that online cheating is a major concern in online chess especially, I honestly do not think Kramnik's approach is a good one.
Here's what I think:
- Not every one that beats Kramnik online is cheating
- The Pandemic made the Fide rating system broken as most players have improved to strengths above their Fide ratings
- We need to have more educative discussions on how we can realistically solve the problem of cheating in the chess community.
With that, I would like to hear your thoughts on cheating in chess. Please do well to leave a comment.
Hivechess
Finally, we had a fun Hive tournament with 700 COLONY up for grabs and a point valid for the next Hivechess season.
It was a 3+1 Chess960 arena event.
The tournament was won by @lucianosky
with @stayoutoftherz coming in hot in second place and @masterswatch in 3rd.
The Hivechess tournament is such an awesome event and will always be. I can most certainly say: There are zero cheaters.
The Hive Chess community is an awesome place to be and if you're interested in being part of the upcoming season, do well to follow @stayoutoftherz to get updates on the coming Season 18.
Honestly, I'm much of a novice in Chess960, so I couldn't come up with some good analysis for the fun tournament.
But in my quest to improve in the format, I will do well to share all my findings in upcoming blogs, so stay tuned.
Thanks for reading!
I am @samostically,I love to talk and write about chess because i benefited alot from playing chess. I love to review books and movies too!.I believe life is all about staying happy and maintaining peace.
♟♟♟♟♟♟♟♟♟
