You Kramnik's fangirls really like to make baseless claims and accusations huh? Is making a rational and coherent argument your kryptonite? Because you didn't explain the reasons for what you said whatsoever but just threw those random accusations trying to dismiss his analysis without having to debate using your brain (if you have one).
@@lehatikhonovit’s not really true tho, magnus and naka are quite well matched online and hikki has beaten him many times OTB in speed chess as well. But on the balance magnus is better, which is expected
His argument is that Hikaru is stronger online than Magnus is over OTB. Basically, claiming that the gap between Hikaru and the 2nd best player is too much to be legit. The problem is when you're the best online player of all time you're going to have anomalies statlines
@@lehatikhonov I'm pretty sure even Hikaru admits he farms rating points.... he takes matches against players to maximize his rating potential and avoids bad matchups where he's likely to lose rating points.
Personally I see it like this. Kramnik was good once but became old and slow, but is still arrogant enough to believe he's better than everyone else. Except this doesn't line up with the results people get against him these days, and the only way to resolve the cognitive dissonance between those two conflicting "facts" is that everyone else must be cheating.
@itaintinnit i do like it because it adheres to the Occam's razor like you said, but also Hanlon's razor, my personal favorite rule of thumb. 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.' Good thing to remember with conspiracies running wild. Cheers!
@@potatoonastick2239 Although I get the point of Hanlon's razor, and do agree with the sentiment of "people are generally not evil, just sometimes stupid," I don't feel it's quite adequate. Problem is, it only accounts for two reasons: evil, and ignorance. It doesn't account for the third reason: indifference. Now, you might argue indifference is the worst kind of evil, and I would tend to agree, but you would want to distinguish between the two. I guess you could bake it all into evil and name three categories of evil, from lesser to worse: evil by ignorance; evil by intent; evil by indifference. In Kramnik's case, I don't think he wanted to do Danya harm. He either was ignorant or indifferent, and my feeling is that he was a bit of both. Ignorant of the suffering he was causing, and indifferent to it/managed to rationalize it as okay. I think this viewpoint can be supported by the "debate" they had on the Levitov Chess channel.
it just comes down to kramnik not being able to click and drag with a mouse and instead clicking squares instead to move. he'd literally be +150 elo online of where he is if he could use a mouse correctly.
@@jacksarkisian playing dumb not understanding that he was kicking his chess pieces and correcting them during Nepos time. American like you just lying again. Already found the WMD in Iraq dear lying american?
younger generation is stronger, nnue solved chess positions for everyone quickly cheaply objectively. if play as fast as possible against at a world class player for 20 moves without giving opponent obvious targets, takes away ability for them to think on your time, even they can blunder horribly in time pressure, especially if they are slow with a mouse. have noticed that egoistic top chess players sometimes falter against such a strategy, make unforced errors, more so than players who are more collected, as someone who has played almost all the worlds elite, there are some players who definitely handle unexpected developments less well, although they are on another level the way they fight back from disadvantage situations and usually win anyway. there is a geopolitical element here as well with India ascendant and Russia on decline. could be a cultural paranoia. or a cry to stay relevant or for attention or a way of protecting ego, to absolve oneself of responsibility of embarrassing mistakes or results. somehow in chess, behavior is much worse after a loss because intense stress in time trouble situations and no outlet when the game is over and when taking shortcuts in one’s thinking mistakes that are unthinkable will sometimes occur. one oversight can ruin 50 good moves. in chess it is easy to gain an advantage somewhere on the board and if it is around the opponents king well, weaker players know their checkmates, upsets will sometimes happen. top level athletes often take losses hard, in chess it players constantly second guess things when they go wrong and players can be very emotionally invested after a tense game see their heart rates. there are players who are good at chess but lack worldly awareness or lack perception, or curiousity or tact in areas outside what benefits them, shocking as that may sound, but can find all sorts in chess as elsewhere. elite players some of them devote their life to the game, some more successfully than others
The funny thing is that Nepo openly admitted of using stockfish in a game against Hans online, that's what i call a proven cheater, not their baseless accusations.
@@jacksarkisian It doesn't let me paste links so I'll just put the name of the video: "Шахматы, скандалы, книги и Магнус Карлсен. Ян Непомнящий. Книжный чел #91". The part I was talking about is at around 49:00 and you can even turn on english subtitles.
i think an important piece of context missing from this video is that FIDE banned Russia in 2022 which could possibly put everything that has happened since then into perspective
i really just didn't want to get political with this video. mentioning the war or anything to do with it just leaves a sour taste even though it might be relevant. at the end of the day i don't think it would be the most compelling information from what we have anyway - the only real sanction is that they can't bear their own flags or speak on the war.
Very insightful! I wasn’t aware of a lot of events you covered Honestly I’m tired of Kramnik and Nepo’s antics, and I’m finding it harder and harder to take anything they say seriously nowadays
i was always super weary of Nepo, heard lots of things about him spanning back to 6ish years ago where it just seemed like he wasn't a great guy. this puts the nail in the coffin for me, especially the snidey digs at Wei Yi - he would never do that in an English interview.
Strongly agree here! It’s sad to see some of the best players in the world/history behave like this I only started chess about a year ago so I’m not attached to them in any but it’s still a shame
Hi, I'm from Russia. Interesting points, watched the video with interest. on the whole, it may be that most are possible. but to me: A. the accusations seem like a stretch, to me there is also not enough evidence. B. Many Russian chess players have a difficult relationship with the Russian Chess Federation because of its political stance, among other things. Many people were against the war and so on, which led to some consequences. so to put Russian sports federation in the center is not right imo C. i don't see any contradiction in dubov's assertions of strong, but perhaps admiring fabiano but not admiring indian has some reason of its own. so a strange take, though maybe correct, but isnt connected to the whole point imo So to summarize: 1. I agree that all these accusations of cheating are nonsense and I don't support them. 2. But I don't agree that the Russian Chess Federation is behind all this, it's all a stretch and generalized. especially considering the relationship of these chess players with the federation. 3. I think that such accusations could indeed arise out of internal resentment, but only towards some of the chess players listed. for me you are generalizing too much about Russian chess players in general. For example dubov 4. The evidence is also insufficient, the connection is there but in a few places as I said it is strained, the evidence is also a bit strained and everything is generalized And so overall I agree with some things thanks
16:45* correction, not the indian team. Those phones had nothing to do with the indian team, they were owned and placed by ChessBaseIndia with the permission of FIDE.
I have to say, this was a very weird video and I'm not sure if it's some sort of exercise in ironic meta-commentary about creating narratives. The main criticism people have about Kramnik's crusades is that he's cherry picking data that fits a narrative, and some of these examples just really seem like you're doing the same. For example, the Nepo-Harikrishna thing: you show Nepo being pissed off but you don't show why. In the heat of the battle, Hari had actually knocked over pieces and adjusted on Nepo's time, and after missing out on a win in a World Championship he was pissed off immediately after the game. So what? Something similar happened between Nepo and Wesley recently, and again Nepo was salty afterwards, but that doesn't fit here because Wesley isn't Indian. In the recent team tournament in London where they had a no-increment time control there were lots of these crazy time scrambles, pieces flying, and decisions made on win/loss/draws, and people on every side were salty and grumbling, but so what? They were a bunch of players from various countries so no narrative there. You've found an example of this normal thing that sometimes people are salty after a bad result and infractions during play, but hey this one is a Russian being annoyed at an Indian (who actually did commit an infraction during the game), so that fits the narrative! The thing with the online Olympiad is another one: it's hilarious for an experienced chess player to look at the Divya game which is a crazy position with *literally every piece* still on the board and then declare that it would have been...ahem... "almost certain" that India would have tied for first place as the game was in the bag. _Anything_ could have happened in that game. It's an unfortunate situation to have arisen by chance, and a difficult decision for how to handle it in making a ruling after the fact to just decide who to give the title to, with no decision that could be made which would not end with some people being angry. It's a perfectly fair position to be annoyed that they arbitrarily decided to grant a win to a +3 eval in a game in which clearly anything could have happened, especially as disconnections have happened many times and are normally not retroactively decided in favour of someone by reviewing the eval. As much as Kramnik talks nonsense about stats, he actually had a fair criticism about the use of phones as cameras during the recent Olympiad. While it's understood that there should be press access to record games and therefore to allow cameras to be set up by the boards, it's reasonable to ask why rather than just use a simple camera, it should be allowed to use a camera combined with a powerful computer with built in telecommunications tech, a large display, and operating system designed specifically to allow the installation and running of any app (aka a smartphone). Really, if anti-cheating security is so important, why not just say only simple cameras (eg a go-pro etc) are allowed rather than smartphones which are built for flexibly running apps, can easily be hacked/rooted to allow basically any capability, and are made for communicating? Kramnik can be criticised for not bringing this up before facing the Indian team, but to be fair to him, it's probably only when facing the Indian team that the opponent's friends (Sagar/CBI) are setting up powerful computers (smartphones) right next to the boards of the players of their countrymen. (Just to be clear, I'm in no way saying Sagar/CBI did anything wrong, they are great, I'm just saying that to look at it objectively it's a pretty poor security standard and VK's concern was not unreasonable). The fact that FIDE "inspected the devices and gave them an approved security sticker" is laughable as they just put a sticker _on the phone case,_ not even on the device itself. With the case of Nepo criticising the lax standards for conferring GM titles, he made two specific suggestions in his tweet. Both of which sounded quite reasonable. What do you think? You just presented this tweet as though there was something wrong with it, without actually stating any criticism or rebuttal whatsoever. If there's a standard for having to have played against GMs to earn the title, does it make sense to still count them if they are sub-2500? I've written enough so I won't keep going on, but to get to your conclusion, as this is what literally made me laugh out loud and prompted me to write this comment. You then present your conclusion, but did it in perfect Kramnik-speak by repeatedly declaring _"It's very clear to me..."._ That's exactly what he says in his stats videos, he shows a bunch of out of context data and casually declares "it's very clear to me, it's obvious" and this is exactly what you've done, and why I'm not sure if this video is a deep joke. Yes, the chess scene is much more international today and relatively speaking the Russians are much less prominent, but framing a load of cherry-picked examples of a Russian complaining about something (often fairly) as a diagnosis of them all being just jealous is pretty weak. You use the timeliness of it as evidence, that Kramnik started spewing stats after Nepo failed to win the WC, but this is exactly the same period as the post Magnus-Hans debacle, which surely is the one massive event which was like an atomic bomb of normalising cheating accusations. Before that, it was taboo to make public accasations, but Magnus smashed that into a million pieces. Talking about that case was the biggest thing in the chess world for a year. You mention this case at the beginning of the video. How do you manage to set this up as a precedent for what came after, while at the same time saying that Kramnik's crusades which started just after it are actually because of the damage to the Russian psyche of Nepo merely being an almost WC rather than a WC? There's just so much sloppy, motivated reasoning in this video, it's embarrassing. But nice narrative bro. (Note I'm not Russian or Indian and have no connection or allegiance whatsoever to either of these countries.)
I agree with first 2 of your points (2nd and 3rd paragraphs), but the second 2 don't convinse me (4nd and 5rd paragraphs), seems like the points made in the video regarding phones in the Olympiad and titles actually make sence. Overall the conclusion of the video seems like rather crazy, but sort of justified conspiracy, and it's kinda weird that the author says it's obvious. Although it seems to me Nepo and Cramnik might indeed be jealous of other countries' success and therefore salty, I don't think other Russian players are, because examples about Dubov and Grischuk look like cherry picking.
Yes, I just saw your comment after posting mine. The creator of this video seems to have forgotten to check for evidence that contradicts his idea. It's totally fine, and actually the normal scientific process, to start with an idea, and then go and check for evidence that supports said idea. But, crucially, you must check for evidence that contradicts your idea. The creator of this video seems to have failed to do that. I made a point about how he shouldn't have included Dubov, but thanks for your other points, even though it was messy to read. Cheers.
My maaan if you Think only problem with Kramnin is Data you might need some social skills to work on and some friends to make Man is a egotistical weirdo anyone thinking Kramnik is sane and Honest person watch Danya kramnik debate on Levitov
I think you have a point, but you're going to far. In any situation you have to select information to try and discern people's intentions. I think the only really accurate point you have it the first one, Nepo has his salty moments. It's still disrespectful but understable. But I will also add that in my opinion, there has been a systematic atempt to downplay the indian young GMs of this generation by Nepo and while I wouldn't say this proves anything, I think it's a dot, and many dots make a line. It's also fair to assume that he choses his words quite careful, since according to Hikaru(and others) Nepo has consistently been someone who often accuses people of cheating behind closed doors. If the smartphones are properly checked, I don't see how you can claim that this is a problem, it's only a problem if you're purpusefully trying to instil doubt in people's minds. If kramnik had an issue with it, he should have talked to the organizers, not make a public statement.It's the same reason why magnus acted very wrongly in the HN situation. Finally, I feel like the last paragraph was a bit of a way to downplay the credebility of the video, which was what prompted me to write a reply,I don't think you need to attack the credebility of a video or of a youtuber to dismantle it's facts.
I appreciate the research that went into this video - I had never heard of Nepo's incident with Harikrishna until now. That said, I think the inclusion of Dubov in particular, and to a lesser extent Grischuk, in the narrative is forced. Dubov's comments in question, while unflattering, are not accusations of cheating. It is also unlikely that he would speak on behalf of the Russian chess federation, given his history of notably non-nationalistic behavior: he famously helped Carlsen prepare for his world championship match against Nepo, and spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine when it began (as did Grischuk, and in a way Nepo). I think the whole fiasco is frankly more of a Kramnik and Nepo thing than a Russian thing.
Interesting theory. Very unlikely to be true though in my opinion. Btw Kramnik did accuse a Russian IM, Matvey Galchenko as well. Kramnik's views do get spread in Russian speaking audiences much wider. But I don't think it's for the reason of being embarrassed for the country, though it might play some small part in it. Main reasons I'd say are 1) Kramnik is much better known and just has inherently more credibility in Russian speaking audiences being one of the great Russian champions. 2) Russians it feels (being Russian I can't speak for other Russian speaking nations) are just prone to conspiracies currently due to the political situation. Because of catastrophic economic situation in 90-s, and then the autocracy and dictatorship of 2000-current. The "there is no objective truth" myth, the "people can't act without a hidden agenda" myth and even more generally not trusting anyone are cultivated by the state propaganda for 25 years now. It leaves a mark. I’m not saying that’s what’s driving Kramnik, what drives him is a mystery to me by now. It honestly looks like he’s not 100% mentally stable by this point. But I think those may be the main factors driving so many people to believe him.
I was so upset to hear Danya was being harassed. He is such a sweet and kind teacher. I can't imagine people believing the accusations against Danya based on such worthless evidence. Great video.
" I can't imagine people believing the accusations against Danya based on such worthless evidence.": There was no evidence. Actually, 'worhtless evidence' is somewhat a contradiction. Anyway... you don't need evidence whatsover to believe something. That's why there are flat earthers, people who don't believe we landed on the moon, Trump voters, and religion.
i love danya content but he came out as a compulsive liar so much lmao then proceeded to flame kramnik pipi in your pampers style, weird gimmicks with monitors etc. zero chance he hasnt cheated in the past online in some (probably minor) form.
@@LukasSkys”He came out as a compulsive liar” ? Bullshit! From everything I know and have observed about Danya, I can only conclude that he’s a really good and decent human being. I’d like to be able to say that about Kramnik. Unfortunately I can’t, cause Vlad the impaler is a worthless piece of garbage - kinda like the leader of his country and those who follow him.
While I liked the hypothesis, it is of course speculative. Vlad's "boomer clicking" is still the problem to me. The guy can't move his pieces in time scramble, and is extremely frustrated by it.
I sympathise - I'm considerably older than Kramnik (who is not a Boomer) and refuse to play bullet because I'm just not fast enough with a mouse (although I do use the right method, I am just too nervous about making a mouse slip).
As a Russian speaker, I find this a clearly cherry-picked way to connect the dots. Firstly, the top Russian chess scene is far from patriotic. Players like Nepo, Grischuk, and Dubov don’t seem to care much about the state of Russian chess. Sure, they occasionally lament how Russian chess has declined, but they’re not deeply involved or particularly patriotic about it. On the other hand, you have someone like Karjakin, who is obviously extremely patriotic, yet he doesn’t say anything about cheating. Interestingly, other top Russian players don’t even mention him in interviews. It also seems much more about human connections-they’re contemporaries and naturally close to each other. At the same time, they maintain good relationships with players like Fabi, MVL, and many other top players. If there’s any low-key conspiracy, it’s more likely about older groups of close-knit players versus the new generation. The newer players, who’ve grown up in a digitalized era and studied chess extensively with computers, play in a way that’s often hard for the older generation to fully grasp from a human perspective. Also they obviously take everyhting Kramnik says seriously because his figure has a very big authority in russian-speaking world, and obviously his opiniong is very important for russian-speaking chess-players, so if they believe in what he says, they support him officially like Nepo or quietly like many other players. Additionally, there are obvious cultural differences that you don’t seem to take seriously. In the Russian-speaking world, using sarcastic or even slightly offensive language is much more normal than in English-speaking contexts. This difference in communication styles can lead to misinterpretations if not properly understood.
Honestly I've always liked Nepo too and for much the same reasons! He doesn't come off as pretentious in interviews, he answers questions insightfully, and he has acted classy multiple times after games. (The time he apologized to the audience for playing a terrible game where he didn't think he even played like a GM at all let alone to his normal level, and when he empathized with Fabi after the candidates knowing that the former would be crushed knowing he had multiple chances to beat him and win the tournament but let them slip away with the game being drawn). It kills me to see his antics too, it's really disappointing.
The problem arises because they believe the ability to play a board game somehow makes them special. It really doesn't. It's just another talent. like balancing plates on a stick, or riding a unicycle. The real world really doesn't give a toss about chess, or chess players.
i 100% agree with this take. its crazy that we as a society place so much intellectual stakehold on a bunch of guys playing a boardgame. they have insane egos. and thus having access to "secret knowledge", such as a cheating conspiracy will help soothe the ego. maybe it once was that performance in chess was linked to intellect, but nowadays gms are skilled at chess and nothing else, they are only normal people who have one very particular well-honed skill. hence the rise of an innumerable amount of child prodigies and the like. imagine if we put the same stock into esports or card games players intellect.
I do just want to make clear as well... having the excuse of "I want to accuse every GM+ player of cheating to scare people because eventually I will get one and it proves me right" is not an ok justification for doing what Kramnik did to anyone even if it was true (which kinda worries me when you made it sound like you were ok with this while it was happening even though you thought this) . The amount of stress these false allegations make against people ESPECIALLY younger players / less established names is incredibly damaging. It's not worth ruining multiple innocent careers just to catch 1 cheater.
obviously this still not ok, but its a much better reality than if he's just accusing people for attention like most people think he is. my main problem with Kramnik is how he does this to junior players, having this hanging over their heads is awful and something that will 100% be brought up later on if theres any doubts about their legitimacy.
@@jacksarkisian Yeah exactly, and I agree the situation with Daniel at the moment is disgusting. You can tell he got really stressed out from all of this and it's caused him a lot of pain for this whole ordeal and shows the impact it can have even on respected people. Genuinely unredeemable behavior to me. Not to mention his just complete lack of understanding of mental states during games (when someone gets beat 10 times in a row they are completely mental boomed, beating them another 20 times after isn't that surprising). Thanks for making the video thought was an interesting watch. I do like the analogy that Daniel used in one of his interviews where he compared it to the witch trials, it really is the same idea. You're asking people to prove something unproveable. You can't prove you didnt cheat, especially if its based on evidence that can't even be gathered.
Love the methodical, and clear laying out of the evidence. Your skills will translate to bigger topics, and is needed in this day an age. Hope you never turn to the dark side.
honestly im excited for the chance of kramnik posting about this on twitter knowing he's reposted one of your videos before jack and that you follow him (:
Although it seems to me Nepo and Cramnik might indeed be jealous of other countries' success and therefore salty, I don't think other Russian players are, because examples about Dubov and Grischuk look like cherry picking. Overall the conclusion of the video seems like rather crazy, but sort of justified conspiracy, and it's definitely not clear if this is the case.
i think the Dubov & Grischuk clips look cherry picked, but in reality its just because there's very few instances of them talking about the subject online. i've heard a lot of instances of Grischuk in Russian interviews making snidey remarks at several Grandmasters and calling it "Russian humour", but as far as Dubov goes he might have completely differing opinions as the rest of them. i agree that its not clear, but with the situation as grey as it is you either come to some sort of conclusion with the information you have or you just pretend it doesn't exist - and when the consequences of the situation is having peoples careers ruined over false accusations i'd rather come to some kind of conclusion.
Dubov is super salty. Imagine calling Fabi talentless then pretending it was a compliment. I can't imagine how naive/ weird one have to be to go along with that. And I don't know what's Grischuk's problem is. Some of the things he says these days are completely unwarranted.
@superneenjaa718, that’s just your speculation. I got an impression he was genuine. Either way this example is just cherry picking. Overall the conclusion of the video states that Russian players have this agenda against Americans and Indians because they’re jealous. If you’ve seen certain Dubov podcasts you know that he’s most likely not the type of person to support this type of stuff in any way.
@@superneenjaa718 Yep, Dubov is a kind of person who = give a fuck {not like Nakamura pretending, but literally} and he most of the time does not live in Russia on a daily basis. Dubov had - overall - cheating suspicions before it was fashionable, which he presented in one of the podcasts, and this was a time when Dubov was still somewhat associated with the "Magnus circle", so I suppose these were the suspicions of that circle. Grischuk has recently "crushed" in Blitz most top Indian GM's winning tournament and he is 2 time Blitz Champ, so his suspicions are valid. I also didn't notice that Grischuk has anything against the Indian chess scene since he plays there regularly. In addition, Grischuk lived in the US playing poker, has liberal views and has never shown any anti-American beliefs. In addition, he has good contacts with ChessBrah for example.
I think the conclusion you came to is very believable. I know that Kramnik has often omitted some facts while accusing someone of cheating. You can have a 30-game-win-streak if 25 out of these games were played against a weaker opponent back-to-back, but if you leave out that it was always the same opponent you come across as desperate or misleading. Over all very good video. Maybe the Russian players are unaware that they are sore losers and echo-chambered themselves into a delusion, but that's difficult to determine from the outside...
Your theory is entertaining, but it also resorts to a significant amount of specualtion. Theres a couple of remarks that could make this more "interesting" I guess: 1. Kasparov has been saying lately that we should stop talking about the upcoming match as a "world championship". To some conspiracy theorists this may be evidence that Kasparov, like many other Russians, also thinks there's something shady going on there and it must be cheating. His comments about Carlsen not playing anymore are just a cover for he really means. 2) Nakamura has also accused quite a few other players of cheating, including Erigaisi himself. You seem to have overlooked that or you didn't want to bring it up. Maybe it doesn't fit your theory. Who knows.
i didn't know that about Kasparov, very strange but its most likely in reference to the fact that the best player ITW isn't competing for the title due to the time format. as for Naka, i think he has a bad history for falsely accusing people as well - however i don't think there's anything more to it than he just a bad loser sometimes.
Kasparov would be the most anti russia of russians , considered his past endeavors in politics that got him locked in prison . You could argue that since Kramnik was his student that his comment was implicitly defending Kramnik . However i don't think it is the case , it is just hothead Garry being himself lol .
Surprised you didnt bring up how Ian accused Ding of foul play at the WCC. After he lost, he started complaining about how his sleeping pills "went missing"
Excellent video. I also wouldn't underestimate the somewhat paradoxical promotional value of throwing out accusations leading to increased profile and name recognition (who hasn't heard of Kramnik these days even among the 'new intake' to chess since the pandemic? Certainly he is now more known in the wider world than Anand, for example). This in turn translates into dollars earned in a very real sense, whether through online engagement or directly E.g. Clash of Claims prize money with very likely more to come. I don't know if that is a motivator, but some would say 'always follow the money' when other motivations don't seem quite logical.
The only reason i have started to believe Kramnik over Danya is because of that one clip where Danya was doing a speedrun or something and he was playing someone that's rated 1100, and explicitly said during the game that "im looking in the engine right now and......." he goes on to explain something, but the point is that he himself said that he was using the engine during the match against the amateur player. But i did not follow up on what's the response from Danya was.
I can’t believe this is the smoking gun people are going with. Danya was up like 10 points of material and his opponent was stalling and wouldn’t play a move, so Danya got impatient and started analyzing the opening (which had nothing to do with the current position) in chessbase so that he could prep for the post game analysis while he waited on his opponent. Yeah, it’s technically against the terms of service, but I would hardly call it cheating.
@@muzzamilsalman4117 If anything, the fact that he casually admitted to looking at opening lines in chess base on stream is proof to me that he’s legit. He openly admitted it because he didn’t feel like what he was doing was even wrong, which is understandable. Don’t you think if he always played with an engine running, that he wouldn’t openly admit it on stream?
For me it's Fisher 2.0... It's only going to get worse, he tics almost every item from the DSM 5 Paranoid Personality Disorder. Good luck to his close ones, it's not easy.
Great background coverage. I think you are being too conspiratorial, though, with your conclusion. I think it is very unlikely that anything organised is going on. More likely, hurt egos have no better explanation than cheating on behalf of their opponents since alternative explanations would require admitting to not being as good (anymore). All these players are extremely competitive and without some strong beliefs in one's abilities, one does crack the top of the league table. That strong self belief gets in the way of unbiased judgements.
appreciate it bro, i don't think its organised at all either if that's how it comes across - but i certainly think Russian players know exactly what they're doing when they make these kinds of insinuations.
playing dirty at a high level isn't a thing. if your opponent knocks over pieces and fixes it on your clock you stop the clock and call the arbiter. the arbiter will then warn the player and add time to Nepo's clock. if you don't do that, which Nepo didn't, its completely your fault.
@ ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Even though these are the rules, every player knows that, in time pressure, the best strategy is to play dirty, break the rules and provoke the call to the arbiter. The extra time that Nepo would have doesn’t make any difference for him, but for pentala it is the main factor for drawing, not losing. YOU KNOW THAT. The rules are not perfect and fair play goes beyond what is literally written in the rules. Every top player knows that this is playing dirty.
Honestly I think that Kramnik is accusing everyone of cheating because he can't perform good with a PC mouse... And that's the entire story... Kramnik has no idea about how fast people can play online chess. Also Kramnik has NEVER played an online bullet game either... So when he gets to time trouble, he loses to lower rated players, thus he then accuses them for cheating...
I understand your position on hans, but c'mon tyhe guy literally cheated , he is a diferent case, i dont think people blindely follow magnus, i guess he did cheated.
In defence of the russian players, they have been banned from events because of the war and the doping scandal from the Olympics. Neither were anything to do with chess, which was also very unfair.
i think Magnus has the respect from most Chess players and is the benchmark of excellence. Carlsen has great relationships with Russians, most notably being on good terms with Nepo after some teams tournaments and also having had Dubov on his team in a WCC match to help with his preparation. generally speaking accusing Carlsen is just a losing battle for Kramnik, you can't accuse someone of cheating that has 2 more WC titles than you. i wouldn't be surprised if the cheating accusations on Gukesh completely go away after the WCC if he wins - its absolutely impossible to cheat in the WCC, security measures are too strict.
@@jacksarkisian Again with your nationalistic BS. No, Carlsen and Nepo doesn't have good relationship. They don't even respect each other too much. Have you heard when Magnus said that he would be so embarrassed to lose someone that's so out of his league as Nepo was (Lex Fridman interview - but you probably didn't watch it, since Lex is a Russian emigrant)
Though I don't agree with everything in this video, I appreciate you taking time to analyze everything from the start including the online olympiad. We can have differing views and we all have a right to have our opinions. If we start to argue in chat information will pile up and end up in more confusion ... But honestly the only stance I can take of all this scandal is "Kramnik is not right about everything (ok this is what you want to hear) but in the same breath lets also admit that Neither are Chess com right about everything. They have a lot to hide" Also let us not forget all the times the great Naka cried fowl and accused players of cheating
What I know is that politics has not interfered with sports, and this is what all sports organizations say, but the truth is that after the Russian-Ukrainian war, it was proven once again that war has interfered with politics, and this was not only in chess, as the Russians were banned from using their country's flag and Sergey Karyakin was punished following his statements. In football, Russia was punished, and even in the Paris Olympics, Russia did not participate because of the war. I do not mind that your opinion may have some truth, but the Russians are being persecuted because of the war, while there are other countries that are waging wars and crushing others without mentioning names because you know for sure, and they are not punished, which means that there is solidarity against the Russians. This is a fact. I am not Russian, but I stand with the truth. Again, your point of view may have some truth.
i don't think stopping players from bearing Russian flags in Chess makes a difference, its just a PR move from FIDE that i don't think Russian players care too much about. i also believe that Karjakin's ban was just, was an extremely insensitive thing to say when you actively compete with players on the other side of the war. at the end of the day i don't actually think the war has too much of an effect on Russian Chess. the biggest effect is self-induced and is the fact its much harder for Russian's to travel to play, especially their junior players.
people don't seem to analyze that chess skill is largely reflected by the prosperity of the country. During the 10th century some of the most developed and progressive enclaves was in the middle east. The greatest chess player of that time was Al-Suli, an Arabian. 16th century, spanish empire. The strongest chess player was Lucena. A spaniard. Italian renaissance period. Strongest chess player was Gioachino Greco. An Italian. During Napoleon's reign. The srongest chess player was Philidor. A frenchman. 1902. Cuba gains independance from Spain, but Cuba stays under the influence of US (before Castro). Cuba financially develops immensely. Jose Casablanca, a Cuban, becomes the world chess champion. Now when was the period of the Soviet Unions world dominance and reign? sometime during the 60's - 70's. You know how many world champions they had during this period? All of them. Except for Fischer. You could say these are coincidences, but chess development seems to be tied with prosperity. History has shown that to be true to me. There's no surprise to me that China, a country that has been progressively most economically developed 20 years ago and currently stands to rival the US, or India, a country that is yearly developing economically at a faster rate than other countries, is also incidently producing the strongest chess players. The fact that Russians are so weak and have completely lost their dominance, and are now resulting to ridiculous cheating accusations to save face from their unfortunate fate, is cathartic to me. it seems to beautifully reflect the behavior of their goverment over the 21st century.
Collective guilt is an extreme tool only used in the most extreme cases. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is very different that "other wars". It is an explicit attempt to completely erase a country from the face of the world. The only recent precedent is the Nazi conquest and genocide. Collective guilt was applied to Germans. Rightfully so. They reformed their culture, they learned where their borders are, and 80 years later they still feel shame. It was an extreme case, and collective guilt was SUCCESSFUL in dealing with it. Russians are also collectively guilty for developing their country in this direction. Putin has higher popular support than Hitler ever had. Diplomacy and military will eventually resolve the conflict, but they will not fix the problem. The problem can only be fixed by shaming Russians into fixing the problem with their culture. Excluding Russia from international organizations in entertainment and sport is correct. The current level of exclusion is actually utterly insufficient to project collective guilt as strongly as it must be.
@@flashpeter625 Germans shouldn't have been punished that harshly, Russia unfortunately will not be punished at all because there's no one to do the punishing
I don't know of any other wars of this magnitude being waged today.. are we talking about Israel? If so then yes, maybe Israeli players should get banned from using their flags too but that's it. What are other countries waging wars of aggression nowadays? I think none.
I disagree with the Fischer point made at the end of the video. Situations are completely different. Largely cause the Russians WERE intentionally drawing games, but Bobby was the only player in this "coalition". Whereas the Russian group today is large
i tried to convey this better, but i did say the legitimacy of the claims were completely different. Fischer's claims were just, but Kramnik's claims aren't - thats the main difference.
from what i've seen, his streaming setup is pretty poor. he has a laptop that he plays on, and one single monitor for everything else. you alt tab to respond to people on discord, change your music on spotify, google something chat mentions, look at a players profile off screen, and a million other things to make the livestreaming experience smooth for the viewer. jumping to the possibility that he's cheating means you'd also need to accuse me, and anyone else that streams Chess of cheating because we quite literally all do it.
@@jaedong1957 just watched the clip you're talking about - its just a pop-out Twitch chat on light mode. he minimizes it when he needs to focus (the constant updating in your peripheral is insanely distracting) and opens it whenever he gets the chance.
@@jacksarkisian ahh right, lets just completely ignore the fact that with that setup his chat is already in the opposite direction. Lets also ignore the fact that whenever he's analyzing games he looks exactly where whatever that window is.
@@Stefan-cx6gv not Danya's fault the rule exists, and he is not the only one taking advantage of it. He's not doing anything illegal here. He is a strong player, regardless.
Cherry picking, confirmation bias and, of course, the Dunning-Kruger at its finest. Kramnik was pissed that they took his electronic cigarette, that’s why he demanded that all phones should be out, because rules are rules. All other arguments are also ridiculous, there are a number of young Russian GMs who are being of accused of cheating and Kramnik and Nepo accuse different players. Nepo didn’t accuse Hikaru publicly, that Dina Belenkaya heard something from Nepo’s team is ridiculous.
He didn't accuse him publicly? Strongly suggesting that someone might be cheating is the same thing as accusing, they're just phrasing it like that to protect themselves from legal consequences, but everyone with a brain can see what their true intent is.
I think a lot of Kramnik's beef goes back to ToiletGate. But there's no excuse for slander. FIDE should sue players who baselessly accuse other FIDE players of cheating.
Okay just skipped to the summary part and this sounds like crazy talk. Going to listen to the whole thing. Edit: Honestly this felt as painful to watch as Levitov moderating the Kramnik/Naroditsky discussion. If the idea was to create an equally toxic counterpart to that I guess it succeeded (?) What is the point of the of including Grischuk and Dubov lmao. Feels like they had to be in to make it a Russia topic. Obv. Kramnik and Nepo talk a lot with each other and share these view publicly. There are so many arguments someone could come up with if it should be a neutral view. If one would really put some thoughts into it you could argue that Nepo is more used to anti cheating measurements failing since I think he is/was sort of into online gaming and Valve using bad AC basically pushes people into a 3rd party matchmaking. So feeling the need that some 3rd party has to step up if current platforms fail to do so feels reasonable (think chess is just a lost cause online since parties have 0 power of chess if it's not played locally). Also such huge disrespect towards Nepo - in a Magnus era of chess that guy did great. Video feels super weird with excluding the existing problem of cheating (even if it was discussed on the channel before).
Wow, accusing everyone of cheating is not disrespectful. 👏 Lashing out on others GMs is not disrespectful either. This video accounting those incidents, on the other hand, is a huge disrespect. Lol.
@@NoOne-ky1er What are you even talking about? Read the comment again and/or watch the video once more. The disrespect was regarding the fact that the video is shitting on the achievements of Nepo as a player. Has 0 to do with cheating/the accusations of it.
@@NoOne-ky1er What are you even talking about? Read the comment again and/or watch the video once more. The disrespect was regarding the fact that the video is shitting on the achievements of Nepo as a player. Has 0 to do with cheating/the accusations of it.
@@Prometheus4096 He had no reason to cheat - the existence of cables in the walls of a building is not evidence of cheating. Admittedly FIDE have to take it more seriously - metal detector sweeps, Faraday cages, accompanied toilet breaks (or NONE) & sitting at the board for the entire duration of every game. No game at ANY level rated without ALL of these conditions enforced. Instead of IDIOTIC drug tests ... for which drug?
@@imankhandaker6103 If Kramnik had no reason to cheat, then no one ever has a reason to cheat. He was in the world up match and his only accomplishment in life is becoming world champ. You wouldn't even know who he was today without that.
@Prometheus4096 I knew who he was when he burst on the scene in the Olympiad & everybody knew who he was after he hammered Kasparov without losing a game, or even looking like he would lose a game. Winning or losing against Topalov could not add to that legend or diminish it.
I am looking again at this thumbnail and this is hilarious. Why are you covering his eyes? Are you afraid of copyright strike? Don't worry, he doesn't copyright strike other channels. Only Danya does that.
You know the game rating is only based on your rating and accuracy right? You can actually test this out. If you have two accounts and each plays an identical game, the one with a higher rating also will have a higher estimated game rating.
It's definitely quite the conspiricy theory 😅 I don't know about the entire "the russians are embarrassed" thing, but there's definitely something going on. They're losing their mind!!
I have mixed feelings about this. There is absolutely no doubt that cheating in chess is out of control, especially with online chess. It is ridiculous how out of control it is and Kramnik is trying to point this out and really, when you are at his level, there is a certain feeling you get when someone keeps playing consistent super accurate moves that surprise you as they don't make human sense until the move is played. Hard to explain this but even a 2500 ELO player can feel this. However, there is no doubt that chess engines and online chess tactical trainers, have made new generation human chess players dramatically better at spotting obscure engine tactics ... I think that is where Kramnik sometimes tends to claim cheating when it does not happen. I do think that Kramnik is more right about his accusations than wrong ... but certainly it is not 100% correct.
its at the summary in the end, the accusations seem to come from a major place of jealousy from Russian players because of their decline on the world stage.
No that's doesn't make any sense. Kramnik has left Russia long ago, he coaches foreign teams. It's not like he is in decline, he just stopped competing. Although he did some outstanding Blitz performances this year. As for cables in Elista, that's a misrepresentation. Ethernet (UTP-1) cables in a bathroom that was used by BOTH Kramnik and Topalov, that's what it was. You need a computer to make use of that cables but if you have a computer, then why you need cables? Computers can solve chess positions without internet connection! Simple logic that ruins that accusation completely but Mr Sarkisian decided to present this information in such way that it casts shadow on Kramnik. Nepo is not in decline either, he competed for World Champion, he was in final match. His temperament is not calm, I agree. Also why Petrosian gaze controversy wasn't covered. Because it does not fit well into this theory?
@@jacksarkisianThat summary doesnt make sense because accusing people of jealousy is the exact same as accusing of cheating. Both cannot be proven. Its literally worthless.
do u even know that grischuk threatened to leave russia if karajkin became the fide president, dubov supported magnus against nepo so i dont know how u joined all their statements to make this video.
I would not be surprised if Nepo Accuses Magnus of cheating 😂 , Nepo,s 1 st loses to a top player and then accuses him to satisfy his own ego it is not Hidden how much egoistic and jealous of a person nepo is and how he act childish when he loss he deserved to loss both world championship,s✨✨
He is 2700 in otb blitz only because he is farming his rating against 2000 guys. Naroditsky is nobody in otb chess, never played any rapid or blitz championships. He is a top 5 blitz only playing from his room.. Kramnik maybe was wrong saveral times but with Danya''the nice guy'' is fully right.
He played in some tournaments in HIS CHESS CLUB WITH KIDS HE TEACHES to reach 2700 and never hid that, also never bragged about that. For the kids it's a pretty good experience if you think about that for a second, they get the chance of playing a strong GM they admire, why do you all need to always see the rotten in everything? And it's not true that he never played top players otb, he didn't often but there are still some games with some good wins. He also never claimed to be one of the best blitz players, and could you tell me how being good online while not playing OTB is a proof of cheating? He doesn't play in tournaments because he's focused on streaming and being a commentator, that doesn't mean that he can't still improve is chess strength. You all should reflect a bit on what the word "evidence" mean and finally understand that you don't have any. You're just throwing baseless accusations without any actual proof.
@@lebannen6056 So he cannot play with kids unrated games? Such nice Danya? bs ,proof is everywhere , only naive and blind ppl don't want to see it. search ''Nakamura Vs Naroditsky!! Grandmaster Blitz Battle!"' from 3y ago and watch carefullly first game. Only a blind man cannot see this.
@kristof80able Do you actually think that way? He does it FOR the kids, try to put yourself in their shoes, it would be pretty cool to be able to play against a strong player that you respect. And don't act like he purposefully travels to tournaments to farm Elo against kids, he just participated in some tournaments in the chess club near his home that he usually attends. There is a big difference between the two situations. For the kids it's a learning experience especially since he teaches them regularly. It's an opportunity for them, try not to be so biased.
Your claim that Russians believe everything Kramnik says, while 98% of non-Russians do not - is just sad. I follow a lot of Russian channels and podcasts (and a lot of English lang content of the same type) - and I know that you are wrong. Of course that somethings wrong with Kramniks behavior, and I see 90% of what he's talk as a bullshit, but that doesn't mean that he's never right, and it certainly doesn't mean he has ill intentions. Are his reaction emotionally immature and is he using dubious "science" to "prove" them. Yes he does. But so does Hikaru (remember his Hans times craziness and "experts with proofs"??). Still you don't see Hikaru as some Lex Luthor of chess. About Kramnik's Naroditski allegations. I was so mad when I saw him accusing one of my favorite streamers, and *the* favorite commentator. But with all BS that was presented those days, I saw something i really disliked, and nobody explained (engine appearing and disappearing in reflection of one of his videos) P.S. You missed the chance to present yourself as objective. Instead, you mostly presented yourself as fanboy and Russophob. edit: now that I watched the whole video - I can say that just like Kramnik, you have some serious issue. The same "methodology" the same level of confidence with the same level of "evidence". But you are definitely a Rusophobe, so you disike him. Ig you were Russian - you would be his biggest fan - a Hans Niemann level fan. You won't go far as a UA-camr/streamer. And I'm so grateful this world works that way, and people like you stay out of the radar.
Anyone picking on Danya is by his own actions, immediately discredited. Dude is too humble and intelligent both to risk his value system and immaculate social persona through cheating. Sometimes you need to take an objective look at the people involved. Who is above reproach, who is bitter... and apply the "duck principle". If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.... it's a duck.
So your conclusion at the end and the whole video is built on your opinion without dealing in any facts, strange when your previous video about cheating seemed full of research and facts.
Another cheatcom propaganda channel. This is sad to see.
fantastic argument brother
You Kramnik's fangirls really like to make baseless claims and accusations huh? Is making a rational and coherent argument your kryptonite? Because you didn't explain the reasons for what you said whatsoever but just threw those random accusations trying to dismiss his analysis without having to debate using your brain (if you have one).
Another Kramnik brainwashing victim. Sad.
@@lebannen6056 I can make the arguments, but this video is so hilarious I just cannot take it seriously.
wassup kramnik alt
I never understood his accusations with Hikaru. Bro draws arrows everywhere and tells everyone his plan and his time advantage is always massive
His argument is basically that Nakamura is stronger player than Magnus online and not so much OTB.
@@lehatikhonovit’s not really true tho, magnus and naka are quite well matched online and hikki has beaten him many times OTB in speed chess as well. But on the balance magnus is better, which is expected
His argument is that Hikaru is stronger online than Magnus is over OTB. Basically, claiming that the gap between Hikaru and the 2nd best player is too much to be legit. The problem is when you're the best online player of all time you're going to have anomalies statlines
@@lehatikhonov I'm pretty sure even Hikaru admits he farms rating points.... he takes matches against players to maximize his rating potential and avoids bad matchups where he's likely to lose rating points.
Doesn't mean he can't see the evaluation or stockfish
Personally I see it like this. Kramnik was good once but became old and slow, but is still arrogant enough to believe he's better than everyone else. Except this doesn't line up with the results people get against him these days, and the only way to resolve the cognitive dissonance between those two conflicting "facts" is that everyone else must be cheating.
Indeed, that is the simple explanation. As far as I can tell, it is also the best one. Cheers.
@itaintinnit i do like it because it adheres to the Occam's razor like you said, but also Hanlon's razor, my personal favorite rule of thumb. 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.' Good thing to remember with conspiracies running wild. Cheers!
@@potatoonastick2239 Although I get the point of Hanlon's razor, and do agree with the sentiment of "people are generally not evil, just sometimes stupid," I don't feel it's quite adequate. Problem is, it only accounts for two reasons: evil, and ignorance. It doesn't account for the third reason: indifference. Now, you might argue indifference is the worst kind of evil, and I would tend to agree, but you would want to distinguish between the two. I guess you could bake it all into evil and name three categories of evil, from lesser to worse: evil by ignorance; evil by intent; evil by indifference.
In Kramnik's case, I don't think he wanted to do Danya harm. He either was ignorant or indifferent, and my feeling is that he was a bit of both. Ignorant of the suffering he was causing, and indifferent to it/managed to rationalize it as okay. I think this viewpoint can be supported by the "debate" they had on the Levitov Chess channel.
it just comes down to kramnik not being able to click and drag with a mouse and instead clicking squares instead to move. he'd literally be +150 elo online of where he is if he could use a mouse correctly.
Also he never matured from the mentality of a teenager
Nepo is working hard to be the least likeable top chess player
the clip of him & Harikrisha was just so weird, Pentala seems like such a nice guy too
@@jacksarkisian playing dumb not understanding that he was kicking his chess pieces and correcting them during Nepos time. American like you just lying again. Already found the WMD in Iraq dear lying american?
Fr nepo is a jerk to everybody I dont get it why he just rages and has a attitude like he's a world champion@@jacksarkisian
He's been on his villain arc since Ding
younger generation is stronger, nnue solved chess positions for everyone quickly cheaply objectively. if play as fast as possible against at a world class player for 20 moves without giving opponent obvious targets, takes away ability for them to think on your time, even they can blunder horribly in time pressure, especially if they are slow with a mouse. have noticed that egoistic top chess players sometimes falter against such a strategy, make unforced errors, more so than players who are more collected, as someone who has played almost all the worlds elite, there are some players who definitely handle unexpected developments less well, although they are on another level the way they fight back from disadvantage situations and usually win anyway. there is a geopolitical element here as well with India ascendant and Russia on decline. could be a cultural paranoia. or a cry to stay relevant or for attention or a way of protecting ego, to absolve oneself of responsibility of embarrassing mistakes or results. somehow in chess, behavior is much worse after a loss because intense stress in time trouble situations and no outlet when the game is over and when taking shortcuts in one’s thinking mistakes that are unthinkable will sometimes occur. one oversight can ruin 50 good moves. in chess it is easy to gain an advantage somewhere on the board and if it is around the opponents king well, weaker players know their checkmates, upsets will sometimes happen. top level athletes often take losses hard, in chess it players constantly second guess things when they go wrong and players can be very emotionally invested after a tense game see their heart rates. there are players who are good at chess but lack worldly awareness or lack perception, or curiousity or tact in areas outside what benefits them, shocking as that may sound, but can find all sorts in chess as elsewhere. elite players some of them devote their life to the game, some more successfully than others
I appreciate that a whole bunch of this video is just "Nepo is a jerk to everybody for no reason."
he genuinely had me feeling so bad for him after that final game in the WCC vs Ding, and now this...
Russians always making shit up. Boxing, chess, US elections
@@jacksarkisianThat loss changed him and turned him to the dark side...
Nepo is just ass lmao. Outside of the candidates his performance is like a 2500 💀💀
@@aadilharoon1807 nah go back and listen to other players walk about Nepo. He is just a jerk, full on dickhead :p
The funny thing is that Nepo openly admitted of using stockfish in a game against Hans online, that's what i call a proven cheater, not their baseless accusations.
i must have missed this in my research, do you have a link for this by chance?
@jacksarkisian It was in a Russian podcast, I'll try to find it
@@jacksarkisian It doesn't let me paste links so I'll just put the name of the video:
"Шахматы, скандалы, книги и Магнус Карлсен. Ян Непомнящий. Книжный чел #91".
The part I was talking about is at around 49:00 and you can even turn on english subtitles.
@@lebannen6056 Doesn't appear on the search. What channel was this video on?
@@FourOneNineOneFourOne The channel is "Книжный чел"
i think an important piece of context missing from this video is that FIDE banned Russia in 2022 which could possibly put everything that has happened since then into perspective
i really just didn't want to get political with this video. mentioning the war or anything to do with it just leaves a sour taste even though it might be relevant. at the end of the day i don't think it would be the most compelling information from what we have anyway - the only real sanction is that they can't bear their own flags or speak on the war.
damn, I didn't know you followed chess
lol prag was studying and playing at the same time. Ultra focused family
Hopefully Kramnik pins this on his twitter.
😭😭😭
Very insightful! I wasn’t aware of a lot of events you covered
Honestly I’m tired of Kramnik and Nepo’s antics, and I’m finding it harder and harder to take anything they say seriously nowadays
i was always super weary of Nepo, heard lots of things about him spanning back to 6ish years ago where it just seemed like he wasn't a great guy. this puts the nail in the coffin for me, especially the snidey digs at Wei Yi - he would never do that in an English interview.
Strongly agree here! It’s sad to see some of the best players in the world/history behave like this
I only started chess about a year ago so I’m not attached to them in any but it’s still a shame
Kramnik and Nepo are past their peak and grasping at whatever's left
@@xylyze Exactly, it's exhausting haha
Worst thing that can happen to a person is to b accused falsely.
The worst thing for him is to get caught...
Hi, I'm from Russia.
Interesting points, watched the video with interest.
on the whole, it may be that most are possible.
but to me:
A. the accusations seem like a stretch, to me there is also not enough evidence.
B. Many Russian chess players have a difficult relationship with the Russian Chess Federation because of its political stance, among other things. Many people were against the war and so on, which led to some consequences. so to put Russian sports federation in the center is not right imo
C. i don't see any contradiction in dubov's assertions of strong, but perhaps admiring fabiano but not admiring indian has some reason of its own. so a strange take, though maybe correct, but isnt connected to the whole point imo
So to summarize:
1. I agree that all these accusations of cheating are nonsense and I don't support them.
2. But I don't agree that the Russian Chess Federation is behind all this, it's all a stretch and generalized. especially considering the relationship of these chess players with the federation.
3. I think that such accusations could indeed arise out of internal resentment, but only towards some of the chess players listed. for me you are generalizing too much about Russian chess players in general. For example dubov
4. The evidence is also insufficient, the connection is there but in a few places as I said it is strained, the evidence is also a bit strained and everything is generalized
And so overall I agree with some things
thanks
16:45* correction, not the indian team. Those phones had nothing to do with the indian team, they were owned and placed by ChessBaseIndia with the permission of FIDE.
I have to say, this was a very weird video and I'm not sure if it's some sort of exercise in ironic meta-commentary about creating narratives. The main criticism people have about Kramnik's crusades is that he's cherry picking data that fits a narrative, and some of these examples just really seem like you're doing the same.
For example, the Nepo-Harikrishna thing: you show Nepo being pissed off but you don't show why. In the heat of the battle, Hari had actually knocked over pieces and adjusted on Nepo's time, and after missing out on a win in a World Championship he was pissed off immediately after the game. So what? Something similar happened between Nepo and Wesley recently, and again Nepo was salty afterwards, but that doesn't fit here because Wesley isn't Indian. In the recent team tournament in London where they had a no-increment time control there were lots of these crazy time scrambles, pieces flying, and decisions made on win/loss/draws, and people on every side were salty and grumbling, but so what? They were a bunch of players from various countries so no narrative there. You've found an example of this normal thing that sometimes people are salty after a bad result and infractions during play, but hey this one is a Russian being annoyed at an Indian (who actually did commit an infraction during the game), so that fits the narrative!
The thing with the online Olympiad is another one: it's hilarious for an experienced chess player to look at the Divya game which is a crazy position with *literally every piece* still on the board and then declare that it would have been...ahem... "almost certain" that India would have tied for first place as the game was in the bag. _Anything_ could have happened in that game. It's an unfortunate situation to have arisen by chance, and a difficult decision for how to handle it in making a ruling after the fact to just decide who to give the title to, with no decision that could be made which would not end with some people being angry. It's a perfectly fair position to be annoyed that they arbitrarily decided to grant a win to a +3 eval in a game in which clearly anything could have happened, especially as disconnections have happened many times and are normally not retroactively decided in favour of someone by reviewing the eval.
As much as Kramnik talks nonsense about stats, he actually had a fair criticism about the use of phones as cameras during the recent Olympiad. While it's understood that there should be press access to record games and therefore to allow cameras to be set up by the boards, it's reasonable to ask why rather than just use a simple camera, it should be allowed to use a camera combined with a powerful computer with built in telecommunications tech, a large display, and operating system designed specifically to allow the installation and running of any app (aka a smartphone). Really, if anti-cheating security is so important, why not just say only simple cameras (eg a go-pro etc) are allowed rather than smartphones which are built for flexibly running apps, can easily be hacked/rooted to allow basically any capability, and are made for communicating? Kramnik can be criticised for not bringing this up before facing the Indian team, but to be fair to him, it's probably only when facing the Indian team that the opponent's friends (Sagar/CBI) are setting up powerful computers (smartphones) right next to the boards of the players of their countrymen. (Just to be clear, I'm in no way saying Sagar/CBI did anything wrong, they are great, I'm just saying that to look at it objectively it's a pretty poor security standard and VK's concern was not unreasonable). The fact that FIDE "inspected the devices and gave them an approved security sticker" is laughable as they just put a sticker _on the phone case,_ not even on the device itself.
With the case of Nepo criticising the lax standards for conferring GM titles, he made two specific suggestions in his tweet. Both of which sounded quite reasonable. What do you think? You just presented this tweet as though there was something wrong with it, without actually stating any criticism or rebuttal whatsoever. If there's a standard for having to have played against GMs to earn the title, does it make sense to still count them if they are sub-2500?
I've written enough so I won't keep going on, but to get to your conclusion, as this is what literally made me laugh out loud and prompted me to write this comment. You then present your conclusion, but did it in perfect Kramnik-speak by repeatedly declaring _"It's very clear to me..."._ That's exactly what he says in his stats videos, he shows a bunch of out of context data and casually declares "it's very clear to me, it's obvious" and this is exactly what you've done, and why I'm not sure if this video is a deep joke. Yes, the chess scene is much more international today and relatively speaking the Russians are much less prominent, but framing a load of cherry-picked examples of a Russian complaining about something (often fairly) as a diagnosis of them all being just jealous is pretty weak. You use the timeliness of it as evidence, that Kramnik started spewing stats after Nepo failed to win the WC, but this is exactly the same period as the post Magnus-Hans debacle, which surely is the one massive event which was like an atomic bomb of normalising cheating accusations. Before that, it was taboo to make public accasations, but Magnus smashed that into a million pieces. Talking about that case was the biggest thing in the chess world for a year. You mention this case at the beginning of the video. How do you manage to set this up as a precedent for what came after, while at the same time saying that Kramnik's crusades which started just after it are actually because of the damage to the Russian psyche of Nepo merely being an almost WC rather than a WC? There's just so much sloppy, motivated reasoning in this video, it's embarrassing. But nice narrative bro.
(Note I'm not Russian or Indian and have no connection or allegiance whatsoever to either of these countries.)
I agree with first 2 of your points (2nd and 3rd paragraphs), but the second 2 don't convinse me (4nd and 5rd paragraphs), seems like the points made in the video regarding phones in the Olympiad and titles actually make sence.
Overall the conclusion of the video seems like rather crazy, but sort of justified conspiracy, and it's kinda weird that the author says it's obvious. Although it seems to me Nepo and Cramnik might indeed be jealous of other countries' success and therefore salty, I don't think other Russian players are, because examples about Dubov and Grischuk look like cherry picking.
tldr? Not reading all that
Yes, I just saw your comment after posting mine. The creator of this video seems to have forgotten to check for evidence that contradicts his idea. It's totally fine, and actually the normal scientific process, to start with an idea, and then go and check for evidence that supports said idea. But, crucially, you must check for evidence that contradicts your idea. The creator of this video seems to have failed to do that. I made a point about how he shouldn't have included Dubov, but thanks for your other points, even though it was messy to read. Cheers.
My maaan if you Think only problem with Kramnin is Data you might need some social skills to work on and some friends to make
Man is a egotistical weirdo anyone thinking Kramnik is sane and Honest person watch Danya kramnik debate on Levitov
I think you have a point, but you're going to far. In any situation you have to select information to try and discern people's intentions.
I think the only really accurate point you have it the first one, Nepo has his salty moments. It's still disrespectful but understable. But I will also add that in my opinion, there has been a systematic atempt to downplay the indian young GMs of this generation by Nepo and while I wouldn't say this proves anything, I think it's a dot, and many dots make a line. It's also fair to assume that he choses his words quite careful, since according to Hikaru(and others) Nepo has consistently been someone who often accuses people of cheating behind closed doors.
If the smartphones are properly checked, I don't see how you can claim that this is a problem, it's only a problem if you're purpusefully trying to instil doubt in people's minds. If kramnik had an issue with it, he should have talked to the organizers, not make a public statement.It's the same reason why magnus acted very wrongly in the HN situation.
Finally, I feel like the last paragraph was a bit of a way to downplay the credebility of the video, which was what prompted me to write a reply,I don't think you need to attack the credebility of a video or of a youtuber to dismantle it's facts.
I appreciate the research that went into this video - I had never heard of Nepo's incident with Harikrishna until now. That said, I think the inclusion of Dubov in particular, and to a lesser extent Grischuk, in the narrative is forced. Dubov's comments in question, while unflattering, are not accusations of cheating. It is also unlikely that he would speak on behalf of the Russian chess federation, given his history of notably non-nationalistic behavior: he famously helped Carlsen prepare for his world championship match against Nepo, and spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine when it began (as did Grischuk, and in a way Nepo). I think the whole fiasco is frankly more of a Kramnik and Nepo thing than a Russian thing.
I dont think Grishchuk was accusing Gukesh. Dubov didn't say anything bad either.
Interesting theory. Very unlikely to be true though in my opinion. Btw Kramnik did accuse a Russian IM, Matvey Galchenko as well.
Kramnik's views do get spread in Russian speaking audiences much wider. But I don't think it's for the reason of being embarrassed for the country, though it might play some small part in it.
Main reasons I'd say are
1) Kramnik is much better known and just has inherently more credibility in Russian speaking audiences being one of the great Russian champions.
2) Russians it feels (being Russian I can't speak for other Russian speaking nations) are just prone to conspiracies currently due to the political situation. Because of catastrophic economic situation in 90-s, and then the autocracy and dictatorship of 2000-current. The "there is no objective truth" myth, the "people can't act without a hidden agenda" myth and even more generally not trusting anyone are cultivated by the state propaganda for 25 years now. It leaves a mark.
I’m not saying that’s what’s driving Kramnik, what drives him is a mystery to me by now. It honestly looks like he’s not 100% mentally stable by this point. But I think those may be the main factors driving so many people to believe him.
Funny how Nepo accused someone of cheating in a tournament that he won.
Perhaps he knows because he cheated too...
I was so upset to hear Danya was being harassed. He is such a sweet and kind teacher. I can't imagine people believing the accusations against Danya based on such worthless evidence. Great video.
" I can't imagine people believing the accusations against Danya based on such worthless evidence.": There was no evidence. Actually, 'worhtless evidence' is somewhat a contradiction. Anyway... you don't need evidence whatsover to believe something. That's why there are flat earthers, people who don't believe we landed on the moon, Trump voters, and religion.
i love danya content but he came out as a compulsive liar so much lmao then proceeded to flame kramnik pipi in your pampers style, weird gimmicks with monitors etc. zero chance he hasnt cheated in the past online in some (probably minor) form.
@@LukasSkys”He came out as a compulsive liar” ? Bullshit! From everything I know and have observed about Danya, I can only conclude that he’s a really good and decent human being. I’d like to be able to say that about Kramnik. Unfortunately I can’t, cause Vlad the impaler is a worthless piece of garbage - kinda like the leader of his country and those who follow him.
Idk about sweet teacher, man charges 300$/hr to teach blitz openings
@@Milos-mk9pb WTF... You can find a GM instructor for under 50 bucks an hour on lichess
While I liked the hypothesis, it is of course speculative.
Vlad's "boomer clicking" is still the problem to me. The guy can't move his pieces in time scramble, and is extremely frustrated by it.
I sympathise - I'm considerably older than Kramnik (who is not a Boomer) and refuse to play bullet because I'm just not fast enough with a mouse (although I do use the right method, I am just too nervous about making a mouse slip).
I don't think it should be understated that Hikaru doesn't need to amplify his ratings online.
His OTB has spoken for itself for 20+ years now.
As a Russian speaker, I find this a clearly cherry-picked way to connect the dots. Firstly, the top Russian chess scene is far from patriotic. Players like Nepo, Grischuk, and Dubov don’t seem to care much about the state of Russian chess. Sure, they occasionally lament how Russian chess has declined, but they’re not deeply involved or particularly patriotic about it. On the other hand, you have someone like Karjakin, who is obviously extremely patriotic, yet he doesn’t say anything about cheating. Interestingly, other top Russian players don’t even mention him in interviews.
It also seems much more about human connections-they’re contemporaries and naturally close to each other. At the same time, they maintain good relationships with players like Fabi, MVL, and many other top players. If there’s any low-key conspiracy, it’s more likely about older groups of close-knit players versus the new generation. The newer players, who’ve grown up in a digitalized era and studied chess extensively with computers, play in a way that’s often hard for the older generation to fully grasp from a human perspective.
Also they obviously take everyhting Kramnik says seriously because his figure has a very big authority in russian-speaking world, and obviously his opiniong is very important for russian-speaking chess-players, so if they believe in what he says, they support him officially like Nepo or quietly like many other players.
Additionally, there are obvious cultural differences that you don’t seem to take seriously. In the Russian-speaking world, using sarcastic or even slightly offensive language is much more normal than in English-speaking contexts. This difference in communication styles can lead to misinterpretations if not properly understood.
The uploader is a half-wit
Very interesting. So you're saying it's a sportsman behaviour like in football. I mean could be true.
I used to be a fan of Nepo. Always loved the way he answered press conference questions. This very much saddens me.
Honestly I've always liked Nepo too and for much the same reasons! He doesn't come off as pretentious in interviews, he answers questions insightfully, and he has acted classy multiple times after games. (The time he apologized to the audience for playing a terrible game where he didn't think he even played like a GM at all let alone to his normal level, and when he empathized with Fabi after the candidates knowing that the former would be crushed knowing he had multiple chances to beat him and win the tournament but let them slip away with the game being drawn). It kills me to see his antics too, it's really disappointing.
@@user-rs1fv2dl6pyeah he seemed respectful then but yeah he's been a diva the whole time
Always knew he was a man-child. And I'm so glad he failed twice at the WCC.
Play more dirty next time yeah?
His entire worldview is that if anyone apart of Magnus or Fabi beats him, the guy is a cheat.
wow it has already been a year since Hikaru being accused time really flies
The problem arises because they believe the ability to play a board game somehow makes them special. It really doesn't. It's just another talent. like balancing plates on a stick, or riding a unicycle. The real world really doesn't give a toss about chess, or chess players.
i 100% agree with this take. its crazy that we as a society place so much intellectual stakehold on a bunch of guys playing a boardgame. they have insane egos. and thus having access to "secret knowledge", such as a cheating conspiracy will help soothe the ego.
maybe it once was that performance in chess was linked to intellect, but nowadays gms are skilled at chess and nothing else, they are only normal people who have one very particular well-honed skill. hence the rise of an innumerable amount of child prodigies and the like.
imagine if we put the same stock into esports or card games players intellect.
I do just want to make clear as well... having the excuse of "I want to accuse every GM+ player of cheating to scare people because eventually I will get one and it proves me right" is not an ok justification for doing what Kramnik did to anyone even if it was true (which kinda worries me when you made it sound like you were ok with this while it was happening even though you thought this) . The amount of stress these false allegations make against people ESPECIALLY younger players / less established names is incredibly damaging. It's not worth ruining multiple innocent careers just to catch 1 cheater.
obviously this still not ok, but its a much better reality than if he's just accusing people for attention like most people think he is.
my main problem with Kramnik is how he does this to junior players, having this hanging over their heads is awful and something that will 100% be brought up later on if theres any doubts about their legitimacy.
@@jacksarkisian Yeah exactly, and I agree the situation with Daniel at the moment is disgusting. You can tell he got really stressed out from all of this and it's caused him a lot of pain for this whole ordeal and shows the impact it can have even on respected people. Genuinely unredeemable behavior to me. Not to mention his just complete lack of understanding of mental states during games (when someone gets beat 10 times in a row they are completely mental boomed, beating them another 20 times after isn't that surprising).
Thanks for making the video thought was an interesting watch. I do like the analogy that Daniel used in one of his interviews where he compared it to the witch trials, it really is the same idea. You're asking people to prove something unproveable. You can't prove you didnt cheat, especially if its based on evidence that can't even be gathered.
Your content feels so professional these days, cheers!
appreciate it bro
Love the methodical, and clear laying out of the evidence. Your skills will translate to bigger topics, and is needed in this day an age. Hope you never turn to the dark side.
honestly im excited for the chance of kramnik posting about this on twitter knowing he's reposted one of your videos before jack and that you follow him (:
Although it seems to me Nepo and Cramnik might indeed be jealous of other countries' success and therefore salty, I don't think other Russian players are, because examples about Dubov and Grischuk look like cherry picking.
Overall the conclusion of the video seems like rather crazy, but sort of justified conspiracy, and it's definitely not clear if this is the case.
i think the Dubov & Grischuk clips look cherry picked, but in reality its just because there's very few instances of them talking about the subject online. i've heard a lot of instances of Grischuk in Russian interviews making snidey remarks at several Grandmasters and calling it "Russian humour", but as far as Dubov goes he might have completely differing opinions as the rest of them.
i agree that its not clear, but with the situation as grey as it is you either come to some sort of conclusion with the information you have or you just pretend it doesn't exist - and when the consequences of the situation is having peoples careers ruined over false accusations i'd rather come to some kind of conclusion.
Dubov is super salty. Imagine calling Fabi talentless then pretending it was a compliment. I can't imagine how naive/ weird one have to be to go along with that.
And I don't know what's Grischuk's problem is. Some of the things he says these days are completely unwarranted.
@superneenjaa718, that’s just your speculation. I got an impression he was genuine. Either way this example is just cherry picking.
Overall the conclusion of the video states that Russian players have this agenda against Americans and Indians because they’re jealous. If you’ve seen certain Dubov podcasts you know that he’s most likely not the type of person to support this type of stuff in any way.
@@YDAE4 this whole fiasco is centred around people's speculations. What else can there be?
@@superneenjaa718 Yep,
Dubov is a kind of person who = give a fuck {not like Nakamura pretending, but literally} and he most of the time does not live in Russia on a daily basis.
Dubov had - overall - cheating suspicions before it was fashionable, which he presented in one of the podcasts, and this was a time when Dubov was still somewhat associated with the "Magnus circle", so I suppose these were the suspicions of that circle.
Grischuk has recently "crushed" in Blitz most top Indian GM's winning tournament and he is 2 time Blitz Champ, so his suspicions are valid. I also didn't notice that Grischuk has anything against the Indian chess scene since he plays there regularly.
In addition, Grischuk lived in the US playing poker, has liberal views and has never shown any anti-American beliefs. In addition, he has good contacts with ChessBrah for example.
I think the conclusion you came to is very believable. I know that Kramnik has often omitted some facts while accusing someone of cheating. You can have a 30-game-win-streak if 25 out of these games were played against a weaker opponent back-to-back, but if you leave out that it was always the same opponent you come across as desperate or misleading.
Over all very good video. Maybe the Russian players are unaware that they are sore losers and echo-chambered themselves into a delusion, but that's difficult to determine from the outside...
Interesting hypothesis. But even regardless of it, I hadn't realised how much Russian chess level has factually dropped. Thanks Jack.
Nepo doing everything he can to make me not feel bad for him losing 2 World Championship matches in a row
Neimann calling Kramnik his life coach 💀
Lmao
Your theory is entertaining, but it also resorts to a significant amount of specualtion. Theres a couple of remarks that could make this more "interesting" I guess:
1. Kasparov has been saying lately that we should stop talking about the upcoming match as a "world championship". To some conspiracy theorists this may be evidence that Kasparov, like many other Russians, also thinks there's something shady going on there and it must be cheating. His comments about Carlsen not playing anymore are just a cover for he really means.
2) Nakamura has also accused quite a few other players of cheating, including Erigaisi himself. You seem to have overlooked that or you didn't want to bring it up. Maybe it doesn't fit your theory. Who knows.
i didn't know that about Kasparov, very strange but its most likely in reference to the fact that the best player ITW isn't competing for the title due to the time format. as for Naka, i think he has a bad history for falsely accusing people as well - however i don't think there's anything more to it than he just a bad loser sometimes.
Kasparov would be the most anti russia of russians , considered his past endeavors in politics that got him locked in prison . You could argue that since Kramnik was his student that his comment was implicitly defending Kramnik . However i don't think it is the case , it is just hothead Garry being himself lol .
My sentiment is similar. Good try, but ultimately, not convincing. Indeed, too much speculation, and some cherry picking of evidence. Cheers.
Surprised you didnt bring up how Ian accused Ding of foul play at the WCC. After he lost, he started complaining about how his sleeping pills "went missing"
Wow, Ding had to hide Nepo's meds to get a win. Nepo the GOAT.
Excellent video. I also wouldn't underestimate the somewhat paradoxical promotional value of throwing out accusations leading to increased profile and name recognition (who hasn't heard of Kramnik these days even among the 'new intake' to chess since the pandemic? Certainly he is now more known in the wider world than Anand, for example). This in turn translates into dollars earned in a very real sense, whether through online engagement or directly E.g. Clash of Claims prize money with very likely more to come. I don't know if that is a motivator, but some would say 'always follow the money' when other motivations don't seem quite logical.
The only reason i have started to believe Kramnik over Danya is because of that one clip where Danya was doing a speedrun or something and he was playing someone that's rated 1100, and explicitly said during the game that "im looking in the engine right now and......." he goes on to explain something, but the point is that he himself said that he was using the engine during the match against the amateur player. But i did not follow up on what's the response from Danya was.
I can’t believe this is the smoking gun people are going with. Danya was up like 10 points of material and his opponent was stalling and wouldn’t play a move, so Danya got impatient and started analyzing the opening (which had nothing to do with the current position) in chessbase so that he could prep for the post game analysis while he waited on his opponent. Yeah, it’s technically against the terms of service, but I would hardly call it cheating.
@AP0PT0SIS this is what he shows to the public, can you deny that he doesn't do it in private? You cant, because in doing this he lost credibility
Nah that’s a nothing burger. Danya can beat an 1100 in his sleep
@@muzzamilsalman4117 If anything, the fact that he casually admitted to looking at opening lines in chess base on stream is proof to me that he’s legit. He openly admitted it because he didn’t feel like what he was doing was even wrong, which is understandable. Don’t you think if he always played with an engine running, that he wouldn’t openly admit it on stream?
For me it's Fisher 2.0... It's only going to get worse, he tics almost every item from the DSM 5 Paranoid Personality Disorder. Good luck to his close ones, it's not easy.
Fischer was right
@@hmmm3210 Fun thing is Kramnik is right too 🤣, but people are never ready to hear the truth
Great background coverage. I think you are being too conspiratorial, though, with your conclusion. I think it is very unlikely that anything organised is going on. More likely, hurt egos have no better explanation than cheating on behalf of their opponents since alternative explanations would require admitting to not being as good (anymore). All these players are extremely competitive and without some strong beliefs in one's abilities, one does crack the top of the league table. That strong self belief gets in the way of unbiased judgements.
appreciate it bro, i don't think its organised at all either if that's how it comes across - but i certainly think Russian players know exactly what they're doing when they make these kinds of insinuations.
Ok, but pentala DID play dirty against Nepo. Why haven’t you mentioned?
playing dirty at a high level isn't a thing. if your opponent knocks over pieces and fixes it on your clock you stop the clock and call the arbiter. the arbiter will then warn the player and add time to Nepo's clock. if you don't do that, which Nepo didn't, its completely your fault.
@ ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Even though these are the rules, every player knows that, in time pressure, the best strategy is to play dirty, break the rules and provoke the call to the arbiter. The extra time that Nepo would have doesn’t make any difference for him, but for pentala it is the main factor for drawing, not losing. YOU KNOW THAT. The rules are not perfect and fair play goes beyond what is literally written in the rules. Every top player knows that this is playing dirty.
*Vladimir Kramnik is typing…*
"I think any creator at the time would be forgiven for taking the topic seriously"
=
"You and I forgive myself"
This video took some time to put together I can tell! Good stuff
glad nepo was humiliated by magnus and broken by ding
Bro missed the first ten seasons of the show called 'Chess'. It's always been that way.
As an indian whose favorite player is nepo this is hard to watch.
Honestly I think that Kramnik is accusing everyone of cheating because he can't perform good with a PC mouse... And that's the entire story... Kramnik has no idea about how fast people can play online chess. Also Kramnik has NEVER played an online bullet game either... So when he gets to time trouble, he loses to lower rated players, thus he then accuses them for cheating...
Are you sure you don't mean premoving? Nakamura can play 255 moves in 1 minute - premoving online. OTB he is nothing like as fast.
*procedure starting* 🔥🔥🔥 🗣️🗣️🗣️
I understand your position on hans, but c'mon tyhe guy literally cheated , he is a diferent case, i dont think people blindely follow magnus, i guess he did cheated.
In defence of the russian players, they have been banned from events because of the war and the doping scandal from the Olympics. Neither were anything to do with chess, which was also very unfair.
you forgot turkey, vietnam, argentina, germany, england. all have young prodigies.
Not really
Could I get some thoughts on why Kramnik never accuses Carlsen?
i think Magnus has the respect from most Chess players and is the benchmark of excellence. Carlsen has great relationships with Russians, most notably being on good terms with Nepo after some teams tournaments and also having had Dubov on his team in a WCC match to help with his preparation.
generally speaking accusing Carlsen is just a losing battle for Kramnik, you can't accuse someone of cheating that has 2 more WC titles than you. i wouldn't be surprised if the cheating accusations on Gukesh completely go away after the WCC if he wins - its absolutely impossible to cheat in the WCC, security measures are too strict.
@@jacksarkisian Again with your nationalistic BS. No, Carlsen and Nepo doesn't have good relationship. They don't even respect each other too much. Have you heard when Magnus said that he would be so embarrassed to lose someone that's so out of his league as Nepo was (Lex Fridman interview - but you probably didn't watch it, since Lex is a Russian emigrant)
“What I think and do, others must do too.”
Sagar Shah is playing? Isn't he the chessbase india commenter guy?
Though I don't agree with everything in this video, I appreciate you taking time to analyze everything from the start including the online olympiad.
We can have differing views and we all have a right to have our opinions. If we start to argue in chat information will pile up and end up in more confusion ...
But honestly the only stance I can take of all this scandal is
"Kramnik is not right about everything (ok this is what you want to hear) but in the same breath lets also admit that Neither are Chess com right about everything. They have a lot to hide"
Also let us not forget all the times the great Naka cried fowl and accused players of cheating
What I know is that politics has not interfered with sports, and this is what all sports organizations say, but the truth is that after the Russian-Ukrainian war, it was proven once again that war has interfered with politics, and this was not only in chess, as the Russians were banned from using their country's flag and Sergey Karyakin was punished following his statements. In football, Russia was punished, and even in the Paris Olympics, Russia did not participate because of the war. I do not mind that your opinion may have some truth, but the Russians are being persecuted because of the war, while there are other countries that are waging wars and crushing others without mentioning names because you know for sure, and they are not punished, which means that there is solidarity against the Russians. This is a fact. I am not Russian, but I stand with the truth. Again, your point of view may have some truth.
i don't think stopping players from bearing Russian flags in Chess makes a difference, its just a PR move from FIDE that i don't think Russian players care too much about. i also believe that Karjakin's ban was just, was an extremely insensitive thing to say when you actively compete with players on the other side of the war.
at the end of the day i don't actually think the war has too much of an effect on Russian Chess. the biggest effect is self-induced and is the fact its much harder for Russian's to travel to play, especially their junior players.
people don't seem to analyze that chess skill is largely reflected by the prosperity of the country.
During the 10th century some of the most developed and progressive enclaves was in the middle east. The greatest chess player of that time was Al-Suli, an Arabian.
16th century, spanish empire. The strongest chess player was Lucena. A spaniard.
Italian renaissance period. Strongest chess player was Gioachino Greco. An Italian.
During Napoleon's reign. The srongest chess player was Philidor. A frenchman.
1902. Cuba gains independance from Spain, but Cuba stays under the influence of US (before Castro). Cuba financially develops immensely. Jose Casablanca, a Cuban, becomes the world chess champion.
Now when was the period of the Soviet Unions world dominance and reign? sometime during the 60's - 70's. You know how many world champions they had during this period? All of them. Except for Fischer.
You could say these are coincidences, but chess development seems to be tied with prosperity. History has shown that to be true to me.
There's no surprise to me that China, a country that has been progressively most economically developed 20 years ago and currently stands to rival the US, or India, a country that is yearly developing economically at a faster rate than other countries, is also incidently producing the strongest chess players.
The fact that Russians are so weak and have completely lost their dominance, and are now resulting to ridiculous cheating accusations to save face from their unfortunate fate, is cathartic to me. it seems to beautifully reflect the behavior of their goverment over the 21st century.
Collective guilt is an extreme tool only used in the most extreme cases. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is very different that "other wars". It is an explicit attempt to completely erase a country from the face of the world. The only recent precedent is the Nazi conquest and genocide. Collective guilt was applied to Germans. Rightfully so. They reformed their culture, they learned where their borders are, and 80 years later they still feel shame. It was an extreme case, and collective guilt was SUCCESSFUL in dealing with it. Russians are also collectively guilty for developing their country in this direction. Putin has higher popular support than Hitler ever had. Diplomacy and military will eventually resolve the conflict, but they will not fix the problem. The problem can only be fixed by shaming Russians into fixing the problem with their culture. Excluding Russia from international organizations in entertainment and sport is correct. The current level of exclusion is actually utterly insufficient to project collective guilt as strongly as it must be.
@@flashpeter625 Germans shouldn't have been punished that harshly, Russia unfortunately will not be punished at all because there's no one to do the punishing
I don't know of any other wars of this magnitude being waged today.. are we talking about Israel? If so then yes, maybe Israeli players should get banned from using their flags too but that's it. What are other countries waging wars of aggression nowadays? I think none.
Being a bit better at chess could gain Nakamura financial rewards? Are you kidding!? He is number 2 in the world on the ratinglist! LOL
Nepo - Harikrishna was wild
I disagree with the Fischer point made at the end of the video. Situations are completely different. Largely cause the Russians WERE intentionally drawing games, but Bobby was the only player in this "coalition". Whereas the Russian group today is large
i tried to convey this better, but i did say the legitimacy of the claims were completely different. Fischer's claims were just, but Kramnik's claims aren't - thats the main difference.
To be honest, i'm actually curious what is the program that Danya alt-tabs all the time during his games (that can be clearly seen in reflection)
from what i've seen, his streaming setup is pretty poor. he has a laptop that he plays on, and one single monitor for everything else.
you alt tab to respond to people on discord, change your music on spotify, google something chat mentions, look at a players profile off screen, and a million other things to make the livestreaming experience smooth for the viewer.
jumping to the possibility that he's cheating means you'd also need to accuse me, and anyone else that streams Chess of cheating because we quite literally all do it.
@jacksarkisian it's not a discord or Spotify or anything else that can be recognized.
@@jaedong1957 just watched the clip you're talking about - its just a pop-out Twitch chat on light mode. he minimizes it when he needs to focus (the constant updating in your peripheral is insanely distracting) and opens it whenever he gets the chance.
@@jacksarkisian ah, alright, thank you
@@jacksarkisian ahh right, lets just completely ignore the fact that with that setup his chat is already in the opposite direction. Lets also ignore the fact that whenever he's analyzing games he looks exactly where whatever that window is.
Only thing i disagree with you is that Hans was not cheating and is capable of beating Carlsen on his own
Lmao this explains so much about the reaction to gukesh winning the championship. Great video
It sounds like Kramnik just doesn't understand modern day technology, my grandma can click faster than this guy
18:51 - Naroditsky is ranked 23rd in the world in OTB Blitz (Fact)
But also please state that he got there playing against 2000 rated players
Sooooo you don’t believe in statistics? ELO demonstrates a player’s strength. Period
@@jeffreybuffkin9108 Yes he beats 2000 elo guys Very strong
@@jeffreybuffkin9108 It is the opposite actually. He believes in statistics, which is why a 400 point rule should not exist.
@@Stefan-cx6gv i certainly agree that rule is dumb. What percentage of opponents have that rule applied for all the other top blitz players?
@@Stefan-cx6gv not Danya's fault the rule exists, and he is not the only one taking advantage of it. He's not doing anything illegal here. He is a strong player, regardless.
Cherry picking, confirmation bias and, of course, the Dunning-Kruger at its finest. Kramnik was pissed that they took his electronic cigarette, that’s why he demanded that all phones should be out, because rules are rules. All other arguments are also ridiculous, there are a number of young Russian GMs who are being of accused of cheating and Kramnik and Nepo accuse different players. Nepo didn’t accuse Hikaru publicly, that Dina Belenkaya heard something from Nepo’s team is ridiculous.
He didn't accuse him publicly? Strongly suggesting that someone might be cheating is the same thing as accusing, they're just phrasing it like that to protect themselves from legal consequences, but everyone with a brain can see what their true intent is.
He did it privately among his team, allegedly, according to Dina
Kramnik has no problems in accusing some russian players so all this stuff doesnt make sense.
Back in the day they accused mostly american grandmasters of cheating.
Now they added a new country to the roster.
Just ignore it
I appreciate your putting this all together. This was my sense of the situation as well.
It's typical KGB psyop. Kramnik is the main actor because he owes the KGB for what happened in 2006.
I think a lot of Kramnik's beef goes back to ToiletGate. But there's no excuse for slander. FIDE should sue players who baselessly accuse other FIDE players of cheating.
Very well made video Jack. Good to see such content in the chess space, hope to see more of such video essay type content on interesting chess topics!
appreciate it bro, glad you enjoyed
Okay just skipped to the summary part and this sounds like crazy talk. Going to listen to the whole thing.
Edit: Honestly this felt as painful to watch as Levitov moderating the Kramnik/Naroditsky discussion. If the idea was to create an equally toxic counterpart to that I guess it succeeded (?)
What is the point of the of including Grischuk and Dubov lmao. Feels like they had to be in to make it a Russia topic.
Obv. Kramnik and Nepo talk a lot with each other and share these view publicly. There are so many arguments someone could come up with if it should be a neutral view. If one would really put some thoughts into it you could argue that Nepo is more used to anti cheating measurements failing since I think he is/was sort of into online gaming and Valve using bad AC basically pushes people into a 3rd party matchmaking. So feeling the need that some 3rd party has to step up if current platforms fail to do so feels reasonable (think chess is just a lost cause online since parties have 0 power of chess if it's not played locally).
Also such huge disrespect towards Nepo - in a Magnus era of chess that guy did great.
Video feels super weird with excluding the existing problem of cheating (even if it was discussed on the channel before).
Wow, accusing everyone of cheating is not disrespectful. 👏
Lashing out on others GMs is not disrespectful either.
This video accounting those incidents, on the other hand, is a huge disrespect. Lol.
@@NoOne-ky1er What are you even talking about? Read the comment again and/or watch the video once more. The disrespect was regarding the fact that the video is shitting on the achievements of Nepo as a player. Has 0 to do with cheating/the accusations of it.
@@klauswolfbert
This is what Nepo is doing to other GMs.
@@NoOne-ky1er What are you even talking about? Read the comment again and/or watch the video once more. The disrespect was regarding the fact that the video is shitting on the achievements of Nepo as a player. Has 0 to do with cheating/the accusations of it.
It is because Kramnik cheated himself against Topalov. And he assumes other people are like him.
Kramnik performed to 2800 in the early 90s - before computers were that strong.
@@imankhandaker6103 I never said he wasn't a good player. WAS, though.
@@Prometheus4096 He had no reason to cheat - the existence of cables in the walls of a building is not evidence of cheating.
Admittedly FIDE have to take it more seriously - metal detector sweeps, Faraday cages, accompanied toilet breaks (or NONE) & sitting at the board for the entire duration of every game. No game at ANY level rated without ALL of these conditions enforced. Instead of IDIOTIC drug tests ... for which drug?
@@imankhandaker6103 If Kramnik had no reason to cheat, then no one ever has a reason to cheat. He was in the world up match and his only accomplishment in life is becoming world champ. You wouldn't even know who he was today without that.
@Prometheus4096 I knew who he was when he burst on the scene in the Olympiad & everybody knew who he was after he hammered Kasparov without losing a game, or even looking like he would lose a game. Winning or losing against Topalov could not add to that legend or diminish it.
I am looking again at this thumbnail and this is hilarious. Why are you covering his eyes? Are you afraid of copyright strike? Don't worry, he doesn't copyright strike other channels. Only Danya does that.
I think losing the WC twice broke Nepo's brain.
Finally I understand what's been going on. I've been looking for this video for a while. Thanks for making it.
I got a 93.2 accuracy and got nervous but game rating quickly calmed me down
You know the game rating is only based on your rating and accuracy right? You can actually test this out. If you have two accounts and each plays an identical game, the one with a higher rating also will have a higher estimated game rating.
It's definitely quite the conspiricy theory 😅
I don't know about the entire "the russians are embarrassed" thing, but there's definitely something going on.
They're losing their mind!!
No matter what, one thing is certain: There are people out there cheating, also among the top players.
"Very nice video"
bro got me 😭😭
No doubt about this one again, alright let's do the procedure
also why are people saying you are handsome in the comments
same observation
Why are you saying why people are saying he is handsome in the comment section?
13:00 Hikaru actually has cheated otb by castling with two hands in a blitz game (Blitz WCC iirc)
I have mixed feelings about this. There is absolutely no doubt that cheating in chess is out of control, especially with online chess. It is ridiculous how out of control it is and Kramnik is trying to point this out and really, when you are at his level, there is a certain feeling you get when someone keeps playing consistent super accurate moves that surprise you as they don't make human sense until the move is played. Hard to explain this but even a 2500 ELO player can feel this. However, there is no doubt that chess engines and online chess tactical trainers, have made new generation human chess players dramatically better at spotting obscure engine tactics ... I think that is where Kramnik sometimes tends to claim cheating when it does not happen. I do think that Kramnik is more right about his accusations than wrong ... but certainly it is not 100% correct.
So what's your point? You didn't even answer the question from your title
its at the summary in the end, the accusations seem to come from a major place of jealousy from Russian players because of their decline on the world stage.
I thought it was explained well.
No that's doesn't make any sense. Kramnik has left Russia long ago, he coaches foreign teams. It's not like he is in decline, he just stopped competing. Although he did some outstanding Blitz performances this year.
As for cables in Elista, that's a misrepresentation. Ethernet (UTP-1) cables in a bathroom that was used by BOTH Kramnik and Topalov, that's what it was. You need a computer to make use of that cables but if you have a computer, then why you need cables? Computers can solve chess positions without internet connection! Simple logic that ruins that accusation completely but Mr Sarkisian decided to present this information in such way that it casts shadow on Kramnik.
Nepo is not in decline either, he competed for World Champion, he was in final match. His temperament is not calm, I agree.
Also why Petrosian gaze controversy wasn't covered. Because it does not fit well into this theory?
@@jacksarkisianThat summary doesnt make sense because accusing people of jealousy is the exact same as accusing of cheating. Both cannot be proven. Its literally worthless.
damn, it all makes a lot more sense now
Awesome content !
thankyou bro
do u even know that grischuk threatened to leave russia if karajkin became the fide president, dubov supported magnus against nepo so i dont know how u joined all their statements to make this video.
This makes all sense.
I would not be surprised if Nepo Accuses Magnus of cheating 😂 , Nepo,s 1 st loses to a top player and then accuses him to satisfy his own ego it is not Hidden how much egoistic and jealous of a person nepo is and how he act childish when he loss he deserved to loss both world championship,s✨✨
Fascinating analysis. Thank you! 👍
Even that great saga about Trump being a Russian spy was a lesser stretch than this incessant rant...
I didnt knew that Ian accused so much, thanks for this video
He is 2700 in otb blitz only because he is farming his rating against 2000 guys. Naroditsky is nobody in otb chess, never played any rapid or blitz championships. He is a top 5 blitz only playing from his room.. Kramnik maybe was wrong saveral times but with Danya''the nice guy'' is fully right.
He played in some tournaments in HIS CHESS CLUB WITH KIDS HE TEACHES to reach 2700 and never hid that, also never bragged about that. For the kids it's a pretty good experience if you think about that for a second, they get the chance of playing a strong GM they admire, why do you all need to always see the rotten in everything? And it's not true that he never played top players otb, he didn't often but there are still some games with some good wins. He also never claimed to be one of the best blitz players, and could you tell me how being good online while not playing OTB is a proof of cheating? He doesn't play in tournaments because he's focused on streaming and being a commentator, that doesn't mean that he can't still improve is chess strength. You all should reflect a bit on what the word "evidence" mean and finally understand that you don't have any. You're just throwing baseless accusations without any actual proof.
@@lebannen6056 So he cannot play with kids unrated games? Such nice Danya? bs ,proof is everywhere , only naive and blind ppl don't want to see it. search ''Nakamura Vs Naroditsky!! Grandmaster Blitz Battle!"' from 3y ago and watch carefullly first game. Only a blind man cannot see this.
@@lebannen6056 He stole rating from kids? pathetic.
@kristof80able Do you actually think that way? He does it FOR the kids, try to put yourself in their shoes, it would be pretty cool to be able to play against a strong player that you respect. And don't act like he purposefully travels to tournaments to farm Elo against kids, he just participated in some tournaments in the chess club near his home that he usually attends. There is a big difference between the two situations. For the kids it's a learning experience especially since he teaches them regularly. It's an opportunity for them, try not to be so biased.
I mean they improve a lot from it
Accusing Naroditsky of cheating is like accusing MisteRogers of being a wife-beater.
Your claim that Russians believe everything Kramnik says, while 98% of non-Russians do not - is just sad.
I follow a lot of Russian channels and podcasts (and a lot of English lang content of the same type) - and I know that you are wrong.
Of course that somethings wrong with Kramniks behavior, and I see 90% of what he's talk as a bullshit, but that doesn't mean that he's never right, and it certainly doesn't mean he has ill intentions. Are his reaction emotionally immature and is he using dubious "science" to "prove" them. Yes he does. But so does Hikaru (remember his Hans times craziness and "experts with proofs"??). Still you don't see Hikaru as some Lex Luthor of chess.
About Kramnik's Naroditski allegations. I was so mad when I saw him accusing one of my favorite streamers, and *the* favorite commentator. But with all BS that was presented those days, I saw something i really disliked, and nobody explained (engine appearing and disappearing in reflection of one of his videos)
P.S. You missed the chance to present yourself as objective. Instead, you mostly presented yourself as fanboy and Russophob.
edit: now that I watched the whole video - I can say that just like Kramnik, you have some serious issue. The same "methodology" the same level of confidence with the same level of "evidence". But you are definitely a Rusophobe, so you disike him. Ig you were Russian - you would be his biggest fan - a Hans Niemann level fan.
You won't go far as a UA-camr/streamer. And I'm so grateful this world works that way, and people like you stay out of the radar.
Anyone picking on Danya is by his own actions, immediately discredited. Dude is too humble and intelligent both to risk his value system and immaculate social persona through cheating. Sometimes you need to take an objective look at the people involved. Who is above reproach, who is bitter... and apply the "duck principle". If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.... it's a duck.
did i miss the girth reveal stream jack
brother? 😭😭😭
So your conclusion at the end and the whole video is built on your opinion without dealing in any facts, strange when your previous video about cheating seemed full of research and facts.
Its called pattern recognition.
Cheating online is easy. Cheating OTB is not. You might therefore expect to find a lot more of the former than the latter, no?
i genuinely feel sorry for people who wholeheartedly believe that hans cheated in that game