A chess critic has been found dead and has been caught up in a cheating scandal of his own
The Russian chess master who was accused by his peers of bullying Daniil Naroditsky, the American grandmaster who was found dead last week, has himself been subject to unsubstantiated cheating allegations in the past – the 2006 chess scandal that became known as “Toilet gate.”
The manager of Vladimir Kramnik’s rival in that title match, Veselin Topalov, claimed that the Russian was using the bathroom up to 50 times per match to surreptitiously look up chess moves on a computer – a charge that Kramnik’s manager vehemently denied.
“It should also be noted that Mr. Kramnik should drink a lot of water during matches” and likes to walk in the bathroom, Carsten Hansel added, According to news reports.
Kramnik He eventually won the match He became the undisputed world chess champion, but only after agreeing to demands from the World Chess Federation (FIDE) that he use the same bathroom as his opponent. Kramnik’s concession was initially protested by a sit-in near the bathroom, which caused him to lose one of the matches in the match.
Later, Topalov and his manager were punished by the Ethics Committee of the International Chess Federation for “– Making unfounded accusations of fraud“.
“Having always played fair throughout my career, this insinuation did not bother me too much,” Kramnik said in an email on Friday, responding to NBC News’ request for comment on the renewed interest in “Toiletgate.”
Since Kramnik has repeatedly suggested that Naroditsky cheated, his confrontation with what turned out to be unfounded allegations resurfaced this week in the wake of Naroditsky’s death. Naroditsky’s cause of death has not been announced.
“It’s a bit ironic that someone like Kramnik, who has been accused of cheating, would turn around and accuse someone else of cheating,” Erik Alebst, CEO of Chess.com, the world’s largest chess platform, said on Friday.
A young chess champion is found dead
Naroditsky, 29, was found dead on Sunday at his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Police said Thursday they were investigating his death as a possible suicide or drug overdose.
The international body said it would investigate whether Kramnik should be disciplined for insulting public statements he made “before and after the tragic death” of Narodetsky.
during His last live broadcast On Saturday, Naroditsky told his audience that the cheating allegations made by Kramnik, whom he once idolized, had affected him.
“Since the Kramnik case, I feel like if you start doing well, people assume the worst intentions,” he said.
Chess.com banned Kramnik in 2023 from participating in prize tournaments after he accused several players of cheating, Allebest said.
Kramnik claimed that he is “the subject of a public relations campaign of bullying and defamation,” as well as continuous threats against him and his family since Monday. That was when the Charlotte Chess Center opened in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach. Advertise on social media He died.
The Russian also denied bullying Naroditsky and said in an email on Friday that his lawyers were “preparing a major case against every media source spreading this false information.”
Do chess players cheat?
Allebest admitted to cheating in competitive chess.
“It’s just a human thing, and it’s the same with any sport,” he said. “For some, the rewards of winning outweigh the cost to their conscience. For some, it is cash, although it is rare for the prize money to be that large.”
Among other things, Chess.com runs weekly Money games online Where players can get up to $3,000.
“It’s not a lot of money,” Alipst said. “Oftentimes, players cheat in order to gain notoriety, boost their live audience, move up the rankings and get fame by taking on the best players. It’s a matter of perception.”
He added that these matches are closely monitored.
“For players competing in prize money matches, we have monitoring A program called Proctor “They download it and it tracks what’s happening on their computers. We have front and back cameras to monitor the players,” Alipst said.
Now that so much chess is played online, cheating methods have become digital as well.
“They will use computer algorithms to determine the best move, and they will have a second program running on their computers while they play the game,” he said. “Sometimes they have someone sitting next to them with an iPad and looking for the best moves.”
So Chess.com looks for red flags.
“We have statistical models that help us identify potential cheaters,” Alipst said. “For example, if a new player signs up and suddenly starts winning a lot of matches in a row, or his rating starts rising quickly, or if we discover other factors that we cannot disclose, we will look into it.”
In their latest work “Fair Play Update” As of September, Chess.com reported that 125,000 accounts had been closed for cheating.
‘Distressing’ allegations
Beginning in October 2024, Kramnik publicly accused Narodetsky of cheating at online chess, suggesting that his near-perfect play was “statistically impossible”.
Statistics don’t always tell the whole story, Alipst said.
“The thing that is often forgotten is that in statistics, lightning sometimes strikes twice,” Alipst said. “When you have 20 million games played every day, the probability of something happening is one in a million every day. Some players, especially old guard players who didn’t grow up playing chess online, often have a hard time understanding that.”
Alipst said he understood why Naroditsky, a child prodigy, felt so despondent in the face of accusations leveled against him by a world-famous player like Kramnik.
“It is painful for players like Dania to be accused of cheating because since they were young they spent hours and hours and hours of work,” he said, referring to Narodetsky by his nickname. “For some, this is all thrown into the trash by accusation. For players who consider chess sacred, it hurts them in the soul.”