October 26, 2025 • 23 mins
This week, host Mihir Vasavda talks to The Indian Express chess experts Amit Kamath and Mayank Chaudhary about the untimely passing away of American grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky. They talk about how the Russian great Vladimir Kramnik has found himself at the centre of the controversy, and discuss the larger issue of cheating in chess, especially how Kramnik’s unsubstantiated allegations against Naroditsky took a mental toll on him.
Produced by Shashank Bhargava
Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar
Produced by Shashank Bhargava
Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Express Sports podcast. You're listening to
Game Time with Mimihi Vasavda. In the house as always
is Ahmed Kamat and making his pot debut this week
is Mayan Chaudhry. The two Indian Express chess experts a
year to break down and talk about the untimely death
of American grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky last Monday. The twenty nine
(00:27):
year old American chess player died in circumstances that aren't
yet completely known. However, what it did was put spotlight
on the less spoken about side of chess, the cheating
sign and it also put the former world champion Vladimir
Krumnik in the talk. Ahmit, let's begin with you. Why
don't you kind of give an explainer of everything that's
(00:49):
gone on in the last week or so and put
into a perspective.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
All right, me, but before we come to the Naroditsky
incident itself, I think we should just talk about just
this undercurrent for cynicism and you know, this whole air
of not trusting other players in the sport that is
very peculiar to chess. You know, you have sports like
cycling where there is a whole circle of cheating, doping,
(01:15):
all of that that happens. But even there, the cynicism,
the paranoia that exists in chess, you don't see that there.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Players don't walk around.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Accusing each other of, you know, being cheaters and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
That is very peculiar to chess.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And chess is one of those sports where every single person,
maybe not the Indian players, but then most other players
are very very open to flinging allegations even though they
cannot back it up right. Just to give an perspective
for Indian listeners, if you look at a sport like cricket,
as soon as you start talking about match fixing, spot fixing,
(01:49):
all the former players current players would just clam up.
They will not say anything. You talk about cheating. In chess,
every single chess.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Player will probably have an opinion.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Every single chest player will also probably take us and
say that, you know, I think this guy is a cheater.
And just to elaborate on why this is such a
complex thing, just look at Magnus Skulson. The most famous
case of cheating accusation that kind of never went anywhere
was by Magnus Culson on Hans Nieman in twenty twenty two,
he could not prove it right, which led to one
(02:18):
hundred million dollar quote. This was settled out of court.
These players still don't trust each other. Right after that,
in September twenty twenty three, Vladimir Kramnik, who's the guy
who has been slammed by everybody for the Daniel laddits
Kid death. He was the one who basically also had
some sharp things to say about Hans Nieman. He in fact,
(02:38):
in an online game right after he had lost, he
actually allowed Hans Neeman to checkmate him by like basically
opening up his pieces, and it was Hans Nieman who
basically walked away. He resigned and walked away because he
realized what Kramnik was trying to do.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Right, So if you look at now, Kramnik is the
guy who was actually working with Hans Niemann as a coach.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So you have all of these complicated underlying things, right.
Hikaru Nakamura is somebody who has constantly gone into like
not constantly, but he has been accused of going into
players like Arjun Ergasi is DMS and accusing him of
being a cheater, and recently at the Global Chess League draft.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Hikaru was the one who was trying to.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Push his team to get ar June Rgas on his
team because he was like, that guy has a lot
of potential. So it's very complicated. Only with this case
in particular, because you asked me about this case, it
did take a tragic turn because for the last few
years L. W. Kramnik has been talking at length about
So Kramnik's somebody whose opinion carries a lot of weight
(03:42):
because he's a former world champion.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
There have only been eighteen world champions, and.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Kramnik is somebody who likes to talk about cheating in
online chess, and there is a very gray area that
he walks when he accuses people.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Right, he doesn't exactly say that this guy is a cheater,
but he will say that his.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Results are interesting, you know, which has now become a
universally understood code for he thinks that this guy is
up to and he's done that with Naroditsky a whole lot.
Narudizsky has come out on multiple podcasts before his untimely death.
He's come out on multiple podcasts, including his own streams,
and started talking about how much of a mental told
these accusations were taking He's spoken about, you know, every
(04:23):
time I start to do well, people will think that
he's probably getting some help from somewhere.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
So, you know, me, just accusations of cheating.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Or players accusing each other of cheating has gone on
for way too long.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
There's not much that feede can do in a sense.
But yeah, now I think there.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Is a case that Freda is trying to make against
Vladimir Kramnik and pull him in because he's accused multiple
players of doing this. It's not just Naroditsky is also accused.
David Nawara, who also has spoken about his mental struggles,
is also accused Jose Martinez Alcantra of cheating without ever
actually giving any evidence rather than some statistical things that
they're not really a smoking gun.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
You know, right, So at this point, if you can
come in and just kind of give a sense of
who Naritski is and why has this blown up into
such a big issue, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
May Before we start on who Narylski was, it's important
to understand how he was as a person. I mean,
obviously his death has created a spark where lots of
you know, top players, as you know, have come and
spoken in his favor and to understand his background. Obviously,
he was one of the top players from America, not
(05:33):
the elite of elites, but he has been there in
the top two hundreds for a long time. He was
actually one of the most famous streamers commentator. He actually
also used to write for New York Times as well,
and a very very active player as far as on
inches was concerned. He had played over three thousand games
with Hikarua, around twenty two hundred games with Nihal Sarin.
(05:55):
So these were the credentials he had, and no one
had ever expected that this was the sudden end we
will have for a guy like Narrensky.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
And what exactly did Krumnik say after his passing away,
because that also has kind of put Krumnik in the dock, right.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah, it's again. As Amith has mentioned, Kramnik has a
very peculiar way of you know, insinuation. He never targets anyone,
so his insignation follows a very strategic pattern where he
tries to, you know, bring out his own analytical findings,
try to bring out his own set of numbers, and
you know, actively engages with the comments in his own
(06:35):
Twitter post beat his supporters or detractors, but these are
the things which he tries to enforce and allege that
a player is kind of cheating, So he never uses
the name. He rarely uses anyone's name, but he tries
to portray that someone's result is just too good to
be proved. So if you look at what sort of
tweets Kramnik was doing just two days before Nalawski, that
(06:57):
was also very interesting to follow. He was following one
of the few of the last streams of nar Nariski
used to stream on platform Twitch, and he noticed that
something is not right, and he also mentioned that on
his social media that he feels that something is not right.
Perhaps the reason could be that he was kicked out
from chess dot com and a freestyle chess commu interestint.
(07:20):
This was Kramnik's observation. He also mentioned, actually rather hinted
at a potential substance use because on his final stream
on Twitch that happened on October seventeenth, that was Sunday,
Nariski actually dozed off like a couple of times in
his stream where he also mentioned about how these Kramnik
stuff has lingering effect on him. Every time he starts
(07:41):
to do well, people will question him and all those things.
So these were the build up which actually happened at
the moment he died. Understandably, people started questioning Kramnik because
he was the reason. People thought that he is the
reason why narisky mental health was deteriorating. And Narriski also
opened up quite a lot of time about how these
affected his mental health. So when everything happened, I saw
(08:04):
a couple of teet from Nihal Serene. So the Indian
Grandmaster actually never met Narrowiski and he had played around
two thousan one hundred game on chess dot com alone.
So when I spoke to him, Nihal said that Nihal
was the last guy who played against Naradisky on seventeenth
of October, and after that there is no active games
from Narediski. So this has deeply painted And yeah, the
(08:27):
way Nihal spoke to me, it was actually shocking to
hear because Nihal is someone who never really you know,
opens up, He keeps whatever there is in his mind.
And a guy who rarely speaks for two three minutes
has opened up for nearly an hour and spoke at
Lens what he feels about Kramnik. He actually directly made
Kramnik the responsible. He actually said that Kramnik, although is
(08:51):
a very influential person, a former world champion, the biggest
name in chess perhaps, but he has taken away from
chess a lot more than he has given into this community.
This is Nial's word where he mentioned Kramnik to be
responsible for what happened to Narodiski. And this is a
big statement.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Right, just I mean, the whole issue, right, It reflects
on so many things. We focus so much on the
boom of chess, especially online chess. We've spoken so much
about that, and Torsa, like you said, this is like
the darker side of it, beyond the value of the
chess world, which we don't really kind of look at
(09:31):
very closely or investigate that much. In a way, this
tragic concident has shed some light on it, but kind
of put it in perspective how easy or tough is
it to cheat an online chess I mean, all the
allegations against nowdred Skia side, the basic thing here is
that he was accused of cheating by someone who couldn't
provide any proof. But since we keep on hearing about
(09:54):
the allegations of cheating. How rampant is it and how
tough is it or easy is it? Right?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
You know, one of the reasons why Hans Nieman has
been accused of cheating is the fact that when he
was much younger, he used to cheat in online games
and he was called doing it. So that gives you
a little bit of a glimpse into how rampant it
can be and how easy it can also be to cheat.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
In online games.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right now, you have all sorts of measures, like you know,
these guys have a program called Procter that all the
elite players have on their laptops.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
It's like a browser window. You go into that browser window,
you play.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Chess like you played games on chess dot Com on
that so that kind of makes it slightly difficult. Then
there are two or three cameras in the same room,
one pointed at your face, one pointed from behind to
see if you have two three screens open in front
of you.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Things like that.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Right, So there are all of these measures. But to
answer how easy it can be, see if you're going
in an over the board chess tournament, there are all
these measures that happen where you have the airport's security
while ive wanting that is there that every player undergoes
once you're inside. There are certain tournaments where they also
(11:05):
check your ears to see if you have those invisible
microphones put in your ear. If you're at a World Championship,
you go into a completely soundproofd glass cage so that
you can't hear anything, you can't see outside, you can't
make eye contact with any fans. Then most of these
tournaments that happen over the board, they are all replayed
to the world with a fifteen minute delay, right, So
(11:27):
if a chess player has somebody who's sitting at home
and helping them, they will only see the moves fifteen
minutes after they've been made, which is kind of a
dead giveaway. Having said that, in the past, there have
been some really audacious ways of cheating, like there have
been players trying to cheat with Bluetooth devices under their
hats and things like that. There was a very famous
(11:48):
case in twenty ten where you had the French Olympiad
chess team where the captain would tell indicate to a
player which piece to move simply by where he was
standing in front of him, right, and you know Magnus
Culson has spoken about is that at his level, he
does not even need for somebody to tell him every
single move. He just needs maybe one critical move or
(12:12):
just one critical piece on some move at a critical
stage to be related to him for him to be unbeatable.
Like for a Magnus culture, you won't have to tell
him all the fifty moves that he plays. You just
have to tell him one critical move in a position
that he can't work out himself. Right, So it's kind
of that easy online also, I mean, there are all
(12:33):
sorts of checks and balances that are put in place,
but obviously no system is perfect. You can still find
a loophole if you are so inclined. And you know,
usually chess dot com to be fair, Like I am
somebody who's a complete amateur when it comes to Chess
dot com games, but almost every three months, every four months,
(12:53):
I get a message saying that the game you played
against one of your opponents two months back was flagged
for fair play violations.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So the rival's.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Account has been banned, and you've been given some rating
bump that you lost for losing to him. Right, So
those sorts of things keep happening, which is also indicator
that cheating in chess might be much more rampant than.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
We think it's insant. Mine do we know, like, if
Krumnik has alleged not Sky of cheating, what did he
base it on exactly? Did he see anything Kata exactly?
Speaker 4 (13:26):
So the first instant came in October twenty twenty four
where he came up with the post trying to compare
Daniel Nanderiski's games from Chess dot COM's weekly event called
Title Tuesday, and in Title Tuesday he came up with
a theory that Daniel Landrinsky's average rating for ten games
(13:48):
was ninety plus and that has never happened in the
case of Magnus Caulsen. So basically he was trying to
compare those two things and said that his results are
just two way too good to be true. This was
first indicator. After that, there were many cases where he
never tried to like never said his name, but used
to interact with other accounts where one of the guys
(14:10):
alleged Dallin Narduski to have a second computer on his
screen while playing an online game. And this is where
for the first time Kramnik actually mentioned his name and
said that this is cheating and if chess dot com
is trying to save him, the whole system and all
those things came into Kramnick's mind. So Kramnik believed and
was sure that Narduitski was a bonafide cheater according to him,
(14:33):
and everywhere he played, he was cheating. And after that
he made a series of continuous tweets where he was
just trying to analyze and compare his on the board
tournament and on and play. So if you ask me
why he was behind Nadiski so much, I'll give you
what Nihal told me. Nihal said that Nihal was also
actually accused of cheating from Kramnik. But again in Nihal's case,
(14:55):
he used to play a lot of on the board event.
Harns also is playing a lot of on the board
event and that's how he's been able to, you know,
put a whitewash to his face. So in this case,
Nadski wasn't a very avid on the board player. He
used to spend a lot of time playing online chess,
and that's why he was not able to clarify his stunts.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Ever right on it just a couple of things before
we wrap this episode. What is the issue with Krumnik?
I was just before starting the recording for this podcast,
I was reading this tweet by Wesley So, the Filipino
American Grandmaster, and I found it particularly interesting his last
(15:34):
few statements where he's telling Crumnik, maybe it's not too
late to just top and fix slash, make things better.
You are a living legend to this game. The chess
world is not your enemy. So why is Crumnick right
now seen as this evil guy or the guy who
thinks that the whole world is his enemy?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Mere he is absolutely convinced that, you know, there is
rampant cheating in chess and especially in online chairs, and
you know, to be fair to him, he's not the
only one. You've had players like Manus Culture, and you
had players like Ikunakamura, all of whom have had these
suspicions about other players.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, So, every time there is.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
A player who shows some sort of spike in their
in game rating, these guys will think that, Okay, there
is something suspicious. He's getting help all of that because
it is so easy to cheat sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Right, So it's basically like you know, in athletics or
in Olympic sports. We see the anti doping guys tracking
a particular athlete and the moment they see a bump
in the performance, they go and target test that person
for banned substances. It's kind of similar to that, I.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Feel absolutely and you know, mere the post that you
spoke about from Wesley, so.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
He's not the first one.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Just a few months back, we've had a very very
emotional letter written by Levon Aronian, who considers Kramnik as
one of his chest parents. Aronian is somebody who's worked
extensively with Kramnik and has gotten a lot of help
from him, but even he has been exasperated by the
level of these insinuations that he can't actually prove. So
(17:07):
he's like one of those as I think. You know,
Kramnik Aronian mentioned that, you know, he'd almost gotten like
a fanatical approach. You know, he was kind of bullying people.
And you know, Kramnik himself has been accused of cheating
by the way. In the World Championship against topal Of,
Kramnik was the one who was on the receiving end
(17:28):
of uh these cheating allegations from his opponent where they
had to shut down a whole toilet because they accused
him of going to the toilet too many times and
then coming and playing great games.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
And all of that.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Right, so all of this there is a background to it.
Right now, what he's doing is thinking that everybody is
suspicious although he can't prove it. He literally can't prove it. It's insane. So,
I mean, just to end this mile, uh, where is
he right now?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
The International Chess Federation has stepped in and they're doing
some sort of inquiry and players have asked that, you know,
at least they stopped Kramnik from quote unquote preventing Kramnik
from destroying mental health of other players, But where exactly
are we in terms of this particular case.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Yeah, So Freede has come up and said the FIER
president Andre Drokovich said that FIDE is going to look
at and probe in whatever comments that has been made
from Kramnik. So that was Freday's stance in this response.
Kramnik has also, you know, come up with his legal
team and has challenged Freede to retract what they have said.
(18:34):
And uh, you know, Kramnik has actually challenged Freede to
bring up the exact quote where he's guilty. Otherwise it
all will be subject to legal action, is what he says.
Apart from that, we also have some update regarding what
has happened on the night of October seventeenth. So the
local police has confirmed to the Daily Mail that there
(18:54):
was actually no foul play involved, which was one of
the first reactions from Kramnik, that there could possibly be
some foul play involves in money and all those things
are involved there as well. However, police has also said
that there could be possible suicide or possible overdose, so
they have not gone aside of that, they are actually
(19:15):
waiting for the toxicology report to come up with the
concrete evidence of what exactly happened that day. Apart from that,
the Charlotte Chess Center where he used to stay and
stream and you know, be the trainer at that center
in Charlotte. So the Charlotte Chess Center has confirmed that
he was found actually conscious on the night of seventeen,
(19:35):
that is Sunday by the club founder Peter Giantos and
one of his really good friend Alexander Botanik. So he
was found conscious before his death and after that his
death was confirmed. So these are the few updates which
we have in this ongoing issue, and we'll wait for
more confirmation as we go ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
My ALCOA just to understand, you know, what can a
fee they even do, Like you know, they've obviously referred
as case to the ethics committee. The ethics committee will
investigate it, and usually for the Feedday Ethics Committee, one
of the things they can do is ban the player.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Kramnik is not an active player.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
The other thing that can happen is chess dot com
will again ban his account.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Which they've done multiple times.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Right, I mean, is there anything that they can do
against Kramnik that will actually kind of hurt him because
you can't stop him from tweeting, Like Feedday can't stop
him from tweeting, neither can chess dot com. And see
right now, whatever we are seeing from Kramnik, we know
for a fact that even the death of this guy
has not kind of dulled his enthusiasm for the crusade
(20:36):
that he's on, because he's already now insinuating that there is,
as you said, there there are some other shady things
happening in the background.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
He's posted things like don't do.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Drugs, right, So what exactly can feed Day or feed
Day's Ethics committee or chess dot Com even do in
this case.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yes, interesting question, even this is what I've asked too
many players, and Nihal himself said that he actually is
not sure that what can be done to stop a
guy like Kramnik who is convinced that there is something
wrong and he is behind all the players. But there
is a growing voice against Kramnik which says that strip
off his titles, strip off his world championship title, and
(21:16):
those sort of things which can maybe prevent of what
is happening. But I'm pretty sure that this is not
going to stop Kramnik at all. As you've said that
fe Day, the most they can do is to consult
the ethics Committee. They've also established an anti Cheating committee
in twenty thirteen regarding that, so they will have to
also consult with like they have to come to a
(21:37):
middle ground where they need to consult Kramnik just to
stop him. But as of now, I'm pretty sure there
is nothing that can stop Kramnik, even if death can't
stop him.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Right, we will follow this case and see how it
shapes up what happens if at all Kramnik is punished
for his comments and his reactions to the death of
our young grandmaster me.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
You know that open letter that I spoke to by
levon or Onion earlier this year that had a brilliant
line that kind of sums up what the rest of
the chess world now thinks about Kramnik. It says, you
think you are saving chess from cheaters, but most of
us see you as a guy with the hammer who thinks.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Everything is a nail. And I think that kind.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Of sums up what the rest of the chessworld looks
at Kramnik and now feels.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
That kind of neatly sums up the whole issue right now.
And I was trying to understand why Kramnik has become
an issue, and that's some sit up. I'm afraid. That's
so all the time we have for this week's episode
of Game Time, Thank you Mine, thank you Ahmed, and
thank you guys for listening. We will be back with
a new episode next week.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
You were listening to Express Sports by the Indian Express.
This week's show was edited and mixed by and produced
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(23:09):
and write to us at podcasts at Indenexpress dot com
Hello, and welcome to Express Sports podcast. You're listening to
Game Time with Mimihi Vasavda. In the house as always
is Ahmed Kamat and making his pot debut this week
is Mayan Chaudhry. The two Indian Express chess experts a
year to break down and talk about the untimely death
of American grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky last Monday. The twenty nine
(00:27):
year old American chess player died in circumstances that aren't
yet completely known. However, what it did was put spotlight
on the less spoken about side of chess, the cheating
sign and it also put the former world champion Vladimir
Krumnik in the talk. Ahmit, let's begin with you. Why
don't you kind of give an explainer of everything that's
(00:49):
gone on in the last week or so and put
into a perspective.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
All right, me, but before we come to the Naroditsky
incident itself, I think we should just talk about just
this undercurrent for cynicism and you know, this whole air
of not trusting other players in the sport that is
very peculiar to chess. You know, you have sports like
cycling where there is a whole circle of cheating, doping,
(01:15):
all of that that happens. But even there, the cynicism,
the paranoia that exists in chess, you don't see that there.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Players don't walk around.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Accusing each other of, you know, being cheaters and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
That is very peculiar to chess.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And chess is one of those sports where every single person,
maybe not the Indian players, but then most other players
are very very open to flinging allegations even though they
cannot back it up right. Just to give an perspective
for Indian listeners, if you look at a sport like cricket,
as soon as you start talking about match fixing, spot fixing,
(01:49):
all the former players current players would just clam up.
They will not say anything. You talk about cheating. In chess,
every single chess.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Player will probably have an opinion.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Every single chest player will also probably take us and
say that, you know, I think this guy is a cheater.
And just to elaborate on why this is such a
complex thing, just look at Magnus Skulson. The most famous
case of cheating accusation that kind of never went anywhere
was by Magnus Culson on Hans Nieman in twenty twenty two,
he could not prove it right, which led to one
(02:18):
hundred million dollar quote. This was settled out of court.
These players still don't trust each other. Right after that,
in September twenty twenty three, Vladimir Kramnik, who's the guy
who has been slammed by everybody for the Daniel laddits
Kid death. He was the one who basically also had
some sharp things to say about Hans Nieman. He in fact,
(02:38):
in an online game right after he had lost, he
actually allowed Hans Neeman to checkmate him by like basically
opening up his pieces, and it was Hans Nieman who
basically walked away. He resigned and walked away because he
realized what Kramnik was trying to do.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Right, So if you look at now, Kramnik is the
guy who was actually working with Hans Niemann as a coach.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So you have all of these complicated underlying things, right.
Hikaru Nakamura is somebody who has constantly gone into like
not constantly, but he has been accused of going into
players like Arjun Ergasi is DMS and accusing him of
being a cheater, and recently at the Global Chess League draft.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Hikaru was the one who was trying to.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Push his team to get ar June Rgas on his
team because he was like, that guy has a lot
of potential. So it's very complicated. Only with this case
in particular, because you asked me about this case, it
did take a tragic turn because for the last few
years L. W. Kramnik has been talking at length about
So Kramnik's somebody whose opinion carries a lot of weight
(03:42):
because he's a former world champion.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
There have only been eighteen world champions, and.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Kramnik is somebody who likes to talk about cheating in
online chess, and there is a very gray area that
he walks when he accuses people.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Right, he doesn't exactly say that this guy is a cheater,
but he will say that his.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Results are interesting, you know, which has now become a
universally understood code for he thinks that this guy is
up to and he's done that with Naroditsky a whole lot.
Narudizsky has come out on multiple podcasts before his untimely death.
He's come out on multiple podcasts, including his own streams,
and started talking about how much of a mental told
these accusations were taking He's spoken about, you know, every
(04:23):
time I start to do well, people will think that
he's probably getting some help from somewhere.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
So, you know, me, just accusations of cheating.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Or players accusing each other of cheating has gone on
for way too long.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
There's not much that feede can do in a sense.
But yeah, now I think there.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Is a case that Freda is trying to make against
Vladimir Kramnik and pull him in because he's accused multiple
players of doing this. It's not just Naroditsky is also accused.
David Nawara, who also has spoken about his mental struggles,
is also accused Jose Martinez Alcantra of cheating without ever
actually giving any evidence rather than some statistical things that
they're not really a smoking gun.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
You know, right, So at this point, if you can
come in and just kind of give a sense of
who Naritski is and why has this blown up into
such a big issue, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
May Before we start on who Narylski was, it's important
to understand how he was as a person. I mean,
obviously his death has created a spark where lots of
you know, top players, as you know, have come and
spoken in his favor and to understand his background. Obviously,
he was one of the top players from America, not
(05:33):
the elite of elites, but he has been there in
the top two hundreds for a long time. He was
actually one of the most famous streamers commentator. He actually
also used to write for New York Times as well,
and a very very active player as far as on
inches was concerned. He had played over three thousand games
with Hikarua, around twenty two hundred games with Nihal Sarin.
(05:55):
So these were the credentials he had, and no one
had ever expected that this was the sudden end we
will have for a guy like Narrensky.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
And what exactly did Krumnik say after his passing away,
because that also has kind of put Krumnik in the dock, right.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah, it's again. As Amith has mentioned, Kramnik has a
very peculiar way of you know, insinuation. He never targets anyone,
so his insignation follows a very strategic pattern where he
tries to, you know, bring out his own analytical findings,
try to bring out his own set of numbers, and
you know, actively engages with the comments in his own
(06:35):
Twitter post beat his supporters or detractors, but these are
the things which he tries to enforce and allege that
a player is kind of cheating, So he never uses
the name. He rarely uses anyone's name, but he tries
to portray that someone's result is just too good to
be proved. So if you look at what sort of
tweets Kramnik was doing just two days before Nalawski, that
(06:57):
was also very interesting to follow. He was following one
of the few of the last streams of nar Nariski
used to stream on platform Twitch, and he noticed that
something is not right, and he also mentioned that on
his social media that he feels that something is not right.
Perhaps the reason could be that he was kicked out
from chess dot com and a freestyle chess commu interestint.
(07:20):
This was Kramnik's observation. He also mentioned, actually rather hinted
at a potential substance use because on his final stream
on Twitch that happened on October seventeenth, that was Sunday,
Nariski actually dozed off like a couple of times in
his stream where he also mentioned about how these Kramnik
stuff has lingering effect on him. Every time he starts
(07:41):
to do well, people will question him and all those things.
So these were the build up which actually happened at
the moment he died. Understandably, people started questioning Kramnik because
he was the reason. People thought that he is the
reason why narisky mental health was deteriorating. And Narriski also
opened up quite a lot of time about how these
affected his mental health. So when everything happened, I saw
(08:04):
a couple of teet from Nihal Serene. So the Indian
Grandmaster actually never met Narrowiski and he had played around
two thousan one hundred game on chess dot com alone.
So when I spoke to him, Nihal said that Nihal
was the last guy who played against Naradisky on seventeenth
of October, and after that there is no active games
from Narediski. So this has deeply painted And yeah, the
(08:27):
way Nihal spoke to me, it was actually shocking to
hear because Nihal is someone who never really you know,
opens up, He keeps whatever there is in his mind.
And a guy who rarely speaks for two three minutes
has opened up for nearly an hour and spoke at
Lens what he feels about Kramnik. He actually directly made
Kramnik the responsible. He actually said that Kramnik, although is
(08:51):
a very influential person, a former world champion, the biggest
name in chess perhaps, but he has taken away from
chess a lot more than he has given into this community.
This is Nial's word where he mentioned Kramnik to be
responsible for what happened to Narodiski. And this is a
big statement.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Right, just I mean, the whole issue, right, It reflects
on so many things. We focus so much on the
boom of chess, especially online chess. We've spoken so much
about that, and Torsa, like you said, this is like
the darker side of it, beyond the value of the
chess world, which we don't really kind of look at
(09:31):
very closely or investigate that much. In a way, this
tragic concident has shed some light on it, but kind
of put it in perspective how easy or tough is
it to cheat an online chess I mean, all the
allegations against nowdred Skia side, the basic thing here is
that he was accused of cheating by someone who couldn't
provide any proof. But since we keep on hearing about
(09:54):
the allegations of cheating. How rampant is it and how
tough is it or easy is it? Right?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
You know, one of the reasons why Hans Nieman has
been accused of cheating is the fact that when he
was much younger, he used to cheat in online games
and he was called doing it. So that gives you
a little bit of a glimpse into how rampant it
can be and how easy it can also be to cheat.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
In online games.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right now, you have all sorts of measures, like you know,
these guys have a program called Procter that all the
elite players have on their laptops.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
It's like a browser window. You go into that browser window,
you play.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Chess like you played games on chess dot Com on
that so that kind of makes it slightly difficult. Then
there are two or three cameras in the same room,
one pointed at your face, one pointed from behind to
see if you have two three screens open in front
of you.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Things like that.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Right, So there are all of these measures. But to
answer how easy it can be, see if you're going
in an over the board chess tournament, there are all
these measures that happen where you have the airport's security
while ive wanting that is there that every player undergoes
once you're inside. There are certain tournaments where they also
(11:05):
check your ears to see if you have those invisible
microphones put in your ear. If you're at a World Championship,
you go into a completely soundproofd glass cage so that
you can't hear anything, you can't see outside, you can't
make eye contact with any fans. Then most of these
tournaments that happen over the board, they are all replayed
to the world with a fifteen minute delay, right, So
(11:27):
if a chess player has somebody who's sitting at home
and helping them, they will only see the moves fifteen
minutes after they've been made, which is kind of a
dead giveaway. Having said that, in the past, there have
been some really audacious ways of cheating, like there have
been players trying to cheat with Bluetooth devices under their
hats and things like that. There was a very famous
(11:48):
case in twenty ten where you had the French Olympiad
chess team where the captain would tell indicate to a
player which piece to move simply by where he was
standing in front of him, right, and you know Magnus
Culson has spoken about is that at his level, he
does not even need for somebody to tell him every
single move. He just needs maybe one critical move or
(12:12):
just one critical piece on some move at a critical
stage to be related to him for him to be unbeatable.
Like for a Magnus culture, you won't have to tell
him all the fifty moves that he plays. You just
have to tell him one critical move in a position
that he can't work out himself. Right, So it's kind
of that easy online also, I mean, there are all
(12:33):
sorts of checks and balances that are put in place,
but obviously no system is perfect. You can still find
a loophole if you are so inclined. And you know,
usually chess dot com to be fair, Like I am
somebody who's a complete amateur when it comes to Chess
dot com games, but almost every three months, every four months,
(12:53):
I get a message saying that the game you played
against one of your opponents two months back was flagged
for fair play violations.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So the rival's.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Account has been banned, and you've been given some rating
bump that you lost for losing to him. Right, So
those sorts of things keep happening, which is also indicator
that cheating in chess might be much more rampant than.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
We think it's insant. Mine do we know, like, if
Krumnik has alleged not Sky of cheating, what did he
base it on exactly? Did he see anything Kata exactly?
Speaker 4 (13:26):
So the first instant came in October twenty twenty four
where he came up with the post trying to compare
Daniel Nanderiski's games from Chess dot COM's weekly event called
Title Tuesday, and in Title Tuesday he came up with
a theory that Daniel Landrinsky's average rating for ten games
(13:48):
was ninety plus and that has never happened in the
case of Magnus Caulsen. So basically he was trying to
compare those two things and said that his results are
just two way too good to be true. This was
first indicator. After that, there were many cases where he
never tried to like never said his name, but used
to interact with other accounts where one of the guys
(14:10):
alleged Dallin Narduski to have a second computer on his
screen while playing an online game. And this is where
for the first time Kramnik actually mentioned his name and
said that this is cheating and if chess dot com
is trying to save him, the whole system and all
those things came into Kramnick's mind. So Kramnik believed and
was sure that Narduitski was a bonafide cheater according to him,
(14:33):
and everywhere he played, he was cheating. And after that
he made a series of continuous tweets where he was
just trying to analyze and compare his on the board
tournament and on and play. So if you ask me
why he was behind Nadiski so much, I'll give you
what Nihal told me. Nihal said that Nihal was also
actually accused of cheating from Kramnik. But again in Nihal's case,
(14:55):
he used to play a lot of on the board event.
Harns also is playing a lot of on the board
event and that's how he's been able to, you know,
put a whitewash to his face. So in this case,
Nadski wasn't a very avid on the board player. He
used to spend a lot of time playing online chess,
and that's why he was not able to clarify his stunts.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Ever right on it just a couple of things before
we wrap this episode. What is the issue with Krumnik?
I was just before starting the recording for this podcast,
I was reading this tweet by Wesley So, the Filipino
American Grandmaster, and I found it particularly interesting his last
(15:34):
few statements where he's telling Crumnik, maybe it's not too
late to just top and fix slash, make things better.
You are a living legend to this game. The chess
world is not your enemy. So why is Crumnick right
now seen as this evil guy or the guy who
thinks that the whole world is his enemy?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Mere he is absolutely convinced that, you know, there is
rampant cheating in chess and especially in online chairs, and
you know, to be fair to him, he's not the
only one. You've had players like Manus Culture, and you
had players like Ikunakamura, all of whom have had these
suspicions about other players.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, So, every time there is.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
A player who shows some sort of spike in their
in game rating, these guys will think that, Okay, there
is something suspicious. He's getting help all of that because
it is so easy to cheat sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Right, So it's basically like you know, in athletics or
in Olympic sports. We see the anti doping guys tracking
a particular athlete and the moment they see a bump
in the performance, they go and target test that person
for banned substances. It's kind of similar to that, I.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Feel absolutely and you know, mere the post that you
spoke about from Wesley, so.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
He's not the first one.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Just a few months back, we've had a very very
emotional letter written by Levon Aronian, who considers Kramnik as
one of his chest parents. Aronian is somebody who's worked
extensively with Kramnik and has gotten a lot of help
from him, but even he has been exasperated by the
level of these insinuations that he can't actually prove. So
(17:07):
he's like one of those as I think. You know,
Kramnik Aronian mentioned that, you know, he'd almost gotten like
a fanatical approach. You know, he was kind of bullying people.
And you know, Kramnik himself has been accused of cheating
by the way. In the World Championship against topal Of,
Kramnik was the one who was on the receiving end
(17:28):
of uh these cheating allegations from his opponent where they
had to shut down a whole toilet because they accused
him of going to the toilet too many times and
then coming and playing great games.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
And all of that.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Right, so all of this there is a background to it.
Right now, what he's doing is thinking that everybody is
suspicious although he can't prove it. He literally can't prove it. It's insane. So,
I mean, just to end this mile, uh, where is
he right now?
Speaker 1 (17:53):
The International Chess Federation has stepped in and they're doing
some sort of inquiry and players have asked that, you know,
at least they stopped Kramnik from quote unquote preventing Kramnik
from destroying mental health of other players, But where exactly
are we in terms of this particular case.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Yeah, So Freede has come up and said the FIER
president Andre Drokovich said that FIDE is going to look
at and probe in whatever comments that has been made
from Kramnik. So that was Freday's stance in this response.
Kramnik has also, you know, come up with his legal
team and has challenged Freede to retract what they have said.
(18:34):
And uh, you know, Kramnik has actually challenged Freede to
bring up the exact quote where he's guilty. Otherwise it
all will be subject to legal action, is what he says.
Apart from that, we also have some update regarding what
has happened on the night of October seventeenth. So the
local police has confirmed to the Daily Mail that there
(18:54):
was actually no foul play involved, which was one of
the first reactions from Kramnik, that there could possibly be
some foul play involves in money and all those things
are involved there as well. However, police has also said
that there could be possible suicide or possible overdose, so
they have not gone aside of that, they are actually
(19:15):
waiting for the toxicology report to come up with the
concrete evidence of what exactly happened that day. Apart from that,
the Charlotte Chess Center where he used to stay and
stream and you know, be the trainer at that center
in Charlotte. So the Charlotte Chess Center has confirmed that
he was found actually conscious on the night of seventeen,
(19:35):
that is Sunday by the club founder Peter Giantos and
one of his really good friend Alexander Botanik. So he
was found conscious before his death and after that his
death was confirmed. So these are the few updates which
we have in this ongoing issue, and we'll wait for
more confirmation as we go ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
My ALCOA just to understand, you know, what can a
fee they even do, Like you know, they've obviously referred
as case to the ethics committee. The ethics committee will
investigate it, and usually for the Feedday Ethics Committee, one
of the things they can do is ban the player.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Kramnik is not an active player.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
The other thing that can happen is chess dot com
will again ban his account.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Which they've done multiple times.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Right, I mean, is there anything that they can do
against Kramnik that will actually kind of hurt him because
you can't stop him from tweeting, Like Feedday can't stop
him from tweeting, neither can chess dot com. And see
right now, whatever we are seeing from Kramnik, we know
for a fact that even the death of this guy
has not kind of dulled his enthusiasm for the crusade
(20:36):
that he's on, because he's already now insinuating that there is,
as you said, there there are some other shady things
happening in the background.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
He's posted things like don't do.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Drugs, right, So what exactly can feed Day or feed
Day's Ethics committee or chess dot Com even do in
this case.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yes, interesting question, even this is what I've asked too
many players, and Nihal himself said that he actually is
not sure that what can be done to stop a
guy like Kramnik who is convinced that there is something
wrong and he is behind all the players. But there
is a growing voice against Kramnik which says that strip
off his titles, strip off his world championship title, and
(21:16):
those sort of things which can maybe prevent of what
is happening. But I'm pretty sure that this is not
going to stop Kramnik at all. As you've said that
fe Day, the most they can do is to consult
the ethics Committee. They've also established an anti Cheating committee
in twenty thirteen regarding that, so they will have to
also consult with like they have to come to a
(21:37):
middle ground where they need to consult Kramnik just to
stop him. But as of now, I'm pretty sure there
is nothing that can stop Kramnik, even if death can't
stop him.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Right, we will follow this case and see how it
shapes up what happens if at all Kramnik is punished
for his comments and his reactions to the death of
our young grandmaster me.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
You know that open letter that I spoke to by
levon or Onion earlier this year that had a brilliant
line that kind of sums up what the rest of
the chess world now thinks about Kramnik. It says, you
think you are saving chess from cheaters, but most of
us see you as a guy with the hammer who thinks.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Everything is a nail. And I think that kind.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Of sums up what the rest of the chessworld looks
at Kramnik and now feels.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
That kind of neatly sums up the whole issue right now.
And I was trying to understand why Kramnik has become
an issue, and that's some sit up. I'm afraid. That's
so all the time we have for this week's episode
of Game Time, Thank you Mine, thank you Ahmed, and
thank you guys for listening. We will be back with
a new episode next week.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
You were listening to Express Sports by the Indian Express.
This week's show was edited and mixed by and produced
by Meshashan Marker. If you like the show, then do
subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. You can
also recommend the show to someone you think we'll like it,
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It's the best way for people to get to know
about us. You can also tweet us at Express Podcasts
(23:09):
and write to us at podcasts at Indenexpress dot com
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