In the world of chess, there is a conflict between former world champion Vladimir Kramnik and Hikaru Nakamura, a grandmaster and Twitch streamer. Kramnik hints in a blog that Nakamura cheated. The chess platform Chess.com intervenes.
What does Kramnik say? The Russian Vladimir Kramnik (48) became world champion in 2000 when he defeated Garry Kasparov, but lost the title in 2007 to Viswanathan Anand.
- In November, Kramnik stated on his blog on Chess.com that a player had won 45.5 out of 46 consecutive blitz games against strong competition. This corresponds to a rating of 3,600 – everyone should find it “Interesting”.
- This was clearly directed against Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura, who achieved such a performance.
- As a result, Kramnik’s accusations escalated further, and he called for the “administration of the platform” to conduct a thorough investigation of Nakamura’s games. Kramnik deemed his performances “not corresponding to Nakamura’s rating”. He plays better than his ranking suggests.
The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” made chess cool:
Chess.com considers Kramnik’s accusations unfounded, sanctions him
Here is the result: The platform Chess.com has apparently complied with the request for an investigation, but the outcome is likely to be unsatisfactory for Kramnik.
For on Christmas, December 24, Chess.com came to the decision that Kramnik’s accusations were unfounded and subsequently closed Kramnik’s blog, removing his ability to write on the platform. However, he could still privately contact Chess.com, for example via email, to discuss his suspicions:
“The escalating attacks by Grandmaster Kramnik against some of the most respected members of the chess community and against some of the most promising young talents can no longer be ignored. As a consequence, we have closed Grandmaster Kramnik’s blog and muted his account.”
Looks like Kramnik has checkmated himself here.
Hikaru Nakamura, known as “GMHikaru”, is the most successful Twitch streamer in chess. On average, about 11,000 people watch him:
