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International chess federation sanctions Kramnik
- Arainach 3mo agoFor those who don't follow chess, what were the allegations? This article is intentionally vague on all the details.
- moomin 3mo agoI’m not a follower either, but inference from the article tells me: Krammik has come up with some sort of cheat detection method, has loudly accused some others of cheating, and FIDE are both unconvinced of the truth of the allegations and very unhappy he didn’t do this through proper channels. He also doesn’t appear to have co-operated with the investigation.
- arvyy 3mo agoone of the players he persistently harassed, Daniel Naroditsky, ended up dying, which surely gave an extra push
- rendall 3mo agoHis "cheat detection method" mostly consisted of playing someone online and then reporting them for cheating if he lost.
- traes 3mo agoHere's a fun compilation of him getting cooked by 12 year olds and then immediately reporting them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg5LSOoYoPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg5LSOoYoPs
- lvRa 3mo agoHe posted mathematically unsound methods that accused online players of cheating. Including Naroditsky, who is no longer with us (draw your own conclusions). This is a case of a Kramnik being a crank whom most people did not take seriously, but he still had an impact on the victims. Fro Kramnik this is a mild penalty.
- kriro 3mo agoHe basically accused many players of cheating without any real evidence. His proofs are notoriously bad. The most notable examples are Daniel Naroditsky who was under immense psychological stress due to the allegations and died due to an accidental kratom overdose (kratom is used to self-medicate anxiety). Another prominent example are his allegations against Jose Martinez (aka Jospem) which resulted in them playing a grudge match which Jospem won. Kramnik was struggling with the tech in the online portion of the game. Basically he cannot accept that younger players beat him in quick formats and flings around ridiculous stuff. He's also feuding with Hikaru who is obviously really good at blitz.
- prmoustache 3mo agoHow can one cheat in chess?
- Arainach 3mo agoBy using computers.
- prmoustache 3mo agoAren't tournaments either held in person or with at least some judge/referree witnessing both parties?
- Arainach 3mo agoMany games are held online. In person, computers get smaller all the time (and there are bathroom breaks etc.). The history of trying to cheat at chess, casino games, and more with concealed computers is far too large a topic for one reply.
- tetha 3mo agoThat didn't prevent Anna Rudolf being accused that she hid a supercomputer in her lip balm box made of tin sheet metal in 2007 and cheated with it in the bathroom. Some parts of the chess community are very ridiculous.
- ungreased0675 3mo agoThat’s a lot of words to say very little. What is this about?
- adityashankar 3mo agoKramnik has a habit of accusing people of cheating without evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kramnik#Anti-cheating_campaigns_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kramnik#Anti-cheating..., he has also done this to many many individuals without evidence (and cheating is taken very seriously), this is in connection to that - he's being penalized for accusing people (repeatedly) without evidence. Just to be clear – this is an event where he has been doing so repeatedly, accusing people of cheating without evidence in-and-of itself isn't forbidden - since cheating in chess is difficult to verify, it's the manner and fashion to which Kramnik has done this that has led to his suspension
- prerok 3mo agoThank you for the link. Chess is very much also a psychological game and that he resorts to such low blows is really petty.
- _factor 3mo agoHe basically pushed a player going through a crisis to suicide with his baseless accusations. Proceeded to make public derogatory remarks right after they passed while the family barely started grieving. This is a slap on the wrist.
- Maxatar 3mo agoKramnik was accused of pushing Naroditsky to suicide and defended himself by saying that it was far more likely that Naroditsky died due to a drug overdose. Toxicology reports later showed that Naroditsky did die due to the combination of an abnormal heartbeat, sarcoidosis and drugs, specifically methamphetamines and kratom. Now if you want to speculate that he took those drugs due to the harassment that's a possibility, but claiming he died due to suicide is entirely unsubstatiated and uncalled for.
- _factor 3mo agoHis final stream is illuminating if you can still find it. He speaks directly about Kramnik who he grew up idolizing right before his friend had to pull him away for erratic behavior. His comments during that stream strongly point to a suicide. Kramnik never let off the accelerator.
- rustystump 3mo agoIt is called for and is substantiated. Should the guy get prosecuted over it? Probably not although a precedent is moving towards pushing and or telling someone to kill them selves constitutes some kind of criminal liability at least in the states. Drug overdoses are so often a method of suicide it is almost laughable to use that as an argument to defend assholery. Some people are psychopaths and Kramnit screams like one. Zero empathy remorse or event the slightest drop of compassion.
- alex1138 3mo agoJust an editorial note here, it's not clear that it was a suicide. The official diagnosis was some heart thing
- manvel_hn 3mo agoSo Kramnik, being a chess player and not a statistician, invented various methods of "detecting" cheating which seemed convincing for for a layman but questionable mathematically. Then he started attacking Daniel, Hikaru and some other players online. This all led to pretty tragic consequences. Kramnik still believes that he's in the right. The only good thing out of this is numerous funny videos by chess players trying to figure out intricacies of statistics and math.
- alex1138 3mo agoNaroditsky played a match against Magnus that he streamed where it ended (this a 1+0 time control; yes you can cheat in bullet but it's clear he wasn't) in a 40-40 tie, this after he lost the first game from being distracted getting his stream set up properly He was one of the world's best bullet and blitz players, it was obvious he was never cheating. Kramnik was apparently one of his heroes. It was despicable behavior
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- IncreasePosts 3mo agoA lot of people imagine chess players to he smart, but there's a video of asking grandmasters very simple (imho) general knowledge questions that they did absolutely abysmally at. It's probably safe to assume that someone who is really good at chess is actually bad at anything that isn't chess
- wongarsu 3mo agoI would call chess players smart in the abstract sense. Playing chess requires both good "compute power", working memory, and long-term memorization. But to become grandmaster you have to dedicate a lot of your life to chess. It's not that these people couldn't know general knowledge or do higher math, they are simply not exposed to it. They are not smart in the sense of a universal genius, because that would require immersing yourself in all the things - the opposite of what a chess grandmaster does
- amrit3128 3mo agoFor anyone new, Kramnik has been accusing players left and right of cheating without any proof. His accusations have done huge harm to the chess community as a whole. Daniel Naroditsky was harrassed so much, that he eventually went into depression and committed suicide. And he had proven ability as one of the best chess players out there, and probably the best chess teacher on YouTube. These are facts. Now onto my probably crazy conspiracy theory: Russian players like Danil, Nepo and Kramnik have accused American and Indian players baselessly of cheating multiple times over the past few years. They have went to podcasts and implied that their opponents have cheated. Idk if it's some lost national pride in chess or something but accusing others does more harm than good. We've seen how it hurt Hans when he was accused by Magnus of cheating without any evidence. Multiple top level tournaments stopped calling him due to magnus throwing a tantrum cuz he lost.
- EGreg 3mo agoWhat about the famous case of Carlsen claiming that his opponent cheated and even forfeiting to draw attention to it?
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- Maxatar 3mo agoThis is a big part of the problem... Kramnik had been bullying people for years about cheating, including aggressively bullying Daniel Naroditsky, and for the most part the chess community did nothing about it. It would be very hard for people to condemn Kramnik for his cheating accusations all the while chess' top star Carlsen was on a bullying spree of his own against Niemann.
- kelipso 3mo ago> It would be very hard for people to condemn Kramnik for his cheating accusations all the while chess' top star Carlsen was on a bullying spree of his own against Niemann. Doesn’t seem that hard from seeing all the comments here. I make an effort to keep away from chess forums online because of this stuff; most of these people are literally children, like under 14, but you can’t tell online lol.
- cubefox 3mo ago> In addition, the Chamber imposed 12 months of unpaid service for the benefit of the chess community as a supplementary sanction. I wonder how this is enforced.
- shh_labs 3mo agoI would imagine by withholding some privilege until the service has been fulfilled
- adjejmxbdjdn 3mo agoKramnik is an asshole and this action is far too little far too late. His actions have possibly already led to the loss of a life. At the same time, FIDE also needs to look back at the behavior of some of the most powerful people in the sport in the whole Hans saga. What Hans was put through was ridiculous even if all the allegations were true, given how many actions were simply the result of the most powerful player in the sport throwing his weight around. I’m not a fan of Hans but I absolutely admire how he managed to continue and grow his career despite the top 2 biggest individuals in the sport, and a whole other set of powerbrokers (for example, the wealthiest tournament in the Sinquefeld cup) teaming up to destroy his career.
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- zmgsabst 3mo agoHans did plenty to damage his own career - eg, his 2024 ban for trashing a hotel room.
- traes 3mo agoThis is true, but the crushing response to this scandal is clearly disproportionate. Millions of views on videos making crude sexual jokes about a 19 year old is already an incredibly unfortunate situation, and his career got completely halted for years due to (what are now clearly) false accusations.
- alex1138 3mo agoIt should also be said Niemann has also had incredibly good results since the whole thing So it casts doubt on what Magnus said somewhat (Of course, on Rogan, I think, Magnus defended the allegations. And of course he's world's strongest player for a reason. Other young players have beaten himm before such as Esipenko and he never said anything like that)
- traes 3mo ago
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- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3mo agoKramnik undeniably pushed Naroditsky into developing an addiction which ultimately contributed to his death. Whether it was intentional suicide or accidental overdose(both are possible) seems to me to be completely irrelevant. Kramnik engaged in a dedicated bullying and a smear campaign against Danya for a prolonged period, without substantive evidence, and never let up. When Danya explicitly stated in multiple interviews that Kramnik was seriously affecting his mental health, Kramnik persisted in his harassment. When Danya's mental health ultimately led to his death, Kramnik tried to put the blame on everyone but himself, including Danya, his friends and family, even the entire chess community. According to Kramnik, it seems like he is the only one who's completely blameless. It's good that he's being punished, but I think the punishment is too mild. In my opinion he should be stripped of all his titles, including his world titles. The sad fact is that Kramnik is a pathetic narcissist, who because he's a shadow of his former strength, and a slow old man, gets easily beaten in online blitz, and then accuses people of cheating to protect his wounded ego, because he wants to pretend he hasn't declined.
- jamesnorden 3mo ago[flagged]
- zelphirkalt 3mo agoStripping him of his titles doesn't do much good to be honest. In the history books he will still simply be someone who won and became world champion, whether stripped of the title or not. What would do us good, is to realize, that even someone in that position is not necessarily a saint or even a good person. To realize that supposed contrast and keep it in mind would be better for us than stripping him of titles, that he did in fact truly earn. Also it would only give him more ammunition.
- dwa3592 3mo agoFor non-chess players - imagine if Geoffrey hinton used AI detectors (GPT zero, pangram etc) to accuse and punish people of using AI in their writing and bad mouth them publicly. That's what kramnik (former world chess champion) did to Danya and other players. I miss Danya.
- nopinsight 3mo agoTo my knowledge, Pangram has a very low false positive rate approaching zero. (False negative is another matter.) I’m not sure that’s what you want to use as the analogy here? (I don’t know much about this Kramnik situation.)
- TimPC 3mo agoPangram’s market claims are very different from independent validations of the platform. The 99.98% rate is on a toy dataset not resembling reality. Even if 2/10000 is true that’s nowhere near accurate enough to make aggressive accusations that create anxiety at levels people need to medicate with potentially fatal consequences.
- nopinsight 3mo agoSomeone also input lots of pre-GPT texts to Pangram and they were all clear. The point is Kramnik’s claims are much weaker and not comparable.
- Seattle3503 3mo ago> Pangram’s market claims are very different from independent validations of the platform. Do you have a link to independent validations? The ones I found, like an upcoming nber paper confirm the companies claims.
- dwa3592 3mo agohttps://github.com/deepanwadhwa/ai_detector_fails/blob/main/pangram/1_modified_gemini_response.png https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/ai_detector_fails/blob/main/... the text in above is all ai generated. i uploaded a picture of two kittens to gemini and asked it to guess their age. then asked gemini to change the language to of someone who is born in deep Appalachia but has Japanese parents. then asked it to change the bullets to paragraphs written by someone who is talking fro life experience rather than grounded in published science. pangram gave it 100% human generated. go ahead, try it. it boggles me how people believe these ai detectors. if it makes you feel good the original response from gemini gets 100% AI detection and for that I think pangram should get the credit but in practical terms the empty pots in my yard are more useful than pangram at this point.
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- luckysori 3mo agoI am happy about the outcome of this investigation, but I think it's far more important to highlight the other people mentioned in this decision statement. I'm not so familiar with Navara, who I understand was also under a lot of pressure because of this, so I will speak about Daniel and his impact on me. Daniel Naroditsky was one of the most influential figures in chess: arguably the best chess educator on the internet; one of the most talented commentators out there; and an absolute demon at speed chess, who could go toe to toe with the best to ever do it. It's hard to come across someone as passionate, knowledgeable and generous about something as Daniel was about chess. And most importantly he appeared to be such a kind soul. I find it hard to enjoy and engage with chess after his passing. He was the main reason to keep coming back for me. I wholeheartedly recommend every video in his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM.
- Imustaskforhelp 3mo agoRest in peace Daniel Naroditsky.
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- janalsncm 3mo agoCold comfort I would say. We can only wonder if things would be different if this had happened a year earlier.
- daft_pink 3mo agoIs there a summary of what he actually did? Since I didn’t follow the initial news item I feel like we are seeing the result before understanding the problem.
- rob74 3mo agoI find it funny that "échec" also has the meaning of "failure" in French, so FIDE could be read as the "International Failure Federation"...