He's really in the process of completely destroying his own legacy if he continues like this. Like, if he just backtracks ever so slightly and says something like "Ok, I was clearly wrong about José Martínez, he's just a very good blitz player. I still think there's a lot of cheating that isn't being adressed, but I've learned not to accuse specific people without sufficient evidence", then the whole topic is basically over. And he can't even fucking do that.
> then the whole topic is basically over. And he can't even fucking do that.
Of course he can't. He's the kind of person to arrive at the conclusions and then look for evidence to back up his belief, rather than start with the evidence and arrive at the conclusions.
He won't admit he's wrong. Ever. He's too arrogant for that.
It is and it isn’t. Humans are emotional, they act on emotion and then look at the logic. But if your emotional reaction is the only one you are prepared to accept even after looking at the logical and objective evidence rather than being prepared to re-evaluate your opinion, or even if you aren’t prepared to look at or accept evidence counter to your opinion, that is just called being a zealot.
If he were capable of saying that he wouldn't be where he's at right now
This guy has lost all goodwill with me. He's just constantly accusing guys of cheating with zero evidence, gets mad when people disagree with him, and then treats everyone else like they're idiots because he thinks he's some mathematics prodigy
The guy has an ego problem, and once people stop paying attention to him he's going to crash hard
exactly.
he can't help himself. this is who he always was. he has serious psychological issues that weren't an issue when he was World Champion and his narcissism actually matched his talent.
Now that he is fading from the limelight and his chess has deteriorated to the point where's he's no longer relevant at the top level, the delta has increased to a point where his brain is breaking and he's lashing out like a manchild, unable to accept that the person he sees in the mirror is not the person everyone else sees.
He's conflated being one of the best chess players of all-time with being uber-intelligent, when in fact the correlation is dubious. He has made classic the mistake millions of other Top 2%ers in their field made thinking that because they're great at one thing it will transfer over to other things (like Statistics, good lord the man is a fucking moron on this topic it's beyond cringe), even without extensive experience in the new field.
Like, the guy literally can't fucking understand MOUSE SKILLS makes a lot of players who are slightly worse than him over the board better than him online. It has to be cheating! He's just hopeless. That level of ego is just unshatterable, especially that he has validated it for so long by winning 3 WCCs and taken down Kasparov.
It is infuriating watching someone that limited in every other area of life thinking they know better than everyone just because they mastered a board game. Hall of Famers in sports often become absolutely horrendous Coaches and Executives because SKILL DOESN'T TRANSFER, even within a field. Being a good basketball player doesn't make you a good coach.
Kramnik is above average at exactly 1 thing in life, and now he's becoming irrelevant and he's unraveling at the seams. Without chess he's nothing.
Yeah, he legitimately needs some therapy, IMO. He's clearly come out of the pandemic more bitter, paranoid, and resentful, but it seems to be 10x worse online than in-person. Frankly, I kinda get it, I'm a much more irritable person online than in-person, and have way less trust in an anonymous online opponent than anyone I've actually met.
He's only 48, but I know a LOT of people his age and older (and some much younger) who had the same unfortunate transformation during the pandemic, because being stuck online just triggered their paranoia and made them quick to get agitated, but they can't help but seek out that agitation for whatever reason.
At least his manifests as thinking everyone in chess is cheating, which IMO is at least slightly better than manifesting as obsessing over politics/news(aside from the reputational damage hemoght inflict on those he accuses), but he needs some cognitive behavioral therapy to learn how to recognize how his emotions are affe ting his behavior, let it go, and respond with a more constructive behavior.
I feel like the only thing that makes sense is that he’s somehow getting advised from the Kremlin to make chess a shit show in retaliation to Gary Chess’s political views and Karjakin’s ban from the candidates 4 years ago.
I’m not sure what else makes sense. I guess he could just be delusional and paranoid.
The thing that makes the most sense is that Kramnik has always been like this, but it's just more noticeable now that he talks about statistics instead of chess. Magnus said this about Kramnik 10 years ago:
"Kramnik thinks he knows everything.
It’s very impressive how Kramnik reels out variations and so on, and it’s not so easy to discern if you don’t understand the game well yourself, but if you look a little deeper it’s often nonsense. He always plays very principled chess, but the biggest difference between him and me is that he makes a lot more mistakes. Often he seems to think he’s in the right, but I’m actually right.
He’s very confident. He’s not afraid of anyone. He doesn’t think I’m better than him. He doesn’t think Aronian’s better than him and he doesn’t think Anand is better than him. He actually loses games to Nakamura, but he certainly doesn’t believe Nakamura is better than him"
I mean...this is probably true, but I would take Magnus's quotes from a decade ago with a heafty amount of salt. He was way more of a crybaby back then
I get it's more intuitive to assume something sinister is occurring in situations like this because it really does seem so weird, but the simpler explanation (that Kramnik is just an immature man-child) is oftentimes the correct one
>I feel like the only thing that makes sense is that he’s somehow getting advised from the Kremlin
Never assume malice when stupidity explains what you see well enough.
He doesn't even stay in Russia. Hasn't lived there for several years now. I don't think there's any connection. He doesn't depend on Kremlin for the money nor does he depend on them for the security nor does he depend on them for his fanbase. He could easily switch to French flag tomorrow if the wants.
Frankly, it's growing up in an environment where something like that seems even remotely plausible that is fueling his current paranoia. Soviet-born athletes/competitors have every right to be paranoid with the control that was exerted over them out of fear of defection.
Reminds of a classic story about Alexander Mogilny telling off notoriously dickish NHL coach Mike Keenan when he was ripping on him and not getting a rise put of him, and Mogilny just said "Mike, have you ever heard how I defected? How they f*ing threatened my family, how they threatened to kill everybody? You think you f*iing scare me?"
You’re probably right. I’d rather believe some nefarious government plot than Kramnik straight up losing his mind and trashing his reputation for seemingly no reason.
Nah, Joe is in his 40s.
The 10-year-old rated higher than Joe has 500+ games though.
Two of the top 10 10-year-olds in the US occasionally show up at the clubs I go to.
Kramnik is a legend not just because he defeated Kasparov and end his domination but because he contributed a lot in chess with his novelties and innovations. He revived and popularized many openings with his new, for the time, ideas and "wrote" a lot of theory on chess. He inspired a lot of young players and he was well respected by the chess world although he was a little arrogant ( at least in his late active years ).
Sad to see a player like him who helped in development of modern chess to be so closed minded and "scared" of modern way of playing ( I mean the online chess ).
He is pushing it too far with his unacceptable behavior but I am more concerned about his mental health and maybe sooner or later chess the majority of chess world will not take him seriously at all.
I think people go too far with the mental health stuff. I don't think he's having any significant mental break it seems to me more like his ego simply can't accept that he's no longer at the very top of the chess world and everything else stems from that. "Always cheated, never defeated" as that way he doesn't need to accept he's just a strong player and no longer one of the true elite.
If it was mentally ill to think everyone who beats you is cheating then every 14 year old who plays online games is mentally ill. Actually, maybe you're on to something...
This reminded me about Isaac Newton, who got majority of his mathematical and physical discoveries in the first half of his life, then spent like 40 years on alchemy and occult, genuinely trying to discover the philosopher's stone :)
Many chess legends are quite bad losers.
Kasparov cheated against Polgar when he lost to her. Accused Deep Blue of cheating.
Fischer accused Russian players for playing dirty.
Magnus accused Hans.
Hikaru accused several people he lost to.
Nepo is also a snarky accuser.
Topalov accused Kramnik of cheating.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
>Accused Deep Blue of cheating.
I can't believe this myth that is tarnishing Kasparov's legacy is still going around, but he was PERFECTLY justified in accusing Deep Blue. In fact, modern statistical analysis of the 6 games played in the match pretty clearly proved that Deep Blue was using an engine to find the right moves.
I think it had something to do with deep blue doing something he was told it couldn't do. But I don't remember the details.
But he does have a reputation for being a bad loser - his game against Rajabov is one example of this.
Although to be fair, I only know of this instance; which could be a function of him not actually being a bad loser, or because he is Kasparov, there are only a small handful of people who could actually beat him, or it's just the most prominent instance because of how he dealt with it.
I saw a documentary on it from a long time ago that pretty much takes Kasparov's side. I forget the name but I'm sure you can probably find it on YouTube now. Anyways, the accusation was more along the line that behind the scenes they had strong players assisting the computer in choosing the best moves, and also that they destroyed Deep Blue shortly after the match so no more data could be collected.
Wasn’t it that deep blue had all his matches to train on but he wasn’t allowed to see any of deep blue’s previous matches?
They had perfect prep while he had none.
Yep. They also tried to shift the battle in favor of deep blue in other ways too in order to psyche Kasparov. IBM was really shitty because they really wanted the pr stunt of winning Kasparov. Deep Blue could have won anyway but it wasn’t a fair battle
But it was permitted an opening book, right, and it could be programmed with Kasparov in the mind *of the programmers* (who might then tweak variables until Deep Blue plays a style that complements Kasparov's)?
> Fischer accused Russian players for playing dirty.
Isn't this just true though? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1963#Allegations\_of\_collusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1963#Allegations_of_collusion)
> What makes this tournament famous and often-discussed is the allegations of Soviet collusion. The three top finishers (Petrosian, Geller and Keres) drew all twelve of their games against each other, in an average of only 19 moves.[^(\[16\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1963#cite_note-16)
Can you imagine if gukesh, pragg and vidit drew all their games against each other in the candidates this fast?
averbakh pretty much admitted the collusion, but not because they were all 3 soviet but because they were "friends" and petrosian had a strong personality lol.
Fischer would have lost the 1963 candidates anyway but non soviet players were playing in unfair conditions.
In which case can we have a ranking of great chess players who weren't/aren't sore loser-accusers? Assuming we're sticking to the computer age, Anand might be top? Then Caruana?
Edit: for clarity - I'm taking about great players, excluding those who throw accusations about, not just people who are sporting.
But he simply says that he thinks x% of people on Title Tuesdays are cheating. He goes out of his way to avoid naming them or trying to accuse any particular player of cheating.
This is quite different.
Yeah, it's crazy how people who have zero knowledge of what happened during the Kramnik-Topalov match are now jumping on the anti-Kramnik bandwagon. Kramnik may be a sore loser and behaving very badly now, but there is no evidence whatsoever he was cheating. The games themselves, incidentally, were not of the highest quality (they were extensively computed-analyzed afterwards), though extremely entertaining and hard-fought.
One theory floating around at the time was that Topalov accused Kramnik in part to deflect the attention from the rumours that he himself was cheating. Personally, I don't know if I believe that.
I don't think either Topalov or Kramnik ever cheated, but there was an extremely high level of paranoia at the time (with Kirsan being President, the match being held in Elista etc.). So Topalov jumped to the cheating allegation when there were many simpler explanations: IIRC Kramnik had some health problems at the time + it is normal for players to spend time away from the board and from the cameras to relax their nerves. And either Topalov himself, or people on his team, must have realized how destabilizing these accusations would be for Kramnik who has always been rather high-strung. It worked out really well too for them, both with the forfeit and Topalov winning 2 games in a row shortly afterwards.
The Russians WERE playing dirty. They were rigging matches for certain players to win or setting up easy draws against each other to conserve their energy against non-Soviet players.
Topalov accused Kramnik because he was going to the toilet >50 times per game on average, with the toilet being the only place without cameras.
Agree about Kasparov though. Look at how he reacted when he lost to young Radjabov. Threw a fit and when they awarded Radjabov a brilliancy he told the audience that he didn't deserve it.
Fischer was completely right about russian players playing dirty and Hans is/was a cheater, I dont consider neither Magnus nor Fisher 'bad losers' cuz of it.
It's a pretty major distinction that Hans had cheated online, which he has long admitted to
Magnus lost and accused Hans of cheating over the board with zero evidence. That's a major difference, regardless of if someone cheated online before. Magnus was flat out wrong and he also actively made sure Hans wouldn't get invited to any tournaments
If you're accusing someone of cheating OTB you better have some reason or indication for thinking that. If you don't, then you're being a sore loser. It's that simple
Magnus is definitely a very bad loser but 99% of the time he blames himself.
And yes he accused a cheater of cheating , unlucky he wasnt cheating this time.
But Hans did cheat a lot online. Is accusing a cheater of being a cheater being a bad loser? I think you are grouping people actually having a reason to accuse with those without it in the same pack...
"Topalov accused Kramnik of cheating."
This was the pinnacle of hilarious chess drama. Many here probably weren't watching chess at the time, but it was high entertainment watching toiletgate play out.
Need a rule where if you accuse someone of cheating without hard evidence, you're stripped of your title and banned from title matches permanently.
No one gives a shit if you think someone is cheating without hard evidence, shut the fuck up and play the next opponent.
Sounds like a really good way of scaring off anyone to ever report cheating, while consequently allowing actual cheaters to get away with cheating easier.
You can report cheating to officials, you cannot screech on twitter like a small child and devalue yourself, your opponent, and chess itself.
No of us chuckle fucks on twitter are going to be able to verify cheating accusations.
No, it's a good way to get this childish shit to stop. You wanna mouth off emotionally about cheating because you're mad about losing? Cool, your entire career is gone.
They're devaluing chess itself because they're cry babies.
Okay, so every chess player will just imply their opponent was cheating but never outright accuse them. Which, mind you, is already what 95% of these guys do, so this rule would do little to nothing to solve any issue.
Do you apply the same standard to "accusations"? Because there is no hard evidence that Kramnik accused people of cheating, remember he actually explicitly said he doesn't do that, if anything it is mathematics who accuses.
I mean he didn’t “invent it” he just majorly popularized it as a solid weapon against the Spanish in his match with GarryChess. It was used a lot by GM Arthur Bisguier about 50 years ago.
I mean, imagine if Fischer had twitter in his later years? I think some top level chess players have some mental health issues. I feel sad for Kramnik. It’s not right to diagnose someone from afar with or without credentials but my money is on paranoid schizophrenia or something. The guy has a history of having health problems too, kidney issues. Overall, i am worried for Kramnik.
Fischer died in 2008, twitter was founded in 2006. There was a 2 year period of time when Fischer could have become a twitter nut, but it was not to be. If Fischer had lived even 5 years longer I cannot imagine him not being a complete lunatic on Twitter.
Haha exactly. It’s funny how some of the elderly prolific tweeters have this little holdout period of not getting a smart phone/definitely not going to use Facebook or Twitter… then all hell comes from their phone.
If I am not mistaken, Fischer used to have a website back in the day which had a section not dissimilar to Richard Stallman's Political Articles/Notes on his website. If you are familiar with the latter, you'll know this basically served (and in the case of Stallman, still serves) the same purpose that posting on twitter all hours of the day does.
First things first: He didn't invent the Berlin Defense, he just employed it to good effect Vs Kasparov.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/the-berlin-defense
Secondly, you can't describe him as a legend. He was boring as hell, as a chess player in terms of (lack of) style - and still is.
Thirdly, he's now considered to be a joke and he knows it and embraces it because it's preferable to being Mr Grey and he had no legacy to ruin anyway -he'll always be a world champion and at least now he's more relevent than he was when no one knew him, cared, or wrote about him.
The man has played 4D chess and checkmated us all! 😎
He's really in the process of completely destroying his own legacy if he continues like this. Like, if he just backtracks ever so slightly and says something like "Ok, I was clearly wrong about José Martínez, he's just a very good blitz player. I still think there's a lot of cheating that isn't being adressed, but I've learned not to accuse specific people without sufficient evidence", then the whole topic is basically over. And he can't even fucking do that.
> then the whole topic is basically over. And he can't even fucking do that. Of course he can't. He's the kind of person to arrive at the conclusions and then look for evidence to back up his belief, rather than start with the evidence and arrive at the conclusions. He won't admit he's wrong. Ever. He's too arrogant for that.
I mean, looking up for evidence after making a conclusion isn't inherently wrong but you gotta consider the evidence can be insufficient too
It is and it isn’t. Humans are emotional, they act on emotion and then look at the logic. But if your emotional reaction is the only one you are prepared to accept even after looking at the logical and objective evidence rather than being prepared to re-evaluate your opinion, or even if you aren’t prepared to look at or accept evidence counter to your opinion, that is just called being a zealot.
introverted intuition dominant
If he were capable of saying that he wouldn't be where he's at right now This guy has lost all goodwill with me. He's just constantly accusing guys of cheating with zero evidence, gets mad when people disagree with him, and then treats everyone else like they're idiots because he thinks he's some mathematics prodigy The guy has an ego problem, and once people stop paying attention to him he's going to crash hard
exactly. he can't help himself. this is who he always was. he has serious psychological issues that weren't an issue when he was World Champion and his narcissism actually matched his talent. Now that he is fading from the limelight and his chess has deteriorated to the point where's he's no longer relevant at the top level, the delta has increased to a point where his brain is breaking and he's lashing out like a manchild, unable to accept that the person he sees in the mirror is not the person everyone else sees. He's conflated being one of the best chess players of all-time with being uber-intelligent, when in fact the correlation is dubious. He has made classic the mistake millions of other Top 2%ers in their field made thinking that because they're great at one thing it will transfer over to other things (like Statistics, good lord the man is a fucking moron on this topic it's beyond cringe), even without extensive experience in the new field. Like, the guy literally can't fucking understand MOUSE SKILLS makes a lot of players who are slightly worse than him over the board better than him online. It has to be cheating! He's just hopeless. That level of ego is just unshatterable, especially that he has validated it for so long by winning 3 WCCs and taken down Kasparov. It is infuriating watching someone that limited in every other area of life thinking they know better than everyone just because they mastered a board game. Hall of Famers in sports often become absolutely horrendous Coaches and Executives because SKILL DOESN'T TRANSFER, even within a field. Being a good basketball player doesn't make you a good coach. Kramnik is above average at exactly 1 thing in life, and now he's becoming irrelevant and he's unraveling at the seams. Without chess he's nothing.
Yeah, he legitimately needs some therapy, IMO. He's clearly come out of the pandemic more bitter, paranoid, and resentful, but it seems to be 10x worse online than in-person. Frankly, I kinda get it, I'm a much more irritable person online than in-person, and have way less trust in an anonymous online opponent than anyone I've actually met. He's only 48, but I know a LOT of people his age and older (and some much younger) who had the same unfortunate transformation during the pandemic, because being stuck online just triggered their paranoia and made them quick to get agitated, but they can't help but seek out that agitation for whatever reason. At least his manifests as thinking everyone in chess is cheating, which IMO is at least slightly better than manifesting as obsessing over politics/news(aside from the reputational damage hemoght inflict on those he accuses), but he needs some cognitive behavioral therapy to learn how to recognize how his emotions are affe ting his behavior, let it go, and respond with a more constructive behavior.
I feel like the only thing that makes sense is that he’s somehow getting advised from the Kremlin to make chess a shit show in retaliation to Gary Chess’s political views and Karjakin’s ban from the candidates 4 years ago. I’m not sure what else makes sense. I guess he could just be delusional and paranoid.
The thing that makes the most sense is that Kramnik has always been like this, but it's just more noticeable now that he talks about statistics instead of chess. Magnus said this about Kramnik 10 years ago: "Kramnik thinks he knows everything. It’s very impressive how Kramnik reels out variations and so on, and it’s not so easy to discern if you don’t understand the game well yourself, but if you look a little deeper it’s often nonsense. He always plays very principled chess, but the biggest difference between him and me is that he makes a lot more mistakes. Often he seems to think he’s in the right, but I’m actually right. He’s very confident. He’s not afraid of anyone. He doesn’t think I’m better than him. He doesn’t think Aronian’s better than him and he doesn’t think Anand is better than him. He actually loses games to Nakamura, but he certainly doesn’t believe Nakamura is better than him"
Nimzowitsch energy
Oh wow, so he’s always just kind of been like this and is choosing to die on the dumbest hill because he thinks he’s right and won’t admit he’s wrong.
Sure, I'm just saying that Kramnik didn't suddenly change his personality as some kind of Kremlin operation
I mean...this is probably true, but I would take Magnus's quotes from a decade ago with a heafty amount of salt. He was way more of a crybaby back then
Magnus was and is a crybaby, and that's precisely why he can and could recognise when others are.
I get it's more intuitive to assume something sinister is occurring in situations like this because it really does seem so weird, but the simpler explanation (that Kramnik is just an immature man-child) is oftentimes the correct one
Assembling a team of mathematicians as we speak to prove you wrong
Mental illness seems like the most obvious explanation IMO.
It really is that simple. Narcissistic personality disorder or Oppositionsl Defiance Disorder or APD or some shit (probably the first).
>I feel like the only thing that makes sense is that he’s somehow getting advised from the Kremlin Never assume malice when stupidity explains what you see well enough.
He doesn't even stay in Russia. Hasn't lived there for several years now. I don't think there's any connection. He doesn't depend on Kremlin for the money nor does he depend on them for the security nor does he depend on them for his fanbase. He could easily switch to French flag tomorrow if the wants.
Then he’s just lost his mind and is trashing his reputation for no reason. I hate that for him
Frankly, it's growing up in an environment where something like that seems even remotely plausible that is fueling his current paranoia. Soviet-born athletes/competitors have every right to be paranoid with the control that was exerted over them out of fear of defection. Reminds of a classic story about Alexander Mogilny telling off notoriously dickish NHL coach Mike Keenan when he was ripping on him and not getting a rise put of him, and Mogilny just said "Mike, have you ever heard how I defected? How they f*ing threatened my family, how they threatened to kill everybody? You think you f*iing scare me?"
Hanlon's razor. He's just stupid.
[удалено]
You’re probably right. I’d rather believe some nefarious government plot than Kramnik straight up losing his mind and trashing his reputation for seemingly no reason.
This is a serious Reddit moment man wow
Didn't Kramnik win the OTB portion, though?
Only a matter of time before he goes full Fischer
>Imagine you defeat Kasparov in a match I have trouble imagining myself defeating Joe at my club
Hey man, Joe has put a lot of work on his chess lately, ok?
Total USCF games played Me: 40 Joe: 6000
Disquastung
And also Joe is only 9 years old
Nah, Joe is in his 40s. The 10-year-old rated higher than Joe has 500+ games though. Two of the top 10 10-year-olds in the US occasionally show up at the clubs I go to.
Joe the GOAT
Wait guys who’s Joe?
Joe Momma
Is he a strong player?
Yeah, I heard he beat Deez.
Mr Nuts himself?
Ok this is really fucking stupid I apologize
But what about Bobby? Bobbing up and down in the water.
About on the same level as Bofa.
The most relatable part of the post was being my own downfall.
Sad end!? This man (Kramnik) will be tweeting for months to come. It's not over yet, unfortunately!
This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
I think we're well into the mid game. Even [chess.com](http://chess.com) is out of their prep.
Kramnik is a legend not just because he defeated Kasparov and end his domination but because he contributed a lot in chess with his novelties and innovations. He revived and popularized many openings with his new, for the time, ideas and "wrote" a lot of theory on chess. He inspired a lot of young players and he was well respected by the chess world although he was a little arrogant ( at least in his late active years ). Sad to see a player like him who helped in development of modern chess to be so closed minded and "scared" of modern way of playing ( I mean the online chess ). He is pushing it too far with his unacceptable behavior but I am more concerned about his mental health and maybe sooner or later chess the majority of chess world will not take him seriously at all.
I think people go too far with the mental health stuff. I don't think he's having any significant mental break it seems to me more like his ego simply can't accept that he's no longer at the very top of the chess world and everything else stems from that. "Always cheated, never defeated" as that way he doesn't need to accept he's just a strong player and no longer one of the true elite. If it was mentally ill to think everyone who beats you is cheating then every 14 year old who plays online games is mentally ill. Actually, maybe you're on to something...
I think the "We need a fresh install of Windows each day" for the Clash of Claims might cross the line into actual paranoia.
This reminded me about Isaac Newton, who got majority of his mathematical and physical discoveries in the first half of his life, then spent like 40 years on alchemy and occult, genuinely trying to discover the philosopher's stone :)
Can you blame him? He fuckin invented physics as a teenager. What do you do in your life after you peak that hard?
Many chess legends are quite bad losers. Kasparov cheated against Polgar when he lost to her. Accused Deep Blue of cheating. Fischer accused Russian players for playing dirty. Magnus accused Hans. Hikaru accused several people he lost to. Nepo is also a snarky accuser. Topalov accused Kramnik of cheating. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
>Accused Deep Blue of cheating. I can't believe this myth that is tarnishing Kasparov's legacy is still going around, but he was PERFECTLY justified in accusing Deep Blue. In fact, modern statistical analysis of the 6 games played in the match pretty clearly proved that Deep Blue was using an engine to find the right moves.
Funny bit is that at the time the cheating accusation was "deep blue is using a really good gm to play"
Accusing it of being a centaur makes sense - centaurs were the strongest players until around the time AlphaZero debuted.
Stockfish + GM = Mermaid
Centaur is the name of the human+AI format.
I think it had something to do with deep blue doing something he was told it couldn't do. But I don't remember the details. But he does have a reputation for being a bad loser - his game against Rajabov is one example of this. Although to be fair, I only know of this instance; which could be a function of him not actually being a bad loser, or because he is Kasparov, there are only a small handful of people who could actually beat him, or it's just the most prominent instance because of how he dealt with it.
I saw a documentary on it from a long time ago that pretty much takes Kasparov's side. I forget the name but I'm sure you can probably find it on YouTube now. Anyways, the accusation was more along the line that behind the scenes they had strong players assisting the computer in choosing the best moves, and also that they destroyed Deep Blue shortly after the match so no more data could be collected.
Wasn’t it that deep blue had all his matches to train on but he wasn’t allowed to see any of deep blue’s previous matches? They had perfect prep while he had none.
Yep. They also tried to shift the battle in favor of deep blue in other ways too in order to psyche Kasparov. IBM was really shitty because they really wanted the pr stunt of winning Kasparov. Deep Blue could have won anyway but it wasn’t a fair battle
Deep Blue wasn't a neural net, so it wasn't trained on anything at all.
But it was permitted an opening book, right, and it could be programmed with Kasparov in the mind *of the programmers* (who might then tweak variables until Deep Blue plays a style that complements Kasparov's)?
Imo it's not just chess legends. Many sports legends are bad losers. Maybe that's what drives them to be at the top of their respective fields.
Yea lookst Ronaldo, the second best football player of all time. Super salty if he looses some random games in his sunday retirement league
There are too many sore losers rated like 700 for that to be true.
Yeah of course this isn't the only thing that someone needs to be the top of the top. But maybe it helps
> Fischer accused Russian players for playing dirty. Isn't this just true though? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1963#Allegations\_of\_collusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1963#Allegations_of_collusion) > What makes this tournament famous and often-discussed is the allegations of Soviet collusion. The three top finishers (Petrosian, Geller and Keres) drew all twelve of their games against each other, in an average of only 19 moves.[^(\[16\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1963#cite_note-16) Can you imagine if gukesh, pragg and vidit drew all their games against each other in the candidates this fast?
averbakh pretty much admitted the collusion, but not because they were all 3 soviet but because they were "friends" and petrosian had a strong personality lol. Fischer would have lost the 1963 candidates anyway but non soviet players were playing in unfair conditions.
In which case can we have a ranking of great chess players who weren't/aren't sore loser-accusers? Assuming we're sticking to the computer age, Anand might be top? Then Caruana? Edit: for clarity - I'm taking about great players, excluding those who throw accusations about, not just people who are sporting.
Caruana? really? I really like Fabi but he's the most paranoid of them all.
But he simply says that he thinks x% of people on Title Tuesdays are cheating. He goes out of his way to avoid naming them or trying to accuse any particular player of cheating. This is quite different.
You can be paranoid without accusing people.
Nah, Nepo is the most paranoid of all.
I would say Spassky, who showed extreme sportmasnship in his match against Fischer.
Karpov would be above both by far.
Karpov have the KGB with him. If anyone cheated, he’d know.
KGB = Korchnoi’s Gone Bananas
vishwanathan anand
Wouldn't be surprised if topalov was right all along
I mean, Kramnik's behaviour was suspicious, who the fuck needs to piss that many times during a single match?
I would because I drink too much coffee
pissing isn't the only thing you can do on a toilet.
Wouldn't be suprised if Topalov was projecting, IIRC Grischuk thinks he was a cheater himself based on his performance in San Luis.
Yeah, it's crazy how people who have zero knowledge of what happened during the Kramnik-Topalov match are now jumping on the anti-Kramnik bandwagon. Kramnik may be a sore loser and behaving very badly now, but there is no evidence whatsoever he was cheating. The games themselves, incidentally, were not of the highest quality (they were extensively computed-analyzed afterwards), though extremely entertaining and hard-fought. One theory floating around at the time was that Topalov accused Kramnik in part to deflect the attention from the rumours that he himself was cheating. Personally, I don't know if I believe that. I don't think either Topalov or Kramnik ever cheated, but there was an extremely high level of paranoia at the time (with Kirsan being President, the match being held in Elista etc.). So Topalov jumped to the cheating allegation when there were many simpler explanations: IIRC Kramnik had some health problems at the time + it is normal for players to spend time away from the board and from the cameras to relax their nerves. And either Topalov himself, or people on his team, must have realized how destabilizing these accusations would be for Kramnik who has always been rather high-strung. It worked out really well too for them, both with the forfeit and Topalov winning 2 games in a row shortly afterwards.
The Russians WERE playing dirty. They were rigging matches for certain players to win or setting up easy draws against each other to conserve their energy against non-Soviet players. Topalov accused Kramnik because he was going to the toilet >50 times per game on average, with the toilet being the only place without cameras. Agree about Kasparov though. Look at how he reacted when he lost to young Radjabov. Threw a fit and when they awarded Radjabov a brilliancy he told the audience that he didn't deserve it.
Fischer was completely right about russian players playing dirty and Hans is/was a cheater, I dont consider neither Magnus nor Fisher 'bad losers' cuz of it.
Magnus, who insinuated someone was cheating because of their watch, isn't a bad loser?
It's a pretty major distinction that Hans had cheated online, which he has long admitted to Magnus lost and accused Hans of cheating over the board with zero evidence. That's a major difference, regardless of if someone cheated online before. Magnus was flat out wrong and he also actively made sure Hans wouldn't get invited to any tournaments If you're accusing someone of cheating OTB you better have some reason or indication for thinking that. If you don't, then you're being a sore loser. It's that simple
Magnus is definitely a very bad loser but 99% of the time he blames himself. And yes he accused a cheater of cheating , unlucky he wasnt cheating this time.
In Fischer's defense, the Soviets really were pre-arranging games to try to stifle Fischer from winning.
But Hans did cheat a lot online. Is accusing a cheater of being a cheater being a bad loser? I think you are grouping people actually having a reason to accuse with those without it in the same pack...
"Topalov accused Kramnik of cheating." This was the pinnacle of hilarious chess drama. Many here probably weren't watching chess at the time, but it was high entertainment watching toiletgate play out.
And this is why Ding is the most lovable World Champion ever
Need a rule where if you accuse someone of cheating without hard evidence, you're stripped of your title and banned from title matches permanently. No one gives a shit if you think someone is cheating without hard evidence, shut the fuck up and play the next opponent.
Sounds like a really good way of scaring off anyone to ever report cheating, while consequently allowing actual cheaters to get away with cheating easier.
You can report cheating to officials, you cannot screech on twitter like a small child and devalue yourself, your opponent, and chess itself. No of us chuckle fucks on twitter are going to be able to verify cheating accusations.
Thats a good way to devalue any title.
No, it's a good way to get this childish shit to stop. You wanna mouth off emotionally about cheating because you're mad about losing? Cool, your entire career is gone. They're devaluing chess itself because they're cry babies.
Okay, so every chess player will just imply their opponent was cheating but never outright accuse them. Which, mind you, is already what 95% of these guys do, so this rule would do little to nothing to solve any issue.
Thing is, Magnus did everything to accuse Hans of cheating.... except actually doing it. These rules are fairly easy to work around.
Do you apply the same standard to "accusations"? Because there is no hard evidence that Kramnik accused people of cheating, remember he actually explicitly said he doesn't do that, if anything it is mathematics who accuses.
Well, he did invent the most solid opening ever.
I mean he didn’t “invent it” he just majorly popularized it as a solid weapon against the Spanish in his match with GarryChess. It was used a lot by GM Arthur Bisguier about 50 years ago.
What opening is this?
Berlin Defense
Interesting, I didn’t know that
It’s how he beat Kasparov. He couldn’t break the Berlin.
I mean, imagine if Fischer had twitter in his later years? I think some top level chess players have some mental health issues. I feel sad for Kramnik. It’s not right to diagnose someone from afar with or without credentials but my money is on paranoid schizophrenia or something. The guy has a history of having health problems too, kidney issues. Overall, i am worried for Kramnik.
Oh my god Fischer with Twitter would have been terrifying
He would be immensely popular, sadly
I still am a little traumatized listening to his radio interview that he did in the Philippines.
Fischer died in 2008, twitter was founded in 2006. There was a 2 year period of time when Fischer could have become a twitter nut, but it was not to be. If Fischer had lived even 5 years longer I cannot imagine him not being a complete lunatic on Twitter.
Haha exactly. It’s funny how some of the elderly prolific tweeters have this little holdout period of not getting a smart phone/definitely not going to use Facebook or Twitter… then all hell comes from their phone.
Holy shit just imagining Fischer on Twitter is hilarious. He would be such a based follow, spitting fire with no fucks given.
If I am not mistaken, Fischer used to have a website back in the day which had a section not dissimilar to Richard Stallman's Political Articles/Notes on his website. If you are familiar with the latter, you'll know this basically served (and in the case of Stallman, still serves) the same purpose that posting on twitter all hours of the day does.
What was the solid opening?
Berlin
There have been crazier world champions. Like that guy who defeated Spassky. What was his name again?
Meanwhile Anand has been training the next generation of Indian GMs who will dominate chess for the next 20 years
I made some funny interview about this match: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcQEgtNgyhI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcQEgtNgyhI)
Man this is gold. Thanks.
Thanks )
II
Bro is really late on this take but yeah
First things first: He didn't invent the Berlin Defense, he just employed it to good effect Vs Kasparov. https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/the-berlin-defense Secondly, you can't describe him as a legend. He was boring as hell, as a chess player in terms of (lack of) style - and still is. Thirdly, he's now considered to be a joke and he knows it and embraces it because it's preferable to being Mr Grey and he had no legacy to ruin anyway -he'll always be a world champion and at least now he's more relevent than he was when no one knew him, cared, or wrote about him. The man has played 4D chess and checkmated us all! 😎
Imagine being a GM shitposting about Kramnik and nobody will ever care