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#kramnik#chess#cheating#players#suicide#naroditsky#accused#without#hans#world

Discussion (47 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

adjejmxbdjdnabout 4 hours ago
Kramnik 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.

t0mpr1c3about 1 hour ago
Hans admitted to cheating. It's no wonder his career suffered. Incidentally, he is also a complete asshole.
searealist27 minutes ago
Sindorov, who won the candidates, and will be playing for the world championship, has also had accounts banned on chess.com for (presumably) cheating as a teenager. Do you think it would be ok if a large part of the chess world conspired to keep him out of tournaments. Do you think it would be ok if the world made jokes that he cheated using a sex toy? Do you think it would be ok for the largest youtube chess channel (GothamChess) to publish a video titled "Chess cheating device" featuring a thumbnail showing his face next to a butt plug? And all this while he was 19?

What happened to Hans is FAR worse than anything Kramnik did. But maybe you think it's ok because you find him to be an asshole?

ball_of_lint3 minutes ago
Daniel Naroditsky is dead
jamespo7 minutes ago
Maybe they are both assholes
g42gregoryabout 2 hours ago
For those of us who have no idea who this guy is and what he said, what did he do? Did he say something unapproved?
WJW33 minutes ago
Do you mean Kramnik or Hans Niemann?

Kramnik ((ab)using his status as a former world champion) accused several other top level players to the point that one of them committed suicide.

Niemann allegedly cheated (In my personal opinion as a decently rated but certainly not elite chess player, he probably did cheat in this particular game, though proof was never given and probably never will) at a high level chess tournament and was ostracized by the chess community for a while. He has since rejoined and continues to play at a high level.

searealist23 minutes ago
> Kramnik ((ab)using his status as a former world champion) accused several other top level players to the point that one of them committed suicide.

There is no evidence of suicide, and he had multiple drugs in his system when he died.

> he probably did cheat in this particular game

This is a fringe opinion at this point in time, even though it was obvious he did not cheat on day 1.

zmgsabstabout 3 hours ago
Hans did plenty to damage his own career - eg, his 2024 ban for trashing a hotel room.
manvel_hnabout 4 hours ago
So 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.

alex1138about 4 hours ago
Naroditsky 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

dwa3592about 3 hours ago
For 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.
wilbur_whateleyabout 1 hour ago
How did he punish them?
nopinsightabout 3 hours ago
To 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.)
dwa3592about 3 hours ago
>>To 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?

'To my knowledge' - okay. In my experience, they're all horrible. I have fooled them both ways - ai generated content that they say is purely human and human generated content that they say is partially AI or just AI.

TimPCabout 3 hours ago
Pangram’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.

nopinsightabout 2 hours ago
Someone 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.
Arainachabout 4 hours ago
For those who don't follow chess, what were the allegations? This article is intentionally vague on all the details.
kriroabout 3 hours ago
He 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.
prmoustacheabout 2 hours ago
How can one cheat in chess?
Arainachabout 2 hours ago
By using computers.
moominabout 4 hours ago
I’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.
arvyyabout 4 hours ago
one of the players he persistently harassed, Daniel Naroditsky, ended up dying, which surely gave an extra push
rendallabout 3 hours ago
His "cheat detection method" mostly consisted of playing someone online and then reporting them for cheating if he lost.
lvRaabout 4 hours ago
He 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.

mtlmtlmtlmtlabout 3 hours ago
Kramnik 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.

amrit3128about 4 hours ago
For 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.

V__about 4 hours ago
Any normal human should have stopped and thought about their actions after Daniels passing.. Daniel will be missed and Kramnik hopefully forgotten.
JoshTriplettabout 4 hours ago
> Daniel Naroditsky was harrassed so much, that he eventually went into depression and committed suicide.

Not according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Naroditsky ? (Still a tragedy, though; any death is.)

tethaabout 3 hours ago
You are correct, there is no strong indication of active suicide.

However, it certainly put him into a state of mind of neglect, not caring anymore and not taking care of himself and most importantly, no way out. The words "I cannot play chess anymore without doubt of being accused of cheating, no matter what I do" are haunting to me. At that point he had multiple cameras targeting all screens he had and everything he could see, and it wasn't enough to Kramnik.

At such a point, it feels like arguing semantics.

ajkjkabout 1 hour ago
If you want to be detailed about it, https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1qjafcd/medical_exam... talks about the whole report; that sarcoidosis was the actual cause is speculative, and the "substance use as a contributing factor" part is widely believed to be in part due to the extreme stress he was under... but it is hard to say anything about causality definitively.
tinyhouseabout 3 hours ago
Are we talking about online chess cheating? Aren't players eventually need to show up and play in-person?
EGregabout 4 hours ago
What about the famous case of Carlsen claiming that his opponent cheated and even forfeiting to draw attention to it?
Maxatarabout 4 hours ago
This 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.
ungreased0675about 4 hours ago
That’s a lot of words to say very little. What is this about?
adityashankarabout 4 hours ago
Kramnik has a habit of accusing people of cheating without evidence 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

prerokabout 4 hours ago
Thank you for the link. Chess is very much also a psychological game and that he resorts to such low blows is really petty.
cubefoxabout 4 hours 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_labsabout 3 hours ago
I would imagine by withholding some privilege until the service has been fulfilled
_factorabout 4 hours ago
He 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.
Maxatarabout 4 hours ago
Kramnik 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.

_factorabout 4 hours ago
His 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.

rustystumpabout 4 hours ago
It 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.

alex1138about 4 hours ago
Just an editorial note here, it's not clear that it was a suicide. The official diagnosis was some heart thing