Why I support Vladimir Kramnik

I have a theory about Vladimir Kramnik. I think when he retired, he perhaps realized he retired too early. These players are used to being the center of attention and Kramnik went from being one of the best players in the world at the center of everything to being fairly anonymous, in just a short space of time. That might explain why he is more active all of a sudden, why he is streaming, why he is compiling statistics and throwing shade on some of the regular money winners on Titled tuesday. Kramnik now seems exasperated by what he percieves as the lack of effort and care shown by Chess.com towards doing anything about this situation.

The world's leading chess website has been put under the microscope by ex World champion Vladimir Kramnik.

I personally applaud Kramnik and his efforts to try and clean up online chess and here's why:

In my opinion cheating is often not taken seriously enough and is not punished as it should be. For example if you are a titled player and you are found cheating on Chess.com, you won't have a red mark against your account. And if you apologise, you'll more than likely to be let back on again. There is no real deterrent against cheating. 

Why Chess.com choose to do this is fairly obvious. They want titled players on their platform because it makes for a vibrant site and encourages other players to join. If you ban someone for life, or if you ban them for five years, or if you put a red mark against a professional players name, that not only opens up the possibility that they might sue you for libel, it also means they are more likely to end up playing on the website of one of your competitors (Chess.com might not have any serious rivals now, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that they will have some in the future.)

That might explain why there is no universal rule when it comes to banning players by online playing websites. A lot of these websites are businesses, and they don't want to get dragged into messy lawsuits which end up costing them time and money. Not to mention that they are aware that no anti-cheating method is fool-proof and that they will always throw up false positives. These people that are taking them on in the courts, might just have a point.

So there is a financial element to this. But Kramnik has gone further still, and hinted that he believes Chess.com are protecting certain streamers because they are making the site money. The problem is he might well be right but how do you prove this, because if a Jospem or a Bortnyk is cheating, they are most likely smart cheating. Noone is dumb enough to play the top engine move on every turn and trigger the anti-cheating software that hard. 

I played Jospem the other day in a Lichess money tournament. I had an uncomfortable feeling the whole way through that event; admittedly I didn't stay very long because after a second loss to Jospem I withdrew in disgust. I wasn't aware until later that I had been playing against Jospem in those two games but I felt strangely helpless in both. I've played elite players quite a lot recently online but rarely have I felt that sense of uselessness. 

I had to delete the video because I started screaming in my typical insane way about cheaters. That was a gut reaction and i'm acutely aware that Jospem at 2700+ fide blitz would marmalize me over the board, but at the same time that doesn't rule out the possibility that he is cheating online. It certainly felt that way in that Lichess tournament, but again "feelings", aren't the same as "reality."

I should also point out that the Lichess tournament was a bezerk event so the fact that Jospem wiped me out while using very little time on his clock while I used all or most of my 3 minutes, is not uncommon, as you have to win games quickly in those tournaments in order to rack up as many points as possible.

GM Jose Martinez has more than likely been unfairly maligned- but does that mean we shouldn't have a debate at all?

Even so the doubt was there, placed perhaps by Kramniks accusations. And the paranoia seems to be spreading. The other day a GM gave away his queen against me very early on a blitz game, in such a way that it was easy to regard his actions as more than just tilt. He seemed to be insinuating that he felt I had cheated in the previous game that we had played, where I had won.

But that's ok, because better my hurt feelings and that the whole of us will catch a few strays, than we live permanently with this sense of paranoia because the sites aren't doing enough to eradicate the cheating issue.

It comes back to not caring enough. What have the boxer Conor Benn and the tennis player Simona Halep got in common? They both had drug bans overturned or reduced recently and in my opinion they shouldn't have done. In sports it seems the doper/cheat often wins, and we have to be careful that in chess it doesn't end up the same. 

Sadly, I don't think that Kramnik will be able to lead the fight for much longer. He has become such a controversial and polarising figure (as stated above, he shouldn't be) that it feels like only a matter of time before Chess.com issue a statement to say that they have reluctantly decided to close his account, in order to protect the other players.