When accusations fly

‘OK, there is a body with a knife there, and the police come and say nothing happened… You have to find who, why, what, but it happened, don’t pretend that it didn’t happen!’ Vladimir Kramnik deployed that analogy about the world of online chess, which he sees as riddled with cheating.

Cheating happens. Once in a while, I get demolished in a casual online game in a manner that leaves no room for doubt that my opponent’s moves were silicon-assisted. Chess.com, the platform that hosts the biggest online events, has a dedicated Fair Play team to monitor cheating, and their checks have led to over a million account closures in 2023 (0.6% of the total number).

Nevertheless, Kramnik clearly believes that Chess.com and the online chess community are blind to the scale of the problem. His concern is legitimate, since nobody really knows how much of the iceberg lurks below the surface.