Kramnik x Hans: A Chess Meditation
In the year 2000, GM Vladimir Kramnik shocked the world, beating the great Garry Kasparov to become world chess champion. In 2024, GM Kramnik continues to shock the world, albeit in a very... different... way:
I will keep publishing various statistical anomalies obviously indicating unfair play. No illusion about profies (private dancers 🙂) reacting and demanding chesscom, vast majority prefer getting their bone to justise and integrity of the game, already clear. But public must know
— Vladimir Kramnik (@VBkramnik) August 1, 2024
In 2000, GM Hans Niemann was merely a gleam in his parents' eyes. Here in 2024, GM Hans Niemann has become chess' bad boy, but unlike GM Kramnik, has been letting his chess speak for itself:
It is time to let the chess speak for itself pic.twitter.com/d5k8EpadRT
— Hans Niemann (@HansMokeNiemann) October 5, 2023
Ok, that's not true. GM Niemann has also said a lot of things, most of which can be boiled down to "chess is controlled by a small number of people, and those people hate Hans and want to destroy Hans' career."
And now, against all odds, GM Kramnik and GM Niemann have formed a team to take on... something. The chess establishment. Cheaters. Everyone who ever wronged them.
Caption this 👇 pic.twitter.com/maJs9z0kPb
— World Chess (@theworldchess) August 19, 2024
The seed for this partnership was planted—how else?—when GM Kramnik accused GM Niemann of cheating. Keep in mind this was September 2023, well after the whole Magnus-Hans fiasco:
Side note: look at GM Niemann's hair in the thumbnail! It looks like Anakin Skywalker's in Revenge of the Sith. Sadly you'll have to look that up on your own, because there's no way I'm finding a free image of it.
By November of 2023 though, GM Kramnik was training GM Niemann in Switzerland. It seems GM Niemann showed enough potential to be worth GM Kramnik's time, or at least convince him to take GM Niemann's money. And the partnership was born!
But enough history. Let's get to the "why" and the "for what reason" and the "how could anyone be benefiting from this."
While no one could have predicted the Kramnik-Niemann pairing, it actually makes a whole lot of sense. If you want to be a world champion- as I assume GM Niemann does, as I assume all top chess players do- you could do worse than getting a coach who had done it himself. And, in addition to being a former world champion, GM Kramnik is by many accounts a fantastic coach; he just finished coaching reigning-champion Uzbekistan at the Chess Olympiad (they didn't repeat, but he did manage to get the whole of India mad at him).
And then- what does either have to lose by working with the other? GM Niemann is, in his own head if nowhere else, a pariah in the chess world. GM Kramnik won the world championship and really doesn't have to care about others' opinions. Did he just get suspended from chess.com prize events? Sure, but GM Kramnik is bigger than Titled Tuesday, bigger than the Champions Chess Tour, bigger than the Julius Baer Generation Cup.
And honestly? I'm don't disagree with GM Niemann (in that the chess elite hates him), or blame GM Kramnik (for not caring about what chess.com thinks).
Let's face it- a lot of people hate GM Niemann. Would you want this guy at your tournament?
Actually, let me rephrase that. Would you want this guy at your tournament... if he was world champion?
And that's the thing with GM Niemann. He's almost good enough to be worth the trouble. His FIDE rating is 2733, ranked 16th in the world. Three points back from GM Ding Liren! There's a real possibility GM Niemann becomes world champion—he's only 21.
And then, do you know what will happen? People will start sucking up to him. It's what always happens. Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, might also have been basketball's biggest jerk. But, at least in his prime, that didn't matter. We worshipped His Airness anyway.
The black turtleneck was stupid. It was always stupid. But the world called it Steve Jobs's genius. [Matthew Yohe at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
I guarantee you, if GM Niemann becomes world champion, he'll be "fiery." He'll be "uncompromising." He'll be "mercurial." But he's not there, and might never get there. Unless he does, GM Niemann is doomed to be "immature" and "abrasive" and "petulant."
Even chess.com will admit that people cheat in Titled Tuesday, and that they cannot catch every cheater every week. Indeed, it is an open question whether there has ever been a completely "clean" Titled Tuesday. But titled accounts get closed for fair-play violations all the time, many presumably because of games played in Titled Tuesday.
GM Kramnik knows that most of the people he has accused weren't cheating. Or at least, he knows he doesn't know if they were cheating or not. He's making a very different point, and one related to GM Niemann's situation.
GM Kramnik is inviting us to ask—what if chess.com caught GM Hikaru Nakamura cheating? What about GM Daniel Naroditsky, or IM Levy Rozman? Would they act on the same standard of evidence—some percentage, from some algorithm—if the player in question was part of the chess.com brand? Would the St. Louis Chess Club choose to offend GM Carlsen instead of GM Niemann? Would FIDE be more likely to grant Team India a phone in the playing hall than, uhh, Team Wales? (Sorry Wales.)
GM Kramnik is inviting us to say that no, the same standard wouldn't apply. And anyone who knows anything about how the world works, has to wonder.
The media on this post is making less and less sense. DirectX3, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
GM Niemann knows that, for now, he is a pariah. GM Kramnik knows that, for now, the chess world is able to laugh him off. But if GM Niemann becomes big enough, highly-rated enough, world-champion enough, the chess world will come to its knees.
Would chess.com ban World Champion Hans Niemann from its site? Not a chance.
Would any content creator refuse to cover World Champion Hans Niemann? Nope, not even after any number of wild interviews.
Would any tournament ban World Champion Hans Niemann for trashing a hotel room? No, somehow we'd love him more for it.
And if GM Niemann never becomes champion? Well, it will have been a wild ride.
Thanks for reading.
Cover images:
Elizabeth Holmes (Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)
Steve Jobs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/8010717@N02/6216457030, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
Levy Rozman (ChesscomRU, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
