Quang Liem responds when former Chess King doubts him

Vietnam's number one chess player Le Quang Liem said former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik's approach to the issue was unconvincing, after he described his games as "unusual".

On January 27, 2000-2007 world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik wrote on social network X about the accuracy of Quang Liem's ​​games at the Titled Tuesday online tournament on the Chess.com platform. The Russian player said that Quang Liem's ​​average accuracy in the last nine tournaments was 90.5%, including one tournament where he achieved 93.8% accuracy.

Quang Liem in a match at the St Louis Super Tournament, Grand Chess Tour in August 2021. Photo: GCT

"Quang Liem's ​​average accuracy is very high, and 93.8% for a single player in a tournament is quite unusual, for anyone," Kramnik wrote. "At least no top player has achieved 93.8% in a tournament in the past year. Perhaps Quang Liem's ​​games need to be examined more closely. In fact, the only other time a player has achieved more than that is Alireza Firouzja with 94.2%."

Responding to VnExpress about Kramnik's opinion, Quang Liem said: "Cheating, specifically using computers or other people to help when playing chess, is a very serious problem that the chess world is experiencing today. It threatens the integrity of tournaments and the reputation of players. Therefore, I support all solutions to prevent cheating, both in board and online chess. The organizers and referees at today's top tournaments such as the World Cup, Grand Chess Tour, Champions Chess Tour... all have very strict anti-cheating measures."

Titled Tuesday is an online blitz chess tournament that takes place twice a week, on Tuesdays, for only titled players (grandmasters). Each tournament usually has hundreds of grandmasters participating, each playing 11 games, with a prize fund of $2,500, of which $1,000 goes to the top player. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and many other masters regularly participate in this tournament, and top Vietnamese players also participate. Based on information on Titled Tuesday and other tournaments, Kramnik has accused many players of cheating via his blog on Chess.com , including Nakamura.

Vietnam's number one chess player added: "I respect Kramnik as a former world chess champion. However, I think his approach to the issue is not convincing. Kramnik has written many articles on Chess.com and social network X implying that many other strong players cheat online, but Chess.com has issued a statement affirming that Kramnik's accusations are unfounded. As a chess player, I trust the processes of Chess.com and the Organizing Committees, more than the subjective opinions of other individual players."

Quang Liem (left) in a draw with Kramnik at the Dortmund Super Cup on July 29, 2011 in Germany. Photo: Souleidis

On December 24, Chess.com announced that it was closing Kramnik's blog, blocking his ability to speak on the platform. That means the 48-year-old chess player still has the right to play and compete there, but he will not be able to comment or blog. The platform's reason for doing so is that Kramnik has "become increasingly aggressive towards respected players in the chess world," and they cannot ignore it. They say that Kramnik's accusations are "unfounded," and that he has not only violated the platform's rules, but also the World Chess Federation (FIDE) code of conduct.

Kramnik was not convinced, so he created an account on X , and continued to post questions to other players. His argument was based mainly on "accuracy of moves", which is basically the percentage of moves a player makes that the computer judges to be good or better. Chess.com statistics show that a player with an online rating of 1,000 to 1,5000 can achieve an accuracy of over 90% in 10% of games. Kramnik, on the other hand, claims that the difference between a player with 93% and 92% accuracy in a tournament is as much as 50 Elo.

Quang Liem added that he trusts Chess.com 's anti-cheat team. "The games I played are public information. I know Chess.com has algorithms and an anti-cheat team that analyzes hundreds of thousands of games every day from all players on the platform. Surely no one can cheat for a long time without being detected. If Kramnik or anyone else wants to dig deeper into any game, they have the right and ability to do so easily," the 33-year-old added.

Kramnik said that the highest accuracy of world number one Carlsen in one of the last 10 Titled Tuesday tournaments he attended was 90.8%. Meanwhile, there were 10 times the tournament witnessed a player achieving accuracy of 93% or higher, and Quang Liem was in this group.

Kramnik's general views on online cheating are shared by pros like Caruana. "Kramnik believes that 25% of Titled Tuesday players cheat, but I think the real percentage is higher than that, upwards of 50%," Caruana has said.

However, there are also experts who disagree, including Nakamura. The Japanese-American player once said that "accuracy" is not a measure of a player's ability to cheat.

Kramnik won the World Chess Championship in 2000, after dethroning Garry Kasparov in London, England. He defended his title twice, against Peter Leko in 2004 and Veselin Topalov in 2006. Topalov's manager suspected Kramnik of cheating when he spent too much time in the toilet during the 2006 World Chess Championship. Kramnik lost the title a year later, losing to Viswanathan Anand.

Quang Liem has been Vietnam’s number one chess player for the past 15 years, having won the World Blitz Chess Championship in 2013. He is currently ranked 22nd in the world in standard chess, and 20th in blitz chess. The 2017 HD Bank Champion has not competed regularly recently, as he is now a full-time chess coach at Webster College and Director of the SPICE Academy.

Xuan Binh

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