Chess GM Vladimir Kramnik suspended for impersonating another player
Maria Emelianova / Chess.comGrandmaster Vladimir Kramnik has been suspended from prize events on Chess.com for playing in a Tilted Tuesday tournament on an account that was not his.
Chess.com released a statement regarding the suspension on April 3, 2024, saying that Kramnik would serve a three-month ban while the GM he impersonated by using their account, Denis Khismatullin, would serve an indefinite suspension.
“Playing under someone else’s name, particularly in prize events, is a violation of our Fair Play Policy,” Chess.com said.
This is not the first time Kramnik has courted controversy in the chess world. In March, the GM quit a Tilted Tuesday match after making one move. He later explained on a live stream that the resignation was a protest against Chess.com over questionable statistics on certain competitor’s accounts.
“I might not play, just resigning, against people whose statistics are very unusual,” Kramnik said.
The GM has also previously accused Hikaru Nakamura of cheating.
Kramnik responded to the ban on social media, explaining that a YouTube Chess creator made a video about him impersonating another player which led to the suspension.
“He answered, approximately, that it was an honor for me that a platform with such ‘low social responsibility’ and ethical standards was afraid of my actions, and that I would continue to identify and publish their ‘exploits,’ in particular in the field of reading there,” Kramnik said, according to a machine translation.
The video supposedly exposing Kramnik is in Russian, the description says “Friends, today I am sharing with you interesting information about the statistics of the Czech game of the 14th world champion. A person on his channel writes so much about honesty and respect for opponents, but how does this coexist with deception? How should a person impersonate someone else in PRIZE tournaments for serious money be punished?” Via a machine translation.
Khismatullin has not responded to the suspension.
The wider chess community has taken the news in jest, as Kramnik’s previous accusations against other players make his suspension ironic.
“How the turntables,” one social media user said in response to the suspension.
