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Popular gaming platform Chess.com has banned Nikhil Kamath, the founder of Zerodha, for cheating in a charity fundraiser event.
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, millions have been forced indoors, and chess has become a way to entertain and occupy oneself. Over the last year, online chess has grown in popularity as numerous prominent Indian players, such as GM Vidit Gujarathi, IM Sagar Shah, and IM Tania Sachdev, have actively streamed the game on YouTube.
Likewise, Samay Raina has also played a part in driving people to the game by hosting Comedians on Board and collaborating with popular personalities.
In these tough times, people have come together to help those afflicted by the deadly disease. To join the effort, Chess.com organized the Checkmate COVID fundraiser, which featured five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand playing two batches of chess simultaneously.
The first set of panelists included Nikhil Kamath, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kichcha Sudeep, Sajid Nadiadwala, and Riteish Deshmukh. Viswanathan Anand took on Aamir Khan, Arijit Singh, Anaya Birla, and Manu Kumar Jain in the second batch.
Also read: "This event sucks": Rainn Wilson hilariously sums up his PogChamps 3 Chess experience
Viswanathan Anand responds to Nikhil Kamath admitting the cheating allegations during a chess match
Anand was expected to breeze through the matches. But something went wrong as the former world champion found himself losing to Kamat, who played one right move after the other to win the game.
Every chess enthusiast worldwide was transfixed by Kamat's accuracy, which was 99%. The game lasted more than 30 moves which made it even more surprising. Agadmator, a popular Chess YouTuber, went into detail about Kamat's moves.
Soon thereafter, Chess.com flagged Kamat's account for violating the platform's fair-play policy. Danny Rensch, Chief Chess Officer of Chess.com, issued the following statement regarding the cheating controversy.
Kamat came clean and apologized in one of his tweets:
"Yesterday was one of those days that I had dreamt of when I was a really young kid learning chess, to interact with Viswanathan Anand. Got the opportunity thanks to Akshaypatra and their idea of raising funds for charity conducting a bunch of chess games with Vishy. It is ridiculous that so many are thinking that I really beat Vishy in a chess game, that is almost like me waking up and winning a 100mt race with Usain Bolt."
He further added that,
"I had help from people analyzing the game, computers and the graciousness of Anand sir himself to treat the game as a learning experience. This was for fun and charity. In hindsight, it was quite silly as I didn't realize all the confusion that can get caused due to this. Apologies..."
The former grandmaster responded to the controversy and expressed his views by saying that,
Aruna Anand, spouse and manager of the former grandmaster, gave the following statement to Chessbase India:
"Well Nikhil contacted Anand today and explained this tweet. Anand replied to say that he can't deny the algorithm and personally wouldn't comment on the issue. He requested Mr. Kamath not to involve Anand’s name in his tweets or in his course of action. That he went ahead and did it and allege something is disrespectful."
This controversy has received flak from chess players from across the world. Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Srinath Narayanan, Tania Sachdev Agadmator, and comedian Samay Raina have criticized the incident.
