#Kramnik

[witchlinda]

José Martínez Alcántara 'Jospem' observes former world champion Vladimir Kramnik descend into insanity at the Clash of Claims event in Madrid, Spain.

Photographed by Federico Marín

[chessismyaesthetic]

[dozydawn]

“Why is the idea of Hikaru cheating so crazy to you? I thought you thought he was an asshole?”

GM Ben Finegold defending GM Hikaru Nakamura (his former student & current frenemy? idk) from accusations of cheating by GM Vladimir Kramnik.

[mirqmarq428]

Stockfish uses Hikaru to cheat

[quotesfrommyreading]

The computer takeover of chess occurred, at least in the popular imagination, 25 years ago, when the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov. Newsrooms at the time declared the match a “Greek tragedy,” in which a silicon “hand of God” had squashed humanity. Yet 1997, despite its cultural resonance, was not really an inflection point for chess. Deep Blue, a nearly 3,000-pound, one-of-a-kind supercomputer, could hardly change the game by itself. Its genius seemed reliant on then-unthinkable processing power and the grandmasters who had advised in its creation, to the point where Kasparov, after losing, could accuse IBM of having cheated by supplying the machine with human assistance—a dynamic that today’s accusations of foul play have reversed.

By the mid-2000s, though, upgrades in chess-engine software and commercial hardware made overpowering algorithms more accessible; in 2006, an engine running on a standard desktop computer defeated then–world champion Vladimir Kramnik. Players had already been using engines to evaluate individual tactics. But Kramnik’s loss kicked off the first era of computer-chess superiority, in which even chess elites would rely on software to help evaluate their strategies, Matthew Sadler, a grandmaster who has written multiple books on chess engines, told me.

As engines became widespread, the game shifted. Elite chess has always involved rote learning, but “the amount of stuff you need to prepare, the amount of stuff you need to remember, has just exploded,” Sadler said. Engines can calculate positions far more accurately and rapidly than humans, so there’s more material to be studied than ever before. What once seemed magical became calculable; where one could rely on intuition came to require rigorous memorization and training with a machine. Chess, once poetic and philosophical, was acquiring elements of a spelling bee: a battle of preparation, a measure of hours invested. “The thrill used to be about using your mind creatively and working out unique and difficult solutions to strategical problems,” the grandmaster Wesley So, the fifth-ranked player in the world, told me via email. “Not testing each other to see who has the better memorization plan.

  —  Chess Is Just Poker Now

[avertigo]

The match that everyone expects CLASH OF CLAIMS: Vladimir Kramnik vs José Martínez Alcántara

The world of chess has lived through countless controversies in recent months. One of the most shocking has been the one developed by Vladimir Kramnik, former World Chess Champion who has accused many online chess players of cheating only by providing the precision values ​​of their game, including José Martínez Alcántara. Precision in chess is a variable that measures the percentage of success…

[rishukumariworld-blog]

Inspired by Kramnik, How Nagpur Teen Raunak Sadhwani Gave up Cricket to Become India’s 4th Youngest Chess GM

From an early age, justice meant the world to Raunak Sadhwani. still, he couldn’t pursue it seriously. No club in Nagpur entertained a five-time-old. Too youthful to face the hard ball, he switched to chess.The plan was to switch back to justice but that wasn’t to be.The club I was playing for told me I can not play for them officially until I was 10 or 11 times of age.…

[triviallytrue]

Kasparov is kind of a weird figure - he's either the greatest or second-greatest chess player of all time, he basically was chess for two whole decades, and yet I feel like I barely see him at chess events - other former world champions like Anand and Kramnik are much more active. And it's true they're technically the generation after him, but he's only 60! He's really not that old.

Reminiscent of Michael Jordan, I guess.

[gabrielferaud]

garry kasparov in 2000 after losing his world championship title to vladimir kramnik

[witchlinda]

Former world champion and resident conspiracy nut Vladimir Kramnik at it again at the 2024 Chess Olympiad.

Photo by Maria Emelianova a.k.a PhotoChess

[on-stolen-sunbeams]

I may not be much of a fan of Niemann (in chess play I respect him, but as a chess player, debatable). but the way he stirs shit up on twitter? hilarious.

Like it's not Nepo or Kramnik or (heaven forbid thank GOD) Kasparov level ugh, but every so often (constantly) there are these petty digs at Hikaru or chess.com or whoever it is Niemann's facing in the weird poker-style tournament thing. Do I like the guy? Not particularly. But tbh the lil snipes combined with the 'I'm so awesome' bits are incredibly amusing. It's like reality tv but people think I'm smart for watching it.

also he is so not over the whole cheating accusations thing lmao. give it a rest dude.

[chessismyaesthetic]

Happy birthday Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand!

Vishy Anand, one of my favourite commentators from recent World Championships (he just seems like such a lovely guy and his analysis is always interesting and well explained), is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former five-time World Chess Champion. The FIRST grandmaster from India (he won the title in 1988) which is hard to believe given how many great Indian chess players there are now, he has the 8th highest peak FIDE raiting of all time. He remains the only player to have won the World Chess Championship in tournament, match, and knockout format, as well as rapid time controls.

Vishy playing Kasparov, 1995.

As a teenager people called him "Lightning Kid" for his rapid playing speed, and later GMs who faced him often described him as one of the all-time greats alongside Garry Kasparov (a logical comparison given the schism in the World Championship and the fact most top GMs would have played both so could compare).

As a lightning fast teenager in the 1980s.

Wikipedia describes him as "a well-liked figure throughout the chess world for two decades, evidenced by the fact that Kasparov, Kramnik, and Carlsen, all of whom were rivals for the world championship during Anand's career, each aided him in his preparations for the 2010 World Chess Championship" which is something I massively admire in sports people - the seemingly rare ability to be a top competitor AND be nice to people.

Check out his game 6 win against Karpov in the 1998 World Championship match for a great win at an important moment. Karpov had won the first four games, Vishy made a draw in game 5, and NEEDED to win. So what does he do? He plays the Trompowsky Attack (1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5) - rarely seen at GM level - and wins in 42 moves! Seriously, go google and admire. Sadly (for me at least since I'm a fan) he lost the WC in the tiebreaker games and didn't manage to become World Champion until two years later when he became the first world champion from Asia and the first world champion from outside the ex-Soviet Union since Bobby Fischer.

Anand v. Kramnik at the 2008 World Championship, game 3.

OR check out game 3 of his World Championship match against Kramnik in 2008. Here Vishy has the black pieces playing against Kramnik's Queen's Gambit Declined - they go into a really tactically sharp line known as the Blumenfeld Attack (this is part of the Semi-Slav defence, classical merin variation if you want to look it up). On move 14 Vishy plays a novelty - a new idea - that Kramnik needs to refute if he's to win. Vishy's idea is to just give up a pawn (which is usually defended) in favour of attacking the white king. Two pawns down, Vishy rejects the possibility of a draw and goes on the attack with Kramnik's king on the run. It's exciting stuff and unbelievably tense when you imagine the WC conditions they were playing in!

Vishy about to beat defending champion Magnus Carlsen in Game 3 of the 2014 World Chess Championship in Sochi.

His career is way too long and too well documented to be worth going into any greater detail - google is your friend here - but what a great player. Well worth delving into his games, not least as he was one of the first to embrace computer prep so that alone is an interesting development.

[fasciation-fascination]

I can't believe we finally found a bootleg of the 2006 estonian production, what??? there soo much stuff in there. canon time loop??? set backstage at a production of chess?? florence kisses walter and freddie at one point?? in endgame they list all the world champions up to Kramnik for some reason?? all the new songs they added?? I am being soo normal about this.

[avertigo]

El entrentamiento que todo el mundo espera CLASH OF CLAIMS: Vladimir Kramnik vs José Martínez Alcántara

El mundo del ajedrez ha vivido de innumerables polémicas los últimos meses. Una de las más impactantes ha sido la desarrollada por Vladimir Kramnik, antiguo Campeón del Mundo de Ajedrez que ha acusado a muchísimos jugadores de ajedrez online de hacer trampas únicamente aportando los valores de precisión de su juego entre ellos José Martínez Alcántara. La precisión en ajedrez es una variable que…

[life--is-not-daijoubu]

okay now i am VERY interested in whatever's going on with chess. /gen

if you want you can rant about it in my dms or here? whichever you prefer tbh

Here is fine and thanks for asking<333

Okay so I think I mentioned 3 things: the toilet cheating scandal, chess boxing and anderssen

1. I was going to tell the whole story because it's hilarious and the players involved to this day don't shake hands in the beginning of their games, which is a sign of total disrespect in chess but it was getting really long

GothamChess has a great 30 min video on this event, just search "Chess Toilet Cheating Scandal (2006)" on youtube, you can leave out the games he analyses and just focus on pure drama, there are timestamps in the video

Long story short it's world chess championship 2006, Kramnik and Topalov playing best of 12 matches to decide who's the world champion, and when Kramnik starts winning more and more Topalov accuses him of cheating. In the bathroom. Because during hours long matches guy goes out to the toilet with a "strange, if not suspicious" frequency and there's a cable on the ceiling of the toilet. So Kramnik gets super pissed and holy tardis of gallifrey, all hell breaks loose.

(I'm laughing rn I can't-)

2. Chess boxing. The most insane sport I've ever heard of and it's exactly what it sounds like.

There's a chessboard next to a boxing ring. The players have a few chess moves/some time to play. Then they switch to boxing, also for a while. And then again to chess. And again to boxing. And again and again and again until someone loses in one of these disciplines.

You can't win your chess match? Gotta crush them in the ring. You can't win boxing match? Oh buddy, good luck with chess.

I have no idea how did this become a thing.

3. And the final one, Adolf Anderssen, the guy who lived like 200 years ago and is probably my favourite chess player ever.

You know romanticism era? All the drama, poems, affairs? Romantic chess was exactly like that. Its Wikipedia page literally says "winning was secondary to winning with style". And Anderssen was one of the most famous players of that time.

Some games are so good they get their own names, titles, idk. This is the case with The Immortal Game won by Anderssen against Kieseritzky, who probably regretted he's ever been born afterwards. Basically Anderssen sacrificed his strongest pieces (both his rooks and the fucking queen, what the fuck who does that) (I'm so sorry for swearing but ndjsnjsntwcs), left his king without any defenders out in the center of the board while being attacked by two different pieces including the enemy queen and then checkmated the enemy king.

I aspire to be like this man.

There's another game with a title won by him, The Evergreen Game, but I don't remember it that well so yeah

He was amazing

[25atalife]

Dj KramniK-1 - Retro House sound ( Disco back )