Chess Cheating: Vishy Anand, Nikhil Kamath

ladies and gentlemen a massive cheating story has just hit the chess world as of yesterday june 13 2021 and i wanted to share it with all of you some irena an indian comedian with a large youtube following he makes a lot of amazing content he put on an event celebrities were going to play against vishwanathan anand the national chess icon of india five-time world champion in a simul he was going to play all of them at the same time and they were going to raise money for charity one of those players in particular is named nikhil kamath he is the youngest billionaire in the history of india and nikhil defeated vichy during the simul obviously people are watching these games live as they go on so they were suspicious at a certain point and their suspicions were confirmed when nikhil's account was banned from chess.com what i'm going to do now is show you the game from start to finish and then after that i'm going to share my thoughts on all of this timestamps are on the video player as always and before we get into this i want to say something i am not the kind of guy who sees drama and wants to make a video just so i can get some views around it i'm also about to talk about something which is going to make a lot of people upset and i urge you to keep your humanity and be the better person i understand that as i grow as a creator my community grows and i cannot control what every single one of you does but i know for a fact that anytime i talk about something even like small that's controversial people go off and start writing crazy messages death threats don't do that to the best of your ability try to take the high road let's go so this is the game fishy is with with white and he plays knight f3 and um nikhil begins the game with e5 now e5 is uh obviously a mistake and um i got mata antonio he covered this video and uh he was also quite shocked about this move so shocked that he made it the thumbnail it's a blunder um and you know nikhil's account has a rating of 836 blitz nerves are involved when you're playing against the guy like vichy and so he blunders upon on the first move because again you are used to playing e4 right actually i would not be shocked if some of you have played the move you know you just you just blunder upon you just like you're like barely thinking in the opening right it happens okay knight takes e5 d6 knight back to f3 now knight c6 black develops a piece uh when you're up a pawn here what vishy wants to do is take the full center so uh d4 is a very decent move um black plays knight f6 and vichy just goes immediately for d5 so this is this is actually kind of an instructive moment because anytime you have knights in the center that could be targeted by pawns to win time uh you should play them now you you have to remember this is a simul so they have like an hour on the clock vishi's going around playing 10 15 20 games at the same time and he's just going through like a like a like a loop so he he has two seconds to make a move he makes his move and then 20 more games pop up on his screen this is very common for title players and it's a lot easier to do when you can actually see the pieces when you're doing it blindfolded it's i mean it's very difficult so vishy plays knight c3 developing notice that he's not taking neither is black e4 taking the full center and what's funny is that actually according to the computer uh white's advantage has actually decreased since here it's actually funny black has gotten to a nice posi a better position because black actually created a blockade and white's extra pawn is not felt anytime you're um you know in a situation where you're down a pawn try to consolidate the position okay c6 to try to attack the center vishy castles we have a trade a6 the point of a6 is that you want to go b5 you want to take queen side space and bishop b7 or bishop probably bishop to b7 to apply pressure here also b4 to try to destabilize the knights of issue plays a3 uh and black plays h6 another waiting move taking advantage uh of of of white kind of not doing anything i'm also not going to do anything now here i think as a human i haven't seen vichy's move i would play bishop f4 okay vishy plays knight d4 also perfectly reasonable i like this move because it applies a little bit of pressure here knight d4 also might prepare this move which kicks the knight out of the middle and makes you go here so if she sees this kind of weakened square on c6 okay black plays bishop d7 passively developing the bishop again to me as a human it seems more natural to go here but i suppose that surrenders control of the f5 square okay bishop to d7 bishop f4 there we see the move that i just talked about black completely ignores it and plays rook c8 to kind of reinforce the control of the square uh at this point it's actually kind of difficult to find a way to make progress for white i mean maybe you trade and bring the knight back vichy plays this move with the hope that his opponent will take actually so he can activate his queen and the powerful black knight has been kicked out of the center this pawn is now a weakness normally you don't want to trade a bishop for a knight but in this case your bishop has no scope i apologize your bishop has no scope and this knight is black's most active piece but black doesn't take he plays queen b6 lining up some pressure over here bishop takes e5 d e5 but wait a minute isn't this just a free pawn well yeah but actually the whole point here is that black would then have played bishop c5 with a laser beam here so queen b6 is a crazy move because it sets up a pawn sacrifice to activate the most powerful piece uh that that's kind of lurking there which is this bishop coming to c5 now vichy reconsiders here and just jumps the knight into c6 he doesn't take on e5 the problem is that now you haven't won the pawn at all and right you didn't win this pawn at all and you black still got active play so vishy should have taken the pawn and allowed black to be down two pawns but have some activity um now vishy takes but now black has this dynamite strike rook takes you can actually take that knight because after this check king f1 takes takes uh even though black is actually down a pawn black is better black is better because black has a pawn break in this position which activates all his pieces which is b4 b4 bringing in the queen targeting this this pawn is a little overextended also rookie 8 is on the cards about to hit the queen and vishy brought his king a little bit too close to the center right so bishop b5 is always lurking in these positions as well um so he plays rook a2 which is necessary to defend the pawn now black plays bishop to b5 check which is actually a shocking move because i was like why would you allow this trade well uh it's not a trade at all actually the whole idea that the engine has here is to play this move you don't take the knight you actually just remove the guard of the rook 92 back and um hear this move queen d6 queen d6 is actually not the top move um the top move is actually bishop takes e2 uh but maybe it's also on low depth maybe on a high depth it likes queen d6 king g1 uh and now rook takes pawn and uh the pawns are now even and black's pieces dominates white's pieces i mean every piece that black has is completely active the knight goes to c3 the bishop goes back to d7 this she plays queen e3 to kind of monitor this as well but also activate the queen and uh yeah i mean black plays a a wild move here he plays bishop g4 which is just understanding that there's no there's nothing for white to do i mean basically if you take take i now threaten queen h2 and i'm i'm gonna threaten to get on this diagonal and rook c1 uh and if you do nothing like for example if you play h3 and and then do this then after it takes takes now i get access to this square so i deflected your queen off and now i'm just gonna win and if this i sneak in this way i mean bishop g4 is the perfect finishing move uh and vishy gets a check and actually gets another check with a triple pronged attack but here there is the absolutely shocking g6 and it's not a blunder at all you can take both of these pieces but if you take this then after check here check king e2 here you only can go to e1 and lose your queen to d3 and get and get checked and deflected from the defense of your queen or here and get forked so you can take the rook and after a nasty sequence of moves lose your queen or you can go here one after check this is mate so this is the only thing that you can do and it looks like you survive but um queen takes d5 and uh your rook is hit and this is hit and this is where it gets interesting because this is where vishu resigned and according to the you know the the stream and everything like that uh vichy could have played for a flag he had a lot of time like 10 minutes his opponent didn't have a lot of time and the way you would play this for a flag for those of you that like it's actually a learning moment in all of this you go here you basically would lose your material or potentially lose your rook and just get out of the way and and just bring all the pieces to safeguard your king and beat the other person on time now if there's bonus time every move like 30 seconds probably you're not gonna do it but if there's like two seconds bonus five seconds bonus or no time bonus you have a very high chance of actually you know flagging this game but vishwanathan anand resigned here and that is where all of so basically i was streaming and i was being informed by people that this had happened he was defeated and then it was started it started going to reddit uh there was a reddit chess post and so and you know again made a video and later the account was banned and that was sort of where we paused yesterday like this is what happened but this is where it gets interesting folks because this is where uh today i woke up and i'm gonna show you social media now so this is the social media angle of things uh this is my current live twitter feed uh which i'm gonna i'm about to pull up you're gonna see some some of the you know crazy trending stuff as well but um so nikhil actually broke broken silence and he said it's ridiculous that so many are thinking that i've really beat vichy in a game that's almost like me waking up and beating you know with usain bolt yesterday was one of those dreams and you know you can pause the video here and read this even if you do pause here this is actually not so much of an apology if you read it it's kind of like why would people think that i would ever defeat vichy well you did i mean i mean you you won so uh so er but i'll talk about this a little bit later in the video chess base india also tweeted about it said vichy's wife uh said he contacted a nun explained the sweet he replied anan said he doesn't you know can't deny the algorithm personally wouldn't comment and requested that uh nikhil doesn't involve his name in his tweets uh but nikhil did and you know uh other i mean many many you know vishwanathan anand tweeted about this as well uh and many many people are responding to this okay so i want to give you my take on all of this my thoughts uh and this is obviously i i cut parts of the video to put them together but this whole part is just gonna be me talking i'm not gonna edit this at all so from a personal standpoint i was involved in my own cheater story right with the indonesia thing and if you don't know what i'm talking about just look up gotham chess indonesia that was one of the most stressful periods of my life i received thousands of hate messages death threats to myself my girlfriend lucy uh i was shocked that they didn't contact my family to be honest it was insane and i was in vishwanathan ananshus not from the chess talent standpoint uh he is far and away greater of a talent but what i'm talking about is having someone cheat against me and i kind of wanted to avoid even making a video on the subject because again i'm not the kind of person that wants to farm views uh because there's a drama uh i'm not that kind of person at all and i i i i don't want to be involved in any sort of way with any more controversy i'm good i'm good doing my own thing here i have the best chess community in the world so uh but i think i offer a unique perspective i also think that i am probably one of the no no not one of the i am the most outspoken large chess content creator on twitter on twitch not so much on youtube i try to keep it here to mostly just chess content but trust me politically my my my views on on certain situations i i'm i'm the most i'm not afraid of losing fans in the name of stating my opinion let's put it this way so i think i offer some sort of unique perspective on all this and let's just start off with what i think about the situation i think it was a horrible decision that's not groundbreaking i i you would obviously not expect me to say anything less do i think it's disrespectful to vichy 100 do i think it's disrespectful to chess 100 having said that to a person that's not heavily involved in the chess world i actually understand nikhil or anybody who cheats in chess mindset especially on such a scale you don't want to risk looking dumb i mean the appeal of cheating in chess is somehow understandable you know all the answers to the test before the test is taken like it's true i mean now then we as humans have a decision do you do it or not so we should not do it but think about also this case this is a charity event this is being watched by thousands of people this is the the youngest billionaire in the history of the country this is the five-time world champion i mean vishwanathan anand to many is the greatest chess player of all time particularly if you're from india to many he's top five top 10 all time i mean this guy is the undeniable national icon pioneer of chess in the country don't do it choose this one right i think choose this one don't don't make the decision to cheat in this case but okay it happened it happened okay now we need to deal with okay what do we do now it happened number one that apology was not much of an apology it was not much of an apology let's just let's just when you mess up you need to apologize performance enhancing drugs and sports don't make some nonsense excuses apologize own it yeah i messed up and this is what i'm gonna do to make it better i'm sorry i did it i'm sorry this is this is the image it has so far it's it's it's bad because once the apology is bad now you got people even angry you got the chess world angry at you you have you have to find a way in in moments like this to to to remedy the situation put on another event put on a sequence of tournaments do something for chess do something for india that in this case india i'm talking about in general and what why i have this perspective is because life is long okay you're gonna screw up in life people you love close to you are going to do dumb things really bad things in life i mean in this case it's cheating in chess i'm not talking murder murder that's a separate i'm not giving no nobody advice uh on that subject i'm not a lawyer um but people you appreciate are going to have bad things done to them as well we need to keep our humanity okay we need to try to make the world a net positive place not explode it with negativity the problem is in this case the apology is is not an improvement of the situation so now people are going to be even angrier and that's where that's where this thing is gonna it's it's gonna get weird because and i i hope we find a way to remedy all this but people are not happy right now and vishy to his credit is just like i don't want to i don't want to deal with this i mean i'm a world champion i'm a father i'm a husband i'm an author i've done things in my life i don't need to be involved with i don't need to make some sort of crazy bombastic statements the truth is out there and and we move on uh and uh i'm also not a massive believer in burying people into the ground for stuff like this i try to think about it in a more positive way again i urge something positive to come out of this i urge nikhil to do something good ultimately uh in all of this and not just say well i can't believe people actually thought i would have won the game you did though you did like you did win the game so that's my view on this i think that you need to also understand that when things like this happen you don't go off and just start throwing rocks and doing some crazy stuff be the better person be the better person you can state your opinion do it in a civil way uh and hopefully we can do something positive out of this and if not then do i think there's going to be ramifications no no truthfully no i mean the more wealthy and powerful people get i i i don't know it's kind of like this it's a whole nother stratosphere of of influence of of individuals right so i can't really i don't know i don't know what that world is like i don't know how much accountability there is for stuff like that out there i think the most important thing when you screw up in a case like this is apologizing and owning it that's just what i think and uh i wanted to share this it's i mean i'm not telling you anything groundbreaking this is my perspective i understand cheating in chess i understand the appeal you shouldn't do it you shouldn't do it particularly in an event like this but having said all that people are gonna do bad things and they gotta own the responsibilities and i think i've basically said everything i wanted to say um hopefully in the next video that i share with you well it will be more positive but hopefully i can continue to make videos on positive subjects and not subjects like this so feel free to get involved in the comments in the discussion let's try to be civil and um yeah i think the last thing that i wanted to say was the fact that uh people were also saying that during this event there was other cheating going on except nikhil was the only one that actually defeated vichy and that's why it became a big story but again this is the major story so this is what i'm telling you uh we have all the facts here and yeah i will see you in the next video folks take care

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 1,217,424

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, nikhil kamath, nikhil kamath cheating, nikhil kamath chess cheating, nikhil kamath cheating chess, jitendra advani, nikhil kamath chess, vishy anand, vishy anand nikhil kamath, chess cheating, nikhil kamath agadmator, agadmator cheating, aamir khan, aamir khan chess, ananya birla, ananya birla chess, checkmate covid, chess for charity, chessbase india

Id: cDwa-UJRuYQ

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021