At the same time, FIDE also needs to look back at the behavior of some of the most powerful people in the sport in the whole Hans saga. What Hans was put through was ridiculous even if all the allegations were true, given how many actions were simply the result of the most powerful player in the sport throwing his weight around.
I’m not a fan of Hans but I absolutely admire how he managed to continue and grow his career despite the top 2 biggest individuals in the sport, and a whole other set of powerbrokers (for example, the wealthiest tournament in the Sinquefeld cup) teaming up to destroy his career.
Then he started attacking Daniel, Hikaru and some other players online. This all led to pretty tragic consequences.
Kramnik still believes that he's in the right.
The only good thing out of this is numerous funny videos by chess players trying to figure out intricacies of statistics and math.
He was one of the world's best bullet and blitz players, it was obvious he was never cheating. Kramnik was apparently one of his heroes. It was despicable behavior
This is a case of a Kramnik being a crank whom most people did not take seriously, but he still had an impact on the victims.
Fro Kramnik this is a mild penalty.
Kramnik engaged in a dedicated bullying and a smear campaign against Danya for a prolonged period, without substantive evidence, and never let up. When Danya explicitly stated in multiple interviews that Kramnik was seriously affecting his mental health, Kramnik persisted in his harassment. When Danya's mental health ultimately led to his death, Kramnik tried to put the blame on everyone but himself, including Danya, his friends and family, even the entire chess community. According to Kramnik, it seems like he is the only one who's completely blameless. It's good that he's being punished, but I think the punishment is too mild. In my opinion he should be stripped of all his titles, including his world titles.
The sad fact is that Kramnik is a pathetic narcissist, who because he's a shadow of his former strength, and a slow old man, gets easily beaten in online blitz, and then accuses people of cheating to protect his wounded ego, because he wants to pretend he hasn't declined.
Now onto my probably crazy conspiracy theory: Russian players like Danil, Nepo and Kramnik have accused American and Indian players baselessly of cheating multiple times over the past few years. They have went to podcasts and implied that their opponents have cheated. Idk if it's some lost national pride in chess or something but accusing others does more harm than good. We've seen how it hurt Hans when he was accused by Magnus of cheating without any evidence. Multiple top level tournaments stopped calling him due to magnus throwing a tantrum cuz he lost.
Not according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Naroditsky ? (Still a tragedy, though; any death is.)
However, it certainly put him into a state of mind of neglect, not caring anymore and not taking care of himself and most importantly, no way out. The words "I cannot play chess anymore without doubt of being accused of cheating, no matter what I do" are haunting to me. At that point he had multiple cameras targeting all screens he had and everything he could see, and it wasn't enough to Kramnik.
At such a point, it feels like arguing semantics.
Just to be clear – this is an event where he has been doing so repeatedly, accusing people of cheating without evidence in-and-of itself isn't forbidden - since cheating in chess is difficult to verify, it's the manner and fashion to which Kramnik has done this that has led to his suspension
I wonder how this is enforced.
Toxicology reports later showed that Naroditsky did die due to the combination of an abnormal heartbeat, sarcoidosis and drugs, specifically methamphetamines and kratom.
Now if you want to speculate that he took those drugs due to the harassment that's a possibility, but claiming he died due to suicide is entirely unsubstatiated and uncalled for.
Kramnik never let off the accelerator.
Drug overdoses are so often a method of suicide it is almost laughable to use that as an argument to defend assholery. Some people are psychopaths and Kramnit screams like one. Zero empathy remorse or event the slightest drop of compassion.