Re #75:
Dear GM Kramnik (if it is really you, those anonymous unverified accounts can be very tricky),
thank you for sharing your thoughts. I only ran at your comment today (on July 14), much later than it had been written. Before, I had been asking FIDE officials for the data linked to your tweet, but have received neither the data, nor any reply.
First of all, I cannot read your tweets, as I am not on Twitter and do not intend to go there.
Moreover, it is not true that I complain about you accusing me of cheating. In fact, I have never claimed that you had accused me of cheating. I wrote my complaint to FIDE when I was shocked and angry, so it might be a bit chaotic, but it contains the following complaints (not in this order):
1. You played Titled Tuesday(s) from Dennis Khismatulin’s account Krakozia, thus violation the rules for both you and him. In my eyes it is very serious, as it was a prize event and the opponents were in a way deceived by that, believing to be facing a different player.
2. You have publicly accused many players, including minors, without bringing convincing evidence in quite some of those cases. (This is how I saw it. You might be right that quite some of those were not strictly speaking accusations, but have been largely perceived as such. By the way, one Russian-Serbian WGM had earlier been banned for three months for an article which had not been strictly speaking accusing anyone, and where she did not even give a one-sided view. In my opinion, she should not have been banned, and I guess that you agree.)
3. Your use of statistics is wrong. (This is my impression, and I asked FIDE for those statistics to look at them, but got no answer.)
4. Some players (like me) are mentioned in an offensive context in your tweet.
In my opinion, those of your actions exemplified by points 1-4 might damage the image of chess.
I agree that it is completely fine if you investigate my games, but the context (“Cheating Tuesdays”, rather than Titled Tuesdays) is clearly offensive and there is no reason why I should be mentioned in connection with cheating in such a way. Obviously many people understood it as accusation of some players, and I have right to feel offended by that, as my results in those tournaments had been pretty normal.
As for 1) in the list of my four objections, the facts are well-known. To me it looks odd that a player who had recently violated the terms of service publicly spreads "argumented concerns" concerning people who did not.
As for 2), it might be controversial, but the facts are well-known, although the interpretations might vary.
I am certainly not defending cheaters and understand that sometimes even public argumented concerns might be good when they well-based, but some of your argumented concerns look too much like accusations to many, and many of your arguments fail to convince others, including me as well as numerous others GMs.
As for that tweet, we all know that I am a much weaker player than Magnus Carlsen and somewhat weaker than Alexander Grischuk as well. (This is also confirmed by our
chess.com ratings and results in Titled Tuesdays, by the way.) I strongly suspect that the metric is wrong (point 3), and I feel that I should not be so high in such a list, given that my results are completely normal and achieved without cheating (point 4).
Your metric is aiming to detect fast cheaters (making an engine move around 1 second) and ultra-fast cheaters (making an engine move much faster than in 1 second). It cannot detect slow cheaters, who make engine moves much slower than in 1 second. First of all, both fast and ultra-fast cheaters can simply avoid time troubles, just playing quicker. (Every mortal can, but unlike bot users, we often deteriorate our positions when doing so.)
Then there is another aspect, which I have not mentioned earlier. I believe that your metric ignores a sort of blunders which both fast and ultra-fast cheaters can avoid easily without ruining their chances, but we (honest players) cannot. Namely loses on time in playable positions. (Loses on time make slow cheaters more suspect, but for fast cheaters it works the other way around.) In the explored period I lost at least three games on time in normal positions. If those moments were classified as blunders (as a bot could easily avoid them, unlike players who get into many time troubles, do not make completely random nonsensical premoves and consequently occasionally lose on time here), I could hardly be on the 3rd place in your table, my position in it would have been much more realistic.
I believe that apart from high class or bot usage, high score in your metric can indicate many other things, including speed, concentration, intuition, good nerves, playing many simple positions and so on. It is very hard to distinguish who cheated and who was just very well focused.
I will look at your video, but not right now, as I am going to play some tournaments soon, and want to focus on them. Generally, I was busy playing over the board (as well as online), struggled to regain my stability after that tweet and also did a plenty of other things, not necessarily chess-related. I would have looked at a one of your videos if I had known which one concerns the topic, but sometimes even thinking about this case makes me feel unwell, so I was not really searching actively, except for asking FIDE for more information.
As for cheating, I dislike it as much as you. (Last but not least because during the pandemic the poor situation in online chess left me earning about 500 euros per month for about half a year, although I was working on chess, playing, giving lessons, annotating games and so on.)
I have written many fair-play reports myself, as well as a handful of messages when I felt someone performing at his normal level was banned by mistake. (Which turned out true in 3 out of 4 cases.) I have been searching for the truth in this respect, with inevitable mistakes (wrong fair-play reports) on the way. I have also been ready to admit my mistakes when wrongly suspecting someone.
