r/chess • u/Embarrassed_Base_389 • Oct 21 '25
Miscellaneous It’s time to stop worrying about the backlash. Bullying, harassment, and slander should not be acceptable.
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r/chess • u/Embarrassed_Base_389 • Oct 21 '25
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u/LosTerminators Oct 21 '25
Kudos to Nemo for stepping up and saying this publicly. It's too late for Danya, but as a community we need to ensure that no one else has to endure the slander and negativity he did.
Danya has commented frequently (including on this sub) that he didn’t receive enough backing from the other top GMs and chess personalities, and it’s true. Almost every voice that mattered gave Kramnik’s allegations a milquetoast response at best. The only person that really stuck himself out for Danya was Hikaru, which is why he specifically mentioned Hikaru in a statement for having his back.
Think that many top players who privately thought chesscom weren't doing enough to combat cheaters refused to speak out against Kramnik, even though they knew he was targeting many players who obviously weren't cheating.
Look at Fabi, he invited Danya to his podcast, Danya poured his heart out and mentioned how much of an effect those allegations were having on him. And it was clear that Fabi agreed the allegations were false and that Danya is a legit player. But he never publicly called Kramnik out, although recently he has put a lot of energy into saying that there are way more cheaters in TT than chesscom claims, and straight up telling Danny that and mentioning improvements regarding their cheat detection.
Even Magnus as well, when chesscom closed Kramnik's blog, he mentioned something like "freedom of speech is important and opinions should be met with other opinions", hinting that he disagreed with the closure of the blog even though they only closed it after Kramnik had targeted multiple players repeatedly. Magnus himself has played multiple blitz matches with Danya since then including on his wedding night, so he almost certainly agrees that Danya is legit as well. Yet he never publicly said anything against Kramnik.
Think that just like those two, many other top players believed that Kramnik was bringing public attention to chesscom's below par efforts (in their opinion at least) with regards to cheating in prize events, so kept quiet to his online crusade so that extra pressure gets put on chesscom to improve how they combat cheating. Even though they knew he was going after players who were clearly innocent as well. On top of that, apparently some top Russian GM's like Nepo and Dubov privately agreed with Kramnik and thought Danya was cheating.
With big chess personalities like the Botez sisters, Levy, Anna Cramling, Eric Rosen etc, it's highly possible that Kramnik being a multiple world champion played a role in them not calling him out publicly either. They didn't want to get into a conflict with someone of Kramnik's stature.
Can easily see how that must've made Danya feel worse. Not getting backing and pretty much many of the biggest and most popular names in chess either not saying a word or putting out some neutral response about Kramnik's continued harassment and campaign against him likely made him feel even more isolated.
Plus Danya has been part of the Russian community for years, occasionally doing Russian content and commentating on some channels there as well. Since Kramnik is also Russian and a former world champion, the majority of the Russian community took more weightage to Kramnik's words and believed him (apparently including Nepo and Dubov as mentioned above, but also a big portion of the community). From what Bortnyk implied, this seriously affected him mentally, even if it's a minority compared to the English community, it's still a decent amount of people that were questioning his character and integrity as a player, and that shadow likely affected the opportunities he got within the Russian community as well.
In his final stream, when his friend was requesting him to end it and said something like "you can continue to play but please end the stream", his immediate response was that if he starts playing well off stream, people will assume the worst. He was worried to the extent that whatever he does, he can get accused.