Let's see some of the salty comments of the Russian ecosystem with regards to Indian chess over the last year.
- Nepo in one of his videos post Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee (I think with Levitov Chess) insinuated that Gukesh and Wei Yi were cheating (of course he directly didn't use the word, technically even Kramnik hasn't accused anyone of cheating till today).
- In C squared podcast, Nepo said that he warned the FIDE officials in January that Gukesh will win the Candidates in April, while saying that his game is nothing special. How do you predict some "nothing special" to win Candidates and "warn" FIDE about it?
- Kramnik accused Nihal Sarin of cheating online, earlier this year.
- Kramnik saw cameras throughout the event, only for him to have a problem just before the 9th round game vs India and made quite a scene about it. From FIDE arbiters to Emil Sutovsky clarified the next day that the devices were scanned, labelled and permitted into the hall as per contract.
- Then Kramnik brought up the population of the countries that medaled at the Olympics in a post.
- Dubov in a podcast with Greg Mustreader said that the Indian kids practice chess 12 hours a day and have no life, as if they personally shared it with him.
- Grischuk in the podcast with Greg Mustreader repeatedly stressed that a player good in one format should be good in all. Also he said that Gukesh's moves were "computer like".
- And here with Levitov Chess, Grischuk again insinuated things.
And no, not all of these can be disguised as humour or sarcasm or "English isn't their first language" etc.
www.ndtv.com
