Regarding Recent Accusations

Chess.com is committed to providing the best platform for both casual and professional players. We invest heavily in protecting the game with both state-of-the-art algorithms and proctoring. Chess.com takes cheating in chess very seriously, and we monitor all players, including the best players in the world. When clear evidence exists, we act. In October of 2023 our Fair Play team made 54,398 account closures, including 6 titled players. We have closed hundreds of titled players, dozens of grandmasters, and 4 players in the top 100.

We recognize that due to the extremely competitive nature of chess there will always be both correct and incorrect accusations of cheating against other players. We take all accusations seriously. We always take an objective and hard look at the data and the facts and then make a determination. In the coming weeks, Chess.com will be announcing further measures and policies to maintain fair play in our events and games.

In the case of the recent accusations against Hikaru Nakamura by Vladimir Kramnik, we can say that we have generated nearly 2,000 individual reports on Hikaru’s games in our Fair Play system and have found no incidents of cheating. As to the allegations about Hikaru’s incredible performance streaks (including winning 45.5 games out of 46), we have also looked at the statistics behind this. Our team has done the math and various simulations of streaks for a player like Hikaru who has played more than 50,000 games. We have found that not only is a 45 game winning streak possible, it is in fact likely given the number of games played. We have confirmed these results with external statisticians, including a professor of statistics at a top-10 university. With the deepest respect for former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, in our opinion, his accusations lack statistical merit.

- Danny and Erik