Did GM Hikaru Nakamura Cheat? Uhhh... No!!!

Recently, former world champion Vladimir Kramnik has recently been going on a tirade against those he thinks of cheating. He's released 11 blogs on the subject, posted a video that lasted for well over an hour in which he supposedly exposed cheaters, and constantly updates the bio on his Chess.Com profile to publish "interesting" statistics.

Hikaru

So, where does streamer and former world #2 Hikaru Nakamura come into this? Well, recently, Hikaru worked his way up to the highest blitz elo Chess.Com has ever seen:  He briefly had a rating of 3,336 points'after farming a bunch of beatable less skilled titled players.

On his run, Hikaru went 45.5/46 in 3 + 0 blitz. Meaning, he won 45 games and drew 1. Kramnik added this fact to his profile saying "I believe everyone would find this interesting."

Ian Nepomniachtchi fought Ding Liren in last year's world championship, and he retweeted - excuse me... I mean reposted on X.Com - a screenshot of Kramnik's words along with a goofy and confusing line about some sort of hero in Gotham or whatever.

Hikaru replied to Nepomniachtchi asking whether or not he was agreeing with this "garbage", and the million plus views on each post have helped propel this to the mainstream as yet another chess scandal.

Kramnik's Case

The case Kramnik's outlined in his accusation against Hikaru and his followup blog (in which he's admitted deleting numerous comments that provide statistics or arguments hat contradict him) have a couple of points and I'll list them here before dissecting the absurdity of most of them and proposing counterpoints later on.

• Kramnik argues that 45.5/46 is uhh... What is the language he'd use? Very interesting and statistically improbable. According to the man, the average Chess.Com blitz rating of the opponents was around 2950 elo, and performing like this against them is apparently worthy of a 3,600+ rated player.
• According to Kramnik and Eric Hansen, a number of titled players have come to both of them with worries about whether or not Hikaru's playing fair. According to the latter individual, the worries are primarily about his Online play.
• Reportedly, Kramnik has hired "professional mathematicians" who've found a ridiculous amount of sus stats that portray him as a cheater.

Why Kramnik is Wrong
You don't have to be a genius to know that I think Kramnik looks like something of a nutcase with this take, especially since the title of this blog claims that Hikaru's not a cheater.

So, without further ado, let's discuss why I think Hikaru's more likely to cheat on his wife - WGM Atousa  Pourkashiyan - than at chess. We'll start off by addressing the first and last of those bullet points before moving on to the second one when we're close to the conclusion section.

Elo Farming

It isn't a secret that Hikaru played opponents he knew he could dominate. Literally, when he's Online he picks and chooses those that he feels like he could easily sweep the floor with. In Hikaru's video where he discussed the accusation, his team had gotten their own little set of interesting statistics that showcased how the opponents Hikaru brutally ravaged actually had low FIDE ratings.

So basically, Hikaru felt that these people were clearly trash when compared to him, in the same way that I'm trash when compared to any other serious chess player. This isn't to demean those individuals, but they stood very little chance against a speed chess god.

And honestly, the data implies to me that those players OTB (Over the Board) elos and Online elos were very, very different. Which makes one ponder whether or not they had experienced rating inflation that Hikaru used to his own advantage to gain elo.

Even if Liam Putnam, Artin Ashraf, Levan Brigadze and the others that Hikaru milked for rating point don't have an inflated elo, this still demonstrates that the difference in skill level is tremendous, despite how a number of the better blitz players are all hovering only three to four hundred below Hikaru and the top players. The best individuals in blitz have no choice but to play those that are way lower rated in Titled Tuesday, and how little they gain at times on wins keeps the system in check. This might make the difference in skill look less extreme when it really isn't.

But the bottomline goes as follows: This is less shocking if you look at who Hikaru crushed.

Kramnik's "Professional Mathematicians"

Vladimir claims to have hired professional mathematicians who have boatloads of stronger data to condemn Hikaru. So why isn't he releasing any of it?

Literally, the only fact he's mentioned here to support and make his case is one that anyone can examine with basic counting of how many wins Hikaru's gotten, as well as some averaging and knowledge of Chess.Com's rating estimator.

If Kramnik provides undeniable evidence - or even semi-strong evidence - then people'd believe him. But right now he just sounds like someone who's bluffing and claiming to have gathered some sort of wacky nonexistent data.

Streaming

Another thing is that Hikaru is a streamer: He constantly explains his thoughts, drawing a couple trillion arrows, discusses the position, and generally just has thousands upon thousands of eyes upon him as he plays.

Not only would the man have to find some way to work around the fact that he's sharing his screen to the universe - and I'm sure that's very doable - but he would also have to consistently work around the fact that countless people are watching his behavior, where his eyes are looking at, and more.

They'll obviously notice anything strange, and so the chat and the viewers are ridiculously efficient at detecting irregularities due to the sheer number of them. Which is why streaming to a gargantuan audience and cheating would be downright idiocy.

Over the Board Skill

Ultimately, the reason why I scoff at accusations that Hikaru's cheating in online blitz isn't because of his streaming. Nor is it because statistics are notoriously known as the 3rd type of lie and sometimes anomalies and record breaking streaks occur without cheating. Instead, it's because Hikaru excels at blitz OTB.

In over the board blitz, Hikaru is rated 2874 and is #3 in the world. He's only 13 points below Magnus (the #2 ranked blitz player) and 22 behind Alireza Firouzja (#1). Meanwhile, the next closest star in that format - Fabiano Caruana - is rated 61 elo less than him and no one else has reached 2800.

Ultimately, the following graphs which showcase how well he does in blitz in tournaments where he was almost certainly matched against players who were waaay better than those the played online, given how much of a bubble a lot of the tournaments for top players are.

And earlier, I listed how Kramnik mentioned how he and Eric Hansen had received a lot of worries about Hikaru cheating. Yet, in the former world champion's blog, he ignored what Hansen had said after mentioning this: Despite how titled players - and any players really - will naturally be suspicious of an insanely strong player, he doubts Hikaru is a cheater.

Hansen has seen the man play similarly over the board, and thusly has little reason to doubt his results on Chess.Com.

*He's just as resilient in-person for the most part. Really, really strong still.*

Eric Hansen in THIS video

So, unless one believes Hikaru goes and cheats at every over the board blitz tournament, the case against him doing it online is infinitely weaker given his complete and utter undeniable dominance in the format.

Conclusion

Kramnik has repeatedly thrown shade at Hikaru, and clearly believes that the man is a cheater. As of late, however, his justifications look approximately as shaky as a castle made entirely out of straw.

Sometimes a record is a record. Sometimes dominance is dominance. Nitpicked statistics can lie more than even a pathological liar might at times. Nonetheless, numerous... Interesting data points that ought to be... Closely scrutinized contradict Kramnik's claims.

In conclusion, Hikaru's chess and the points above speak for themselves. Just much more strongly and convincingly than Hans Niemann's chess and Vladimir Kramnik's accusations do.