Frauds And Titled Players

Top of the morning to ya laddies! My name is Daylen Branch Haley, I go by Nightlen on stream, and ThatMagnetMan here! And oh boy, do I have a story to tell. While I have gone to a couple tournaments since my last post and haven't wrote anything on them yet. Nothing complete anyway, I wanted to share with you a two day journey that I've been going on that really only I, and a couple of others have been privy to. Now the title of this might spark interest as "Frauds & Titled Players? What on Earth is this about." Let me start by saying that the two are separate subjects in this blog post of mine. I recently came across a person who claimed to be using an alt account called "TheGoatBK" Brian Karimian. I met him on a place where strangers can talk and we had a commonality with interest in chess. The moment he said he was a grandmaster I was immediately intrigued and plotting on how I could take all his strategies and learn them for myself! I kidd.

In the interest of making this blog more clear I will start with each individual in question one by one. But I do have a bit to say on two titled players as well! So if you end up not wanting to hear about this controversy scroll down.

There is not much to say about this game and this would generate no substantial evidence that this person was cheating. While I did get battered and it wasn't even close it would also be fair to say that I played extremely poorly. And after ruining my pawn structure I made my already unpleasant position worse by panicking which led to a knight fork that took out my queen. I was not to happy about the result of this game. And had he quit against me there that would probably be the end of it. However! There is so much more. We played two rematch games after this, and both I will confess I think were of really high quality! When I thought I was facing a grandmaster I thought it was of high quality but now that I know I was toe to toe against someone most likely using stockfish I feel even more confident in my play!

There is not much to say about this game other than I held my own against stockfish in the petrov and for most of the opening/early middle game the computer even had a very slight preference for white's position. The only reason I lost this game was because I didn't understand how strong the queen side pawns would be-- ironically because of the pawn on h3 which made it so my king was useless having to stay within the square of the pawn. This caused my position to eventually reach a state of complete and total paralysis. I think in a ten minute game I might have found Na6 which I believe was the alternative that it wanted me to find to keep equality but even so I think a grandmaster or really strong computer would still manage to find tricks that might make me throw this otherwise equal position. Now, if this dude was a grand master there is an insane amount of disrespect implied by not resigning before mate happens on the board but I prefer to not resign 99% of the time. That being said the next game he won, he won via resignation lol. And now there is one more game with this Brian individual.

Alright so I added some annotation for this game as I found it to be one of the more interesting ones. I was able to generate a good amount of counterplay via this 'person' in the opening. And I was able to create a good amount of counterplay. I think against a lower rated person I might have found Nxe4 but admittedly I was thinking more about surviving the opening than tactics I will confess. That being said I still was able to find some good moves and nearly equalized what was a bad position. Had I found a couple more accurate moves I doubt it would have changed the result. This person even said that he was smiling after Qd4 as he thought the queen trade was a very strong idea for a 1600 blitz to find. An observation which I think is correct.

Now it is not a total shock to me that this person was cheating. As he played a game against a 1400 which I found to be particularly strange. 

@CarolLr congrats on beating this cheater! For those who don't know it's obvious the cheater in question didn't use any form of assistance this game and played purely on his own. The gap of skill is fairly obvious. Even I wouldn't play f6 and I will still on occasion hang a mate in 1 if there is other stuff going on in the position distracting my attention. a 2400 hanging fools mate definitely caught my eye. As this seemed to be a very strange thing to have happen. The thing that troubles me the most about all of this is, why?

Being a grandmaster is the most coveted title in chess. And perhaps he wanted to be seen as a sorta king among the chess world. But he did know what would happen. He even warned me that if I was using outside assistance I would be caught within a few hours probably. The cheater accused me of cheating for playing to well in games he won! I defended myself accurately against him and explained all the moves he thought were a bit above my level but in retrospect they were probably above his level. There was also one other red flag. He had an insta where he posted pictures.

Now for those of you new you might ask why I assaulted your eyes. Well there is something to note about this! first off he made the background transparent and put a lot of companies behind him probably to make it look like he has real "sponsor" money. Now those of you who know a lot about chess will probably know unless you're someone really established into the scene the amount of money you'll make as even a semi pro chess player is fairly small. Which has me worried if the reason this person does this is a safety issue. As after our games he was exceptionally flattering towards me and my play. Even told me I could be part of his team for "Brilliant players in his elite division." Now if a grandmaster did have a select team of promising newcomers he wanted to coach I would make it no secret how game I would be and do everything in my power to prove them right for taking a chance on me! But the fact he did this had I played more along with the charade would he tell me to go to tournaments and do something? Luckily for me this guy's lies are so poorly thought out it would be hard to fall for his Boolean Strings. (The programmers out there know what I mean.) His instagram posts were two weeks old but he had 100k followers. Which I suspect I might be one of the only real humans following his account.

Also if you didn't catch it the board in every picture is set up wrong. I actually confronted him about this and he said it was a prank because he was a perfectionist and the person taking the pictures wanted to mess with him. Which if a grandmaster trolled in such a way it would be extremely funny but as it stands I think it's obvious that is not what happened here. 

If you look up his full name you will see that he has a criminal background and if he is using chess for some sorta fraud to evade background checks for work I find that quite troublesome. He definitely played some moves on his own so he doesn't suck at chess but he isn't who he says he is. 

I do believe what I said at the top of this. That being said I think people should be accountable to their own standards. And if he doesn't believe in grace for lying and believe that they should be uncovered we'll start by having own up to his lie by making it common knowledge. He's already lost credibility in the real world for criminal activity and now if he doesn't own up to his mistakes and do better he will lose the credibility and respect of the chess world as well. And if I was gracious and didn't say anything about these lies, in Brian's own words.

"Then you're an idiot."

I told him I didn't want him to be my mentor now that I know he's a fraud. Last thing I need is to be seen as the next Hans Neiman to his Max Dlugy lol.

Then again how could I be without beads? Would have to do some online shopping haha. I do hope that he doesn't have a genuine dark and nefarious purpose behind all this. If he's just bored trolling well then that happens. I just wouldn't want a less aware person to get caught up in this person's charm and put themselves in a compromised position. Which is why I opted to use his real full name instead of just referring to Brian as the "Cheater." If it wasn't for that concern in the back of my mind that this could be more than a bored 24 year old I probably wouldn't have even shared the chess.com profile and made the pgn load without saying the players names. But the fact he tried to "recruit" me for some imaginary team of upcoming strong players with IM potential really is what has me worried that his cheating antics might be part of a bigger plot. Had he not gotten caught so soon I might have played along with his charade more to see if I could uncover what exactly he was trying to get at. His lies are so blatant that you'd have to be willingly blind to not see through it. He tried to tell me he was making 500k off instagram. That he was a millionaire at 13, that he evented the 3d concept known as atheism which that sentence honestly gives me... A name for a discontinued chocolate brand. Honestly even claiming a person said such a brain dead sentence is hard to believe.

https://about.me/karimianbrian if you are curious about other bizarre claims made by this individual. Hopefully they'll take this down due to sheer embarrassment as I've never seen someone fluff themselves up this much. Makes you wonder what he's overcompensating for. If you are a person who decided to do a background check on Brian I hope this has enlightened you as I have a strong feeling this guy will make another account. 

@briankarimiangm is his insta page too so if this person tries to convince you this article is about someone else you have all the info you need to be warned and cautious of interacting with this person. Chess is my home turf. I believe in criminal reformation a lot and think that reducing recidivism rates in jails/prisons is far more important than the retribution that society demands of these individuals. That being said if you're a crook please leave my board game out of it. Chess is a safe place for all of those who have been hurt by factors outside of our control. So that for once in our lives we have the final say in our success and failure. That is what I love about this game. Whether I win or I lose at the end of the day every victory was because of what I did and every loss is because of ME as well. The way this person talked I thought they felt the same way but it was clear they didn't.

They had a sob story that in retrospect I just have to roll my eyes. I was very patient and understanding at the time but now I can see through it and can clearly see this person wanted to illicit sympathy from me. And it was really a cry for attention that honestly I can't be bothered to hear. I hope this person gets psychiatric help and perhaps one day is a reformed player that plays clean without cheats. He also talked a lot about how him losing his fiance to his best friend messed him up. Which if true sorry bro. But on the other hand if I was your fiance I would have walked away too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ perhaps that's overly harsh.

I've felt the cold sting of loss of love and it perhaps is the worst thing a human being can feel if their love for another is sincere. Without that feeling being intimately close in the past I earnestly probably would have never crossed the 2000 barrier as quickly as I did and I was seriously contemplating putting chess on the shelf and abandoning it before that as I thought the person I needed to be to make that work and the chess crazed me were incompatible. I might have been right but no need to contemplate to much on that. Point being is I do feel genuinely sorry for this individual as it's so much more than "Dude cheated in this board game while we were playing together in an unrated game woo is me."

This is a psychological liar who tells lies just as easily as he breathes. And might have more sinister purposes in mind for those who ultimately engage him in his offer of mentorship. For those who come across Brian just be weary. I don't have more to say on the subject if you want to see his crimes in the real world that is for you to look up but I think it's inappropriate to go into major detail on that.

Grinds my gears a little bit writing about all that honestly. I will say I am glad that I finally was able to blow off some steam writing about this. Now to the more fun stuff!

I was completely lost in the final position but managed to flag against this guy! I think we played a total of four games and this was the one where he stopped accepting my rematch challenges as from the jaws of defeat I managed to snatch a draw thanks to the wonderful god called time! The position was drawn earlier in the game but unfortunately due to low time I didn't find accurate moves to make it a draw on the board but the time format saved me by the skin of my teeth! And I am glad to say that my games against titled players now have not been entirely one sided! It is quite a happy feeling to get a draw against a titled player in a RATED game! The feeling was euphoric!

This next game was a two in one special. A chess streamer and WFM. She was playing viewers on stream it was only 3+0 and 5 minutes games that she was doing. I will freely confess I am horrible at blitz and bullet. The time pressure are really hard for me to overcome and while I can play quickly I find it really difficult to adjust to such low time. In the game I had an entire minute advantage and in the end I end up succumbing to time pressure despite having such an edge on the clock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UZaHknosrE

This is the video from her perspective showing the game and I will put the pgn here too.

As you can see I had a completely winning position at the end and the only reason I lost was I was not fast enough with premoves. I also wasn't using a mouse at the time perhaps if I was the result of this game would have ended different. I was so amazed that I was able to not only hold my own against a master, but unlike the game versus the NM this wasn't a luck time out. THE MASTER HAD THE LUCK TIME OUT!! Where as I was the person who completely won on the board and if time wasn't a factor I would have won that game! That's crazy to think! That not only did I outplay a master I did so in a blitz time control a time control where I am SUBSTANTIALLY weaker, and they had to resort to dirty flagging in order to survive the game against me! I might have lost but never have I ever felt so elated to lose. 

All of this happened within a two day timespan. What a crazy two days. I should post more tournament games soon if I get around to it just wanted to share an update with all the crazy things that have happened! Peace.