“Come out and say what you mean” - GMHikaru confronts Vladimir Kramnik following latter's recent cryptic post

Chess Grandmaster and Twitch streamer Hikaru "GMHikaru" addressed a recent controversy with former World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik on his official YouTube channel by sharing his perspective. For those out of the loop, Kramnik posted a rather cryptic statement on his Chess.com profile insinuating that Hikaru may have used foul means to play online.

More precisely, he posted a status on his profile highlighting that an unnamed individual (most likely Hikaru) had a record of 45.5 games out of 46, which, according to the Russian, is unusual.

Naturally, this prompted a wave of reactions from different members of the chess community, with GMHikaru himself stating:

"Come out and say what you mean."

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GMHikaru fires back at Vladimir Kramnik and Ian Nepomniachtchi

Vladimir Kramnik's recent online post has garnered significant attention. Notably, Ian Nepomniachtchi, another Russian Grandmaster, used his X account to share Kramnik's post, adding this as his caption:

"Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now."

Ian shares a cryptic post himself (Image via X/@Iachesisq)

Reacting to Ian's post, here's what GMHikaru said:

"There's a couple of things that I want to point out about this. First of all, I don't know what Ian means by 'Gotham.' We're gonna be very generous and give him the benefit of the doubt. He could be just making a reference to the Dark Knight."

He continued:

"On the other hand, I do know for a fact that Ian is not a huge fan of me and he's also definitely not a fan of Levy (GothamChess) either. So I do think there's a possibility that when Ian makes this tweet he is implying something related to Levy and content and Levy making money that he doesn't deserve."

Coming to Vladimir Kramnik, the primary source of all the conflict, Hikaru said this:

"When you do this, as far as Kramnik goes, just come out and say what you're trying to say. Stop trying to hide behind 'Oh, it's interesting,' or 'There's this piece and that piece' and just say it."

He also compiled a spreadsheet detailing the outcomes of the 46 matches he played, winning 45 (and 1 draw) of them. Hikaru disclosed that many of the Chess.com ratings displayed on the website are inflated, and in reality, the opponents he faced had an average rating below 2500.

Here's a screenshot of his data:

Hikaru reveals that the opponents he faced averaged only 2421.98 (Image via YouTube/GMHIkaru)

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Vladimir Kramnik has a track record of accusing fellow grandmasters of cheating. Earlier this year, he made a similar accusation against another grandmaster, Hans Niemann. Following this incident, Kramnik declared that he was boycotting Chess.com.