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Chess.com has banned Nikhil Kamath, the co-founder of Zerodha, after his shocking win against 5-time world champion GM Viswanathan Anand with 99% accuracy. The reason for the ban appears to be a "Violation of Fair-play Policy," according to the platform.
The year-long lockdown in India has forced people, especially the youth, to find new forms of entertainment. Thanks to the chess community and influencers like Samay Raina and IM Sagar Shah, online chess has increased significantly in the country.
Considering this, Chess.com recently hosted a charity event to raise COVID-relief funds for those affected in India. The event, called Checkmate COVID (celebrity edition), featured multiple prominent personalities, including Nikhil Kamath, Viswanathan Anand, Aamir Khan, Sajid Nadiadwala, Manu Kumar Jain, and more.
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Chess.com bans Nikhil Kamath for violating Fair-Play Policy
Chess.com India organized 'Checkmate COVID' on its official YouTube channel on June 13th, 2021. The pandemic fundraiser raised over ₹10 lakhs during the live stream, making the event a huge success.
The first set of celebs who played against Vishy Anand were defeated, with the exception of Nikhil Kamath. He showed brilliant tactics and succeeded in finding game-changing moves when required.
The audience, however, was not convinced that Vishy could be trounced. Especially when Nikhil's accuracy turned out to be 99%, the viewers and the chess community took the matter seriously. The match was so unbelievable that the popular International Chess YouTuber, Agadmator, released a post-match analysis.
After the match ended, viewers discovered that Nikhil's Chess.com account was banned for violating Fair-Play policy. The news spread like wildfire on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter before Nikhil responded to the cheating allegations.
Nikhil stated the following in his latest tweet:
"Yesterday was one of those days that I had dreamt of when I was a really young kid learning chess, to interact with Vishwanath Anand. Got the opportunity thanks to Akshaypatra and their idea of raising funds for charity conducting a bunch of chess games with Vishy. It is ridiculous that so many are thinking that I really beat Vishy in a chess game, that is almost like me waking up and winning a 100mt race with Usain Bolt."
He further added that,
"I had help from the people analyzing the game, computers and the graciousness of Anand sir himself to treat the game as a learning experience. This was for fun and charity. In hindsight, it was quite silly as I didn't realise all the confusion that can get caused due to this. Apologies..."
It was all pre-planned, and his motive was to 'treat the game as a learning experience,' added Nikhil, in his apology.
The 5-time world champion Viswanathan Anand himself replied to the drama and stated that he had just continued the position on the board while sustaining the ethics of chess.
Other than Anand, other notable personalities in the Chess community also reacted to the incident.
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