Edward Winter
From Books about Leading Modern Chessplayers:
Our feature article’s cut-off point was 17 January 2020.
Vladimir Kramnik (Szolnok, circa 1995) had (on pages 5-6) a brief biography in ‘English’. Some highlights are reproduced below:
‘Kramnik is the youngest one in the pleiad of today’s top-level world Grandmasters of today. ... His baptism of fire in the cycle for the world Championship was in July in 1993 in Bill. At the very beginning he burned himself at the Dutchman Van Vely, but later on he walked through the Swiss chess temple in triumph.
The eight-part finals match against Leonid Judasin was only a playing-in for Volodja (Kramnik is called so by his Russian fellows) ...
Volodja will surely remember the New York June in 1994 for a long time. He encountered the pitiless attacker, Gata Kamsky. ... The Russian longlegged suffered the great defeat but he didn’t waver. He maintains the high reputation and eats chess bread pleasantly at tournaments all over the world ...
Kramnik, however, differs very much from his somewhat older fellows of same age, who almost began to rule over the chess world. He is a nonconformist out of the chess board. He does not avoid the night associations, he is a passionate smoker and drinks willingly a small cup more as well.
... Volodja does not like to play dice at the chess board. He does it only as an unnecessary factor in the chess bag. He hand to do it once in his life. As a boy he used to play the table tenis excellently, he used to enjoy in goals on the green ground carpet. It is said that he was predicted some people the career of a top-ranking football goalgeter. The empire of the white-black squares, however, was more provocative one.’
(4624)
Zapiski sekundanta by Yevgeny Bareev and Ilya Levitov (Moscow, 2006) contains all the games of Kramnik’s matches against Kasparov (2000) and Leko (2004), as well as extensive biographical information about him.
(4795)
Page 237 of the Complete Book of Beginning Chess by Raymond Keene (New York, 2003) asserts that Capablanca’s 1921 feat of winning the world championship without losing a game ‘has never since been repeated’. What about Kasparov v Kramnik in 2000?
(3343)
Regarding Kramnik’s eventual receipt of the 2000 world championship trophy in 2008 [sic], see a cryptic, sourceless article on page 6 of the 8/2008 New in Chess.
From Reflections on Garry Kasparov:
We have it on the authority of Raymond Keene that after the fourth game of the 2004 Kramnik v Leko match in Brissago Peter Leko declared:
‘My cousin Sammy told me a true slugger – a Szeged slugger – will always swing for the fences, and that is exactly what I am going to do. I am going to knock Kramnik out of the room with my “home run punch”. My trainer and I have been developing it in camp. I just hope Vladimir’s head is screwed on tight or it may end up on top of the demonstration board!’
After quoting these words, on page 114 of his book World Chess Championship Kramnik vs. Leko, Mr Keene reported:
‘Kramnik made a face – and a fist – but chose to reserve a fuller reply for the chessboard.’
But did Leko, a gentleman, speak any of those words attributed to him by Mr Keene? Drawing this matter to our attention, Alan O’Brien (Mitcham, England) writes:
‘It struck me that this mix of boxing and baseball terminology sounded unusual coming from a Hungarian, so I decided to trace the source of the quote. The first time I have found it mentioned is at http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1306947&kpage=59. In a posting dated 3 October 2004 somebody using the pseudonym “Offramp” asserted that the words quoted above (completed with “I will knock Kramnik senseless. He is going down in game five. And he is going down HARD!”) had been spoken by Leko during a press conference after game 4.
Incidentally, Raymond Keene mentions the www.chessgames.com site many times in his book on the match, but not in this case.
I was curious as to where “Offramp” had obtained the quote, and at the webpage http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news/sternburg2210.php I found the following text:
“Sosa: ‘I'm Going to Knock Manfredy Out of the Park!’
… Dominican national lightweight champion Victoriano Sosa predicted a ‘home run-style’ knockout against former WBU champion Angel Manfredy when they rumble, Saturday, 9 November, on the pay-per-view extravaganza ‘Real Fights!’ …
Sosa, the cousin of Chicago Cub home run king Sammy Sosa, spoke today from his training camp outside Chicago …
‘My cousin Sammy told me a true slugger – a Sosa slugger – will always swing for the fences’, said Sosa. ‘And that is exactly what I am going to do. I am going to knock Angel out of the ring with my “home run punch”. My trainer and I have been developing it in camp. I just hope Manfredy’s head is screwed on tight or it may end up in the bleachers!’ …
‘I will knock Manfredy senseless. He is going down in five. And he is going down HARD!’”’
Yet another memorable episode …
(3752)
From page 98:
For Kramnik read Anand. For Topalov read Kramnik.
(8476)
Steve Wrinn (Homer, NY, USA) draws attention to a passage on page 404 of Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov Part III: 1993-2005 (London, 2014) regarding the game Leko v Kasparov, Linares, 2003:
Our correspondent remarks:
‘In the rapid game referred to by Kasparov it was Kramnik who had the rook against Leko’s bishop. Kramnik ultimately won on time at the 133rd move, and his decision to play on in a theoretically drawn position elicited various comments. For example, in the Los Angeles Times, 14 January 2001 Jack Peters wrote:
“The players revealed opposing attitudes to rapid chess in the time scrambles at the end of the seventh and tenth games. In both cases, Kramnik had a nominal advantage that Leko neutralized easily. In the seventh game, Kramnik, with only five seconds remaining, offered a draw to Leko, who had 23 seconds left. Leko graciously accepted. In the tenth game, Kramnik had the edge on the clock and kept playing a drawn position until Leko ran out of time.”’
(9273)
C.N. 9545 included the following from page 106 of Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov with Mig Greengard (London, 2015):
‘In October [2000], I had my first world championship title defense in five years, against my compatriot Vladimir Kramnik. I arrived in London in great shape, full of ideas and confidence. A month later I had been defeated in a title match for the first time, and without winning a single game. Kramnik had outprepared me and outplayed me and I was a victim of my own complacency after 15 years at the top. It was a crushing experience and, at 37, I briefly considered retirement for the first time. But my desire to prove I was still the best player in the world was too strong and I would retain my number one ranking until I retired in 2005.’
An excerpt from C.N. 9880:
In Instant Fischer, which examined six volumes on the 1992 Fischer v Spassky match, we commented:
The books, all written before the Kasparov-Short world championship controversy arose, show a surprising willingness to entertain Fischer’s claims to the world championship.
It is, though, necessary to bear in mind, and seek further information on, Kasparov’s ‘co-champion’ remark to Fischer, quoted in our above-mentioned feature article from page 282 of No Regrets by Yasser Seirawan and George Stefanovic (Seattle, 1992).
Anybody wishing to argue that Fischer was still the world champion in 1992 should, logically, also assert that he remained so until his death in 2008. That would make him the longest-reigning chess champion in history and would mean that Kramnik, for instance, never held the title at all. In reality, any chronicle which gives Fischer’s dates of tenure as other than ‘1972-75’ is, at best, eccentric.
A further passage from Instant Fischer:
The transcripts in No Regrets highlight Fischer’s aversion to Kasparov, who is described as a ‘pathological liar’ (page 55) and ‘an outright crook’ (page 151). After stating that Kasparov wrote a letter to him signed ‘your co-champion’, Fischer remarked, ‘He is not my co-champion, he is a criminal and should be in jail’ (page 282). Having announced (page 212) that he will write a book to justify his allegations of prearranged world championship games, Fischer can hardly now do otherwise, but whatever supporting ‘proof’ he may have should in any case have been presented concurrently with the accusations.
From Chess Thoughts:
The propagation of accusations and the supply of proof should go hand-in-hand.
Accusations need corroboration. Insinuations need
expurgation.
Establish misconduct and then go public, yes. Pluck an angle and then go angling, no. Inquisitorial not piscatorial.
How often can a suspicion be voiced before becoming an accusation? Twice?
Insinuations are proof – of an empty armoury.
On 24 October 2025 our feature article on Leonard Barden added a link to his Guardian column of the same day.
Daniel Naroditsky was an infrequent but fine writer on chess. Those less gifted, or whose native language is not English, can lessen the gulf if, for every text, they systematically embrace the freely available fact-checkers, grammar-checkers and spell-checkers, the ever-improving automatic translators, AI tools employed critically, and a second opinion from qualified confidants via e-mail. That is our diplomatic, impersonal wording. A more direct formulation would be that, and still referring only to linguistic standards and clarity of presentation, much of what Vladimir Kramnik has posted on X/Twitter and elsewhere has been execrable and continues to do his cause a marked disservice.
Our feature article on Daniel Naroditsky shows the conclusion of an inscription in his first chess book – the work of a prodigy and as such a record-breaking publication. The inscription itself is private, but we dwell on the date: 9 April 2010. It is a crushing thought that nearly half of his life had already gone.
(12236)
Further to C.N. 12236.
On page 5 of the November 2025 CHESS, an editorial by Malcolm Pein observes that there was ‘an outpouring of anger’ at the first of two messages on X/Twitter posted by Emil Sutovsky, the Chief Executive Officer of FIDE, after the death of Daniel Naroditsky.
As in C.N. 12236, we propose to focus on language, and from the same standpoint: why would the CEO of a world federation issue a statement left unchecked by basic computer tools? For example, Mr Sutovsky wrote incoherently:
‘It kept haunting him for more than a year, even if there was not much of polemics of recent.’
Another faulty text:
‘... public debate within the chess world has too often moved beyond the boundaries of acceptable, harming not only people’s reputation but ...’
‘The boundaries of acceptable’?
That line comes from a statement by the President of FIDE, Arkady Dvorkovich, dated 22 October 2025, the same day as Emil Sutovsky’s two X/Twitter posts. The President announced that ‘all relevant public statements’ by Vladimir Kramnik were being referred ‘to the FIDE Ethics and Disciplinary Commission for independent consideration’.
On or about 28 October 2025, a statement appeared from the ‘Chairwoman, Ethics & Disciplinary Commission’, Yolander Persaud. One paragraph reads:
‘I confirm receipt of, and I have read the numerous email petitions made to the EDC concerning the bullying campaign and alleged unfounded cheating claims directed at GM Naroditsky, even posthumously. I acknowledge your expressions of hurt and frustration.’
Incorrect punctuation aside, there is this to consider:
‘... concerning the bullying campaign and alleged unfounded cheating claims ...’
As that text stands, the ‘Chairwoman, Ethics & Disciplinary Commission’ is publicly affirming that there was indeed a ‘bullying campaign’. Many will say, ‘Of course there was’, but where does her declaration leave Vladimir Kramnik’s entitlement, before her Commission, to deny any bullying campaign?
On the other hand, the cheating claims are described by Yolander Persaud as ‘alleged unfounded’, which has no meaning.
What could have been intended? Has she decided, with or without her Commission, that the claims about cheating were alleged and unfounded, or just alleged, or allegedly unfounded, or something else again? Above all, what business is it of hers to judge anything before the promised ‘independent consideration‘ by her Commission has even begun? An AI tool would have suggested ‘cheating and bullying allegations’, a neutral wording which neither Vladimir Kramnik nor anyone else could reasonably contest.
Inquiries can drag on beyond the worst fears. It may soon be evident, if it is not already, that FIDE lacks the requisite independence and competence for such a major undertaking, and that an impartial outside body, such as an international investigation firm, needs to be engaged.
In the meantime, there is one practical step that FIDE officials, and not only them, could decide upon with immediate effect: no text will enter the public domain until the person or body concerned has found the short time needed to verify it properly with readily available IT tools.
Finally, our observation in C.N. 12166, dated 2 July 2025, is reiterated here:
The current battles over online cheating are a grimly undignified, barely intelligible mess with, as their hub, nothing better than X/Twitter.
There must be a better way.
(12237)
An addition to the C.N. main page on 15 November 2025:
Anyone listening to Vladimir Kramnik’s words about David Navara (YouTube video, 19:55-27:20) may feel that little is gained by prolonging their dispute, which escalated through communication failures and misunderstandings. Immediate closure would serve the best interests of both masters. For Kramnik, withdrawal of his legal action against Navara could be seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.
Vladimir Kramnik is still making frequent use of X/Twitter rather than offering a website on which his statements can be found easily, through rigorous indexing. He does, however, have a very brief, static ‘Fair Play in Chess’ webpage.
Chess Thoughts gives our overall view of the platform:
X/Twitter is a blighted battlefield where blustering snipers endlessly arm each other.
As in the case of two other feature articles (about Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Garry Kasparov), on current matters related to Vladimir Kramnik our prime interest is in what he himself has written or said, as opposed to other people’s accounts and opinions.
Addition on 20 November 2025:
Needed regarding online cheating: a check-list of Vladimir Kramnik’s 1) questions; 2) suspicions; 3) insinuations; 4) allegations; 5) accusations; 6) proof.
Addition to the main C.N. page on 7 December 2025:
12257. An insinuation
Vladimir Kramnik is still using X/Twitter.
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