Ex-World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, 'the guy with the hammer who thinks everything is a nail

It's been a long few days in the world of chess. The issue of cheating in the sport is back in the headlines with a former world champion accusing another grandmaster of being up to no good. Courts have been dragged in to adjudicate with one player suing the other for slander. Only, this time around, there's a twist: unlike the Magnus Carlsen vs Hans Niemann incident, where Niemann sued the former world champion for implying that he had cheated, this time around it's former world champion Vladimir Kramnik who is doing both, the accusing and the suing, after dragging grand-master David Navara to court. This is the latest step taken by Kramnik in his infamous crusade to weed out cheating in online chess, a fight that the Russian seems to have dedicated significant mindspace to over the last couple of years. Kramnik posts data on his X account implying that there was something fishy in the way many grandmasters were competing in online games. It's a fight that has gained Kramnik no admirers, at least not publicly.

- GNS News Agency

The most recent grandmaster to try and coax Kramnik to see the light of reason is Levon Aronian, who's now posted three long emotion-laced posts on X aimed at a man who he calls his “chess parent”, each post displaying the delicate tact a hostage negotiator would ideally employ. "Volodya, my friend,” Aronian exhorts in one of his posts on X aimed at Kramnik using the Slavic name for Vladimir. “Perhaps my letter will seem disrespectful and inappropriate to you. But my goal is one. Let's reduce the intensity of passions... You think you're saving chess from cheaters. But most of us see you as the guy with the hammer who thinks everything is a nail,” Aronian says at one point. Over the course of his three posts, Aronian tries multiple tacts. Telling Kramnik that he's a great champion and amateurs do not deserve the attention he's given them in his YouTube breakdowns (“the king of beasts is engaged in catching mice”). Trying to convince Kramnik how much the world would benefit from an analysis of his own tactics from his world championship duels instead. Reminding the Russian how he was himself bullied by Veselin Topalov and his team, who accused Kramnik of being up to no good because he visited the toilet too many times (an incident known popularly as Toiletgate) during their World Championship battle in 2006. Trying to reason with him by saying that the sport is a family and kin cannot go around suing each other. And finally, telling him that no one who's close to him in the sport thinks what Kramnik is doing is “good and pure”. Vladimir Kramnik Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik in conversation with Chess24’s Mike Klein during round 9 of the Chess Olympiad in Budapest. (FIDE)“Chess world does not appreciate you enough... I feel the chess world and the new generation need to know about you... about who you are,” Aronian writes at one point. “And I want you to rem