Billionaire admits cheating in chess to beat Indian leader

New Delhi, India | An Indian billionaire admitted he took advantage of the “help” of computers to beat five-time world champion Vishwanathan Anand, during an online charity tournament on Sunday.

Nikhil Kamath, founder and managing director of an online brokerage firm, used computers but also experts in an online chess tournament and beat the world champion organized for the Covid-Relief fund to fight the coronavirus.

On Monday, he admitted that he had “benefited from the help of people analyzing the game, computers and the kindness of Mr. Anand personally to treat the game as a learning experience”.

“It’s ridiculous for a lot of people to think I really beat Mr. Vichy (Vishwanathan) at chess, as if I got up and beat Usain Bolt in the 100m,” Mr Kamath wrote on Twitter. “Going back it was pretty stupid because I didn’t realize all the confusion it could cause. My apologies.”

For his part, the 51-year-old senior teacher downplayed the importance of Mr. Kamath’s actions.

“(…) It was about raising the money. It was a fun experience, and the ethics of the game were respected.” “I played center (on) the chessboard and expected the same from everyone.”

On the other hand, the Secretary General of the Indian Chess Federation (AICF), Bharat Chauhan, did not appreciate the incident described as “extremely unfortunate”, noting that players are expected to respect protocols. . Mr. Kamath “was involved in charity, he shouldn’t have done that. It’s really unfortunate,” he added.

The Indian chess master won his first world title in 2000 at the age of 30 and competed against the world’s greatest champions such as Russia’s Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik and Soviet-born Israeli Boris Guelfand.

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