Kramnick repeatedly accused Danya of cheating, which prompted a lot of ongoing abuse from his acolytes. Danya spoke publicly about the stress this caused him several times.
Of course, as ever, Kramnick had nothing to back up his claims, a fact which in no way prevented him repeating them ad-nauseum.
That's not being "forthright" or "lacking tact". That's being an abusive asshole.
A tweet by IM Kostya Kavutskiy of ChessDojo from November 2024 (paraphrased):
> Our intention was to express concern for what's going on. Many of us supported Kramnik's fight against online cheating for some time.
> But then he started naming players left & right, some of whom were likely 100% innocent, who got their name dragged through the mud regardless. Kramnik also started naming actual children at one point, without any real evidence from what I could tell
> And it's not "just asking questions", it's casting aspersions. And the words of any world champion obviously carry a lot of responsibility.
This whole cheating kerfuffle would have never happened if people would have switched to games or variations of games that are not beaten by computers.
This has been discussed to death but to reiterate here: people have been much too polite about Kramnick's nonsense. Danya and Hikaru are (were) probably the two people in the world whose bullet play is least suspicious. Cheating isn't very powerful in short time controls, and they have streamed thousands of games playing them.
Kramnick's bullshit never made any damn sense at all.
no doubt they're two of the least suspicious, particularly Danya, but you're mistaken in thinking that cheating isn't very powerful in short time controls
Of course, as ever, Kramnick had nothing to back up his claims, a fact which in no way prevented him repeating them ad-nauseum.
That's not being "forthright" or "lacking tact". That's being an abusive asshole.