April 3 (Reuters) – U.S. grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura has criticised the International Chess Federation (FIDE) over what he described as excessive anti-cheating measures at the Candidates Tournament in Cyprus before his final victory chances went up into thin air on Friday.
Nakamura is one of eight players competing in the elite event, which will determine who is to challenge Indian teenager D Gukesh for the world chess championship later this year.
Nakamura took aim at the use of scanners and monitoring devices as part of FIDE’s anti-cheating protocol.
“I think it’s all complete nonsense,” he said on his YouTube channel.
“I am just going to be honest… they scan us before the games, they scan us after the game.
“They have the metal detectors, they have the separate scanners, I mean… I feel like what are we all? Mossad agents inside Iran or something. Come on, we are chess players, let’s be real, seriously, let’s be real.”
Nakamura lost his second game in five encounters on Friday and was left with 1.5/5 after suffering a tough defeat against Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov, who reached an unprecedented 4.5/5 at the Candidates by combining great preparation with precise play with the black pieces on the receiving end of a Marshall gambit.
FIDE defended the measures, saying they were vital in order to maintain the integrity of top-level competition.
“We find tight anti-cheating measures essential. What’s more, the sentiment is shared by the vast majority of players,” FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky told Reuters.
“At the same time, physical check-ups for players hardly changed since Toronto, and it is not that there is any noticeable difference for players.
“No other participant complained about it – and that’s for a good reason: all the extra measures control and intercept signals, whilst not demanding players to be additionally searched.”
Concerns over cheating in chess intensified in 2022 after former world champion Magnus Carlsen said that then-teenager Hans Niemann may have cheated following an upset loss at the Sinquefield Cup.
Niemann later admitted to cheating in online games when he was aged 12 and 16 but denied cheating in over-the-board events. He filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Carlsen, Chess.com and Nakamura, which was dismissed by a judge in June 2023.
That controversy is the subject of a Netflix documentary, “Untold: Chess Mates”, scheduled for release next week.
(Reporting by Karan Prashant Saxena in Bengaluru and Julien Pretot in Paris, editing by Ed Osmond)
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