How to lose

Millions of people would see losing to Anand as a privilege rather than a disgrace. So it is simply astonishing that one lucky opponent, facing the Indian star in an online simultaneous display, squandered the opportunity by cheating.

‘Checkmate Covid, celebrity edition’, hosted earlier this month by Chess.com, was supposed to be a lighthearted event, with a handful of Indian celebrities taking on the former world champion to raise funds to tackle the pandemic in India. Billed as India’s youngest billionaire, Nikhil Kamath is the co-founder and CIO of Zerodha, an Indian brokerage company, but his claim to have been a chess champion in his youth looked doubtful when he blundered a pawn on the very first move.

After that, his moves were conducted with superhuman precision, and 30 moves later Anand’s position was hopeless (see diagram). Capturing either the knight (as in the game) or the rook both lead to disaster. But it didn’t take long for the audience to notice how closely Kamath’s moves had matched the suggestions of a chess computer. (Nor was he the only opponent displaying suspicious levels of ‘accuracy’.)

In the final position, Anand might have tried to continue the game exploiting the fact that Kamath had nearly run out of time. Instead, his gentlemanly resignation cast a spotlight on the incident.

Kamath seemed at first unaware of the sporting norms he had trampled on, implying with his tweet that it was all part of the fun. ‘I had help from the people analysing the game, computers and the graciousness of Anand sir himself to treat the game as a learning experience.’

Anand would certainly have sensed the deception while the game was still being played. With devastating courtesy, he made it clear that he expected no such thing from his opponents: ‘I just played the position on the board and expected the same from everyone.’