Nikhil Kamath Resorted To ‘Unfair’ Means To Win Chess Game Against Viswanathan Anand

New Delhi: The charity chess game turned out to be a blooper instead of raising hopes after Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, who won against five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand accepted using unfair means during the match.

Expressing his views on the incident, the All India Chess Federation (AICF) Secretary Bharat Chauhan said it is “unfortunate” to see unfair methods employed in a charity chess game by Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath.

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In a Covid-19 relief charity match, Kamath defeated Anand, but reports claimed Kamath manipulated the game to register a win.

The AICF secretary termed it as a “bad” move by Kamath and said it shouldn’t have happened.

“It is very unfortunate it was a charity match. We don’t expect anybody to get help from computers, at the national and state level we are following the protocols. We are putting cameras where players are playing and there is a fair play committee which includes three grandmasters and two players,” Bharat told ANI.

“All things are completely followed but in this kind of charity match, we didn’t expect anybody to do this. It is very unfortunate such things have happened. He is not a player and he has apologised in public. He is not a regular player or our member we don’t have jurisdiction, he was doing it for charity he shouldn’t have done. This is really bad. For the noble cause, we are helping people and such things shouldn’t happen,” Bharat added.

Once reports came to the fore, Kamath issued a public apology saying he took help from some people and computers to analyse the game.

“Yesterday was one of those days that I had dreamt of when I was a really young kid learning chess, to interact with Vishwanath Anand. Got the opportunity thanks to Akshaypatra and their idea of raising funds for charity conducting a bunch of chess games with Vishy. It is ridiculous that so many are thinking that I really beat Vishy in a chess game, that is almost like me waking up and winning a 100mt race with Usain Bolt,” Kamath said in a statement.

“I had help from the people analyzing the game, computers, and the graciousness of Anand sir himself to treat the game as a learning experience. This was for fun and charity. In hindsight, it was quite silly as I didn’t realise all the confusion that can get caused due to this. Apologies,” he added.

Anand also took to the micro-blogging platform saying he just played the position on the board and expected the same from everyone.

The Checkmate Covid program is launched to rope in people from the Chess community apart from Anand dedicated to this cause. “Yesterday lot of celebrities, like Aamir Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Kamath were there and various other celebrities were there for the initiative,” Bharat said