"Hikaru Nakamura used to accuse Arjun Erigaisi of cheating" - Grand Master Srinath Narayanan on 'Kramnik vs Nakamura' controversy
Amid the controversy between Vladimir Kramnik and Hikaru Nakamura, Young Indian chess grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi's former coach and mentor Srinath Narayanan has said that Nakamura accused the Indian prodigy of cheating three years ago.
Russian chess grandmaster Kramnik recently alleged that American grandmaster Nakamura is cheating in online games. This was followed by a series of online exchanges between the two players.
Born in Telangana's Warangal district, Arjun is the first grandmaster from the South Indian state. He started playing chess in 2015 and three years later, became the grandmaster at the age of 14 years and 11 months.
But instead of receiving praise for his massive jump, the teenager was asked to "stop cheating" from Hikaru Nakamura through direct messages on an online chess portal. While speaking to The Indian Express about the matter, Srinath, a 29-year-old grandmaster himself, said:
"Hikaru used to accuse Arjun of cheating. This was two or three years back. He was pretty confrontative about it. Arjun felt sad about it, that someone he looked up to as a chess player was accusing him just because he was playing well.
Hikaru stopped messaging Arjun Erigaisi after the youngster took the matter to the portal and got clearance of any misconduct. Arjun is currently ranked 23rd (2727 ratings) in the men's FIDE rankings while the American holds the third spot with 2788 ratings.
Hikaru Nakamura gets a taste of his own medicine?
Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik shared a petition link in a recent blog, urging Chess.com (an online portal to play chess on) to investigate Hikaru Nakamura's matches. The Russian has been vocal right since Hikaru's winning streak of 45 matches and a draw in Title Tuesday, a popular online chess competition.
Kramnik also drew a statistical comparison between Hikaru and other prominent Grand Masters such as Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja in his blog. The Russian argued that both Carlsen and Firouzja have better ratings than Hikaru but they have registered winning streaks of 32 and 17, respectively. On the other hand, the world's third-ranked American has won 79 games on the trot.
Chess.com carried out a thorough investigation in Hikaru's matches following the accusations, but couldn't find any substantial evidence against him, just like the American GM couldn't find anything against Arjun Erigaisi.