Hikaru is definitely cheating. He said he was starting a diet and I saw him eating cookies. That’s the only cheating he can be accused of

I love the fact that hikaru himself is giving this about 1,000x more publicity than it would’ve received. The man knows the algorithm.

I wish Kramnik a speedy recovery, I don't wish this level of delusion on my worst enemy

Eric: reacts Hikaru: reacts to Eric’s reaction Eric: reacts to Hikaru’s reaction to Eric’s reaction Hikaru:

If he's cheating, he's the fastest cheater of all time.

You know things are bad when Eric defends Hikaru

The fact Hikaru called out Danya as one of three people who could have possibly fit that description is such a massive shout out from him. That just stood out to me as a really awesome shout out to hear.

Eric at 1.5x sounds like a normal person.

Hikaru puting Eric on 1.5 speed is a subtle roast

I believe Hikaru is at the peak of his chess career. He looks so happy and is living his life. I think that's one of the reasons why Hikaru has been playing the best chess recently. And we are very proud and happy for him. But these accusations are just ridiculous.

Someone has to tell Kramnik "just because you couldn't do it, doesn't mean he's cheating".

You know you're damn good at what you do when people make unfounded cheating accusations against you, props hikaru

Hikaru even blitzing his reaction to Eric Hansen.

Kramnik has officially lost it

Kramnik is actually going Insane.

In Levon Aronians words: “All my colleagues are paranoid ” *He then proceeds to stretch his back 30 times. 😅

The gold moment in this video was Hikaru stating that Kramick doesn't have a brain anymore.

Hikaru chats like a boss on a rampage while he's playing. There's no way he'd be able to concentrate on chess, respond to chat on subjects they bring up AND RECEIVE INPUT ON MOVES from an external source all at once. Saying Hikaru cheats doesn't pass the giggle test, let alone the smell test.

Hikaru couldn’t think as slow as kramnik

Has Kramnik ever even seen Hikaru do puzzle rush? 🤭

I died laughing when that "YAAAAAY" soundbite you play after someone subs happened right after eric said hikaru was accused of cheating.

I think it is very interesting, that Kramnik went to the bathroom all the time in his world championship matches. I wished Hikaru could make a video about this very interesting topic which might find a lot of people also very interesting

Fischer lost his mind before, and now Kramnik lost it completely. It seems like a mintal disorder happens to world champions, and I started to worry about Magnus😅

Hikaru literally doesn’t care about the allegations

Hikaru thought he would be exposed for cheating, he got exposed for being a hot asian girl trending on twitter.

I'm an avid chess player, in my fifties now. I grew up watching Karpov vs Kasparov, and Hikaru and all the other players since. Hikaru was just one of those players. Now I'm so grateful that Hikaru started streaming, I weirdly feel a connection with Hikaru. Hikaru lays it all out, and brings a really interesting insight on the world of chess.

Hikaru isn't cheating because the dude literally voices his entire game plan that he's thinking about

The fact that he is streaming isn't mentioned, but it's simply a fact that he thinks often outloud, draws arrows, premoves, etc makes even the most sophisticated cheating implausible. He literally has a camera and microphone surveillance on himself. I find this accusation laughable. I think it's a few chess insiders only who wanted to bring this to the behind the scenes griping and venting to the surface perhaps to generate discussion, make drama or whatever. Likely there is some agenda underlying this. The whole community isn't buying this nonsense. Not to mention we've seen the way he strategically uses the clock, and salvages hopeless positions. That's psychology and it happens as light speed. Even an engine cannot finesse its way through that. In fact the engine likely would lose those hopeless positions as best moves aren't the trickiest moves to keep your opponent wasting time. Also the only conceivable way to cheat with kernel drivers running a chess engine and using screen overlays direct on the graphics buffer to bypass browser detection or screen capturing, is a sophisticated project only a senior engineer with a lot of experience and time could pull off. And it would need to be updated with every Windows version and could break on driver updates. Not to mention you could keep the developers from talking about it. So I discount this as pretty much totally absurd as well. Technologically possible but extraordinarily impractical.

I think Kramnik's biggest mistake is not actually watching some of Hikaru's streaks and just referring to stats. If you've been watching his stream long enough, you see how real the Hikaru/Magnus effect is on opponents.

It is INSANE to believe that someone who livestreams his games and explains the thinking behind his moves as he goes is cheating. His accusers have to be ignoramuses. I'm 100% behind Hikaru.

Currently, Hikaru's average accuracy is 87.8 but in the last 7 days from now his average accuracy was 86.3... Lower than his average, his opponents just played a little worse and he got a streak, I doubt he was cheating.

Hikaru's not cheating, period.

He cut off precisely where Eric was about to talk about how Hikaru was actually the most original "everyone's cheating against me" dude lmao. Wonder how Hikaru would've attempted to defend that

It's really funny seeing Hikki being defended by Eric. Two of my favorite GMs of all time. It is always fun watching them compete against each other, but this video and Eric's video were a change of pace.

Because Hikaru is usually so casual and outspoken in the public people don't realize how monstrous he is at chess. Magnus is more of a mythical creature for average chess player because of his aura. But Hikaru just as much as a monster as Magnus, we just take it for granted.

Keep doing what you're doing Hikaru. Now my money's on you for the Candidates!

Eric called you the goat. He clearly has a lot of respect for you. Show the man some love! ❤

So beautiful to see Eric supporting Hikaru after the front lawn incident

i love your videos and this one is surprisingly one of my favorite. keep rockin!!!!

Even the actual cheaters got confused on this one.

Playing online is always different than OTB. It's definitely more comfortable at home, in your own chair, and set up. OTB chess is always a little more nerve wracking and you do move slower when having to reach for the pieces.

Statistically, there is no difference whether we pick 46 consecutive games or we pick every other game or every p-th game, where p is a prime. So the easiest way to "prove" someone is cheating is simply pick all games they won and say that their win rate is 100%. Kramnik needs to justify why he specifically chose those 46 games.

Ben Shapiro: Play at .5x to sound normal. Eric Hansen: Play at 1.5x to sound normal.

Hikaru should just interpret this situation as nothing but a massive compliment from one of the great chess legends. Kramnik is essentially saying that Hikaru is so good that it is quite literally hard to believe it.

Hikaru should challenge Kramnik to an over the board high security blitz tourney. I’ll bet Hikaru would beat him 46 times in a row

"he doesn't have a brain, he lost it" ~Nakaru Hikamura

the rating system itself can't even be used as a marker for blitz chess because the rating applies to so many different time controls... hikaru could be 300 points over someone on increment and 400 points over the same person without increment you wouldnt be able to disguinsh based on a combined rating if one players plays mainly one over the other

"He's been accused of cheating" " YYAAAAAAAAYYYYY"

I know Eric's and Hikaru's relationship is professional and not friendship, but hearing Eric talk at 1.5 speed and sound like a normal person is entertaining haha

Kramnik being a merchant banker, hikaru chasing that bank 🎉

For anyone wondering why the "Hikaru" trend is not related to GM Hikaru, the term 光(Hikaru) means light in Japanese, so it's a pretty common term used by many people in many aspects

Hikaru dressed like an easytech at staples

i drank a litre of motor oil yesterday

Maybe it’s just me, but I read that tweet like Nepo wasn’t agreeing with kramnik… seemed like he was saying kramnik is right to be concerned with cheating but this is not the battle to be fought (because he’s obviously wrong). And also meme-ing on kramnik by referring to him as some self proclaimed vigilante. I could be 100% wrong tho

Hikaru: It's still slow lets put it at 100x speed

Hikaru hides all of his chess moves in his brain.

Any doubts about Hikaru should be dispelled by seeing him do puzzle rush. That shit is straight up insane

Hikaru is melking his own drama. I love it! At least he produces some nice content after that ridiculous suspicions of that old delusional pal.

So chess grandmasters are essentially just gamers... "damn he shot me so quickly, I didn't even see him, cheater"

I love how Eric and Hikaru went from online beef to now he is defending him. Good sportsmanship.

Kramnik: this cockroach, this SWINE, I will EXPOSE him for the CHEAT he is Eric and Hikaru: we could probably make a lot of YT coin off of this...

Hikaru living a double life as a jpop star 😮

“this is the last time I’m pausing the video…” 😂 much love Hikaru. good job confronting the nonsense

Probability is an strange animal. Lets say the rating difference suggest H has a 90% chance at winning against a random player. Then the probability of H winning 44 in a row is less than 1 % But as soon as your not playing 44 random players but just a few you can throw that calculation out of the window. Different players have different playing style that can be a good or bad match. There may be a prehistory of intimidation and fear. So perhaps the chance of H winning may be 95 %. This subjective probability may come closer to the truth the the one derived from ELO diff. If this is the case then the probability of winning all games jumps to more then 10%. Lets assume that we have a tilt factor as well. So whe H has won three games in a row the probability goes up to 97%. Then we are not looking at a proposterous result anymore. People use statistics too casual sometimes.

Hikaru definitely enjoyed the showering of praise 😂

I remember on ICC Nakamora reached 3700 in blitz while the best computer at the time was rated 3300

It’s funny how Eric on increased speed sounds the same as Hikaru

Never accuse a GM the likes of Hikaru of cheating without actual proof. It’s in poor taste and we all know Hikaru doesn’t need to cheat. Hikaru is true elite class as a player and a person.

Another possibility is that the ratings aren't very accurate. I think in these cases, Hikaru also found some players who were a bit overrated online, and managed to farm them, also probably using the psychological advantage of being a GM. It might be a little unfair, but its not cheating. But maybe the rating system does need to be reformed a bit.

If I learned that Hikaru does cheat, then I would have to question everything I ever thought I knew. Incredible players have incredible stats, and his brilliance, is proven over and again on stream at a pace that couldn't even allow for cheating.

0:40 "...That he's been accused of cheating" "Yayyyyy"

Getting used to time makes a huge difference. I play nothing but bullet and I can crush in bullet bc I’m used to the time where as in blitz or rapid people have more time and you lose a big advantage if you’re good at the laying fast.

Kramnik needs a friend. Maybe we could all pitch in and buy him a puppy.

Great to hear Hikaru praising Danya

Hikaru putting the video speed up😂😂

Ive been playing chess for 7 months now and i recently won a chess tournament in my School im so happy when i won since all my opponent is older than i am i learned alot from Hikaru's content and help me improve more in playing chess

The one thing I'm still trying to figure out is, how on earth did Eric not lose his place counting when he scrolled up??

I've heard Hikaru is the top player whom most gm's dislike so i believe this is why many said hes cheating cause they dont like him but deep in their souls they know how good he is at online chess but they wish he wasnt... and im not a fan of hikaru i will never think hes cheating he has good skills with the mouse way better than any other top gm, thats it.

Frankly my first interpretation of Ian´s Tweet, "He is the hero gotham deserves, but not the one we need right now", was that he was refering to Kramnik, not Hikaru. I saw it as : Kramnik is what we need (or deserve) to fight cheating, but not what we need right now (because right now we dont need this sort of un-fundamented accusations against people like hikaru). But i could be wrong

Nepo's tweet referencing the dark night is literally just him saying that Kramnig is "speaking facts!!" but that no one is ready to hear it yet.

Imagine being that good at chess that even top players think you’re cheating 😂😂🤣

The Russians are still pissed about 1972.

Hikaru has shown his skills time and time again. Bong cloud, the Botez gambit.....he shows he is not afraid, talented enough to sacrifice and still win just for the heck of it

I remember Hikaru in NYC and in NJ. Hikaru always clobbered everyone in blitz even in his youth.

Bro is so good at chess that the former world champion accused him of cheating.

When your such a monster at chess people think you be cheating 😅

Hikaru's rant on Kramnik's brain is so good

i really want standupmaths to review this whole debacle. What kramnik did (and what Eric did, essentially) is basically called a "sampling bias" which is covered by Matt Parker of standupmaths when Dream's minecraft speedrun drama happened. We have to look at hikaru's 51 thousand games (and maybe distill it down to only the game mode in question) and account for all of them, and calculate the possibility of him having a run of 45 wins among the thousands of games he's played. At that point we would have something that is statistically sound to put blame on, if there's any.

Hikaru doesnt need to do this. Hikaru's track record has been on live in front of everyone since basically what...like...'94? '95? Hikaru you are worth more than this.

Eric is a Legend. He knows Hikaru is the Overlord.

Even hans is doing a face palm

To detect cheating requires more than just checking game results! Move accuracy and count of inaccuracies during time scrambles. Cheaters typically have a fixed time increment for their moves. There will be exceptions to this, as someone might not be referencing the engine moves directly, but just the scores at key times. nevertheless, one would expect particular gaps in move times if cheating.

When a former world champion thinks you’re cheating, that’s a massive compliment

this drama led me to the hansen/nakamura drama that happened a couple of years ago over alexandra botez, chessbae and the copyright strikes. from this video it seems like hansen and nakamura are on friendly enough terms, but i couldnt find much online about what ended up happening between them. can anyone who knows better explain what happened?

It makes me smile seeing an absolutely phenomenal player like Hikaru give credit to Magnus saying sometimes he is too good to beat in tournaments

There should be an event where Hikaru speedruns FMs and IMs. Pay every one to show up and double the pay for beating Hikaru.

9:55 hikaru calls danya a GOD

Hikaru is top 2 GOATed for online speed chess, with a longevity case for #1.

me: looks up the fight hikaru and eric

It's so funny that Hikaru has the video is at 1.5 and Eric is basically speaking at normal pace 😂😂😂