Nikhil Kamath ban lifted as Anand says ‘forgot and forgave’

MUMBAI: It was not all well but it surely ended well for

Nikhil Kamath

, one of the youngest billionaires in the country. Having been banned by chess.com on Monday for admittedly adopting unfair tactics in a charity chess game against Viswanathan Anand, Kamath had the benefit of having his account restored by the international chess platform 24 hours later.

Of course it was all thanks to the munificence and large-heartedness of Anand, who wanted to move on, forgetting and forgiving everything. “Chess.com has elected to reopen all of the accounts in question during the event. Given the forthcoming cooperation of the players and the clarification that not all the rules were properly understood, neither Chess.com nor Anand himself see any reason to uphold the matter any further,” a spokesman for the US-based chess site told TOI.

In a fundraiser, organized by Bangalore-based

Akshay Patra Foundation

on Sunday for Covid victims, Anand played nine celebrities, including Aamir Khan, Ariit Singh, Riteish Deshmukh, Ananya Birla among others and one of them was Kamath, who had the distinction of beating the five-time world champion. It soon emerged that the Bangalore-based businessman had taken the assistance of chess engines and was promptly caught by the algorithm programme of Chess.com, which provided the online platform for the charity games. Kamath confessed to taking assistance of chess engines.

Chess.com has a robust policing system and it could easily detect that Kamath’s moves were computer-assisted and as per its anti-cheating policy, it locked Kamath’s account. But on Anand’s request the website lifted the ban on Kamath on Tuesday night. “We made this decision solely based on the fact that

Vishy Anand

is the offended party. Vishy Anand wants to forgive and forget. Chess.com has no reason to uphold anything given its rules and guidelines toward unrated games and exhibition events."

“Because Mr. Kamath provided a confession, we are able to follow our standard procedure that we would follow for any other account: allowing them back on the site. While normally we would require a new account to be made, because the only game in violation received a confession, and it was during UNrated play, the answer is yes, he is allowed back on the site,” the website spokesperson further said late on Tuesday night.

Anand could not be contacted but he posted a comment on his Twitter handle saying, “It’s time to move on and get closure on this.”