this is how Vladimir Kramnik quit online chess forever

Kramnik narrowly missed qualifying when he flagged in a winning position against Keymer in the last round.
Vladimir Kramnik calls flagging "moral degradation" and vows to never play the Rapid Chess Championship event again after participating in it.

[coosoorlog]

it's not a rage quit. it's a disappointed at humanity quit.

[wlyTheEverydayWorld]

I feel for Kramnik, he didn't sign up to be an RTS pro when he decided to take up chess in the Soviet Union

[thesnackbandit]

This is a professional tournament with serious money on the line. Not only was what Keymer did well within the rules, but also an extremely common tactic. That said, I feel for Kramnik because that's a really shitty way to lose and to have a tournament without increment is just bonkers. There shouldn't be professional tournaments without increment, it's just ridiculous.

[jasonli]

I understand both Keymer's actions and Kramnik's emotions. I think for more serious tournaments like RCC, there should be a 1sec-3sec increment, just like TItled Tuesday. The whole point of increments is to avoid dirty flagging. However, I would have also played the clock in a losing position with few seconds on the clock. I guess that's online chess. Hope we can see less flagging and more quality chess in the future!

[roybiv]

Thats why Fischer invented the Fischer Clock.

[dertfert]

This is why I play with increment every time I take chess seriously. When I'm messing around (most of the time) I play without increment that way I can keep playing lost positions

[Anton]

Kramnik strongly discouraged the whole trend, when top level players participate in flagging. He said, he has no questions to both Keymer and Andreikin personally, but he would oppose this new trend to play until time ends instead of drawing.

[miroslavjanecek]

The real problem is the possibility of pre-move. Keymer had like two seconds and Kramnik like 10 so without pre-moves he could never make it in time. Not sure Kramnik even knows what a pre-move is and that's why he lost.

[ln]

Of course it was ok by rules and we all know the problems about playing with no increment, but on the other hand we all feel why this was especially cheap and probably puts the older generation in a structual disadvantage. Keymer was clearly beaten on the board and for Kramnik it just feels so disrespectful. Everybods feels this way when getting flagged, but the younger players are used to it and normally there is not that kind of money involved.

I understand Kramnik, but it's not really to blame on Keymer. Kramnik wasted a lot of time in the last moves and if you want to avoid stuff like this just give the players +2 or +5.

[Matthew-bufg]

This is exactly why this is not a rapid tournament. How many rapid tournaments do you see with zero increment?

It's a blitz tournament.

[jsd]

"Now we don't get to see Kramnik play tomorrow." Damn.

[friendlycomment]

All good and all rules were followed, no incident at all. If any incident then that Kramnik made some noise when someone followed rules. Flagging in case of zero increment is a standard strategy in online chess.

[CSGOCOMPILER]

People justifying it with many different reasons, like how there was money on the line, but winning against an opponent needs no justification.

[alk]

What's the point of playing with no increment? Just start an increment once there's less than a certain amount of time on the clock, no chess player enjoys these situations when there's simply not enough time to move the pieces without premoves.

[tonybestyo]

That's absolutely normal in Blitz and bullet online games, they crash their pieces into your face in last seconds to try to make you loose more time creating confusion. The crazy rook especially happens millions of times and, in this particular case it was easy to guess it would happen, easy to prevent too if you are used to blitz and bullet online games, maybe Kramnik is not used to it or it's hard to him to change his solid "over-the-board classic chess player mentality" at this point, but online fast games are a different story and last seconds flagging skills counts as much as how good chess you can play or even more at times!

[synchronium]

If a tournament has a time control you don't like, it's fine not to play it and even to advocate for the time control to be changed in the future. But if you do choose to play the tournament, you've gotta accept that the clock is part of the game.

[fernandoioio]

“Just resign” why resign when you can win?

[JTST]

well, Kramnik was us all when we lost our first winning game due to flagging

[eelkedeboer]

A related problem of short time format live online chess is slow internet service in some countries or locations. A player's time starts running down before he has even seen the last move.

[localmechanic]

On Levitov Chess he said everything about Keymer and Andreikin about this accident.
Shortly he very and verh disapointed and said that this is highly unrespectful..