The end of the match for the world title gave us a controversy from Magnus Carlsen, who assured that he would only defend his champion title against Alireza Firouzja. Now the controversy comes from the other side. And it is that the importance of this sport in Russia is well known by the chess fans. In fact, President Vladimir Putin himself has made clear on more than one occasion the importance of recovering the world chess championship for Russia (the last Russian champion was Vladimir Kramnik in 2007).
It is that recently it was known that Daniil Dubov, a Russian player and part of the team from that country, was part of “Team Carlsen” during the match against his compatriot Ian Niepomniachtchi. Once this news was known, there were not a few who came out to accuse Daniil of “traitor”, recalling those times of accusations of espionage and treason that occurred in the matches between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, and those of Anatoly Karpov against to Victor Krochnoi.
Treason accusations
One of the first to come forward to accuse Dubov was Sergey Karjakin, a former Carlsen champion who was part of Niepomniachtchi’s team for the world title match. This he said in a tweet after the match: “Of course I congratulate the world champion, but a little comment. Imagine you have to play a title match against Carlsen. Would you accept help from Hammer or Tari?”, in reference to Aryan Tari and Jon Ludvig Hammer, the GMs who are number two and three in Norway.
Another who came out to accuse Daniil, although more harshly, was the coach of his adolescence, Sergey Shipov, who said: “Ah, Danya, Danya… Why? For how much? Why was it not possible to rest for a match or comment on a website? And now the seeds of discord have been sown in the Russian team”.
In addition, Shipov made a comparison on what would have happened in the case of Azeri or Polish chess players: “Imagine that Duda is playing the match and Wojtaszek helps his rival. How would they look at it in Warsaw? Or if Mamedyarov plays the match of his life and Radjabov is on the other side. Would they react calmly in Baku? “.
What did Niepomniachtchi say?
Ian Niepomniachtchi chilled the controversy. Far from being outraged like many of his compatriots, the world runner-up responded when asked: “We should thank Dubov for that!” since he understands that those games in which Dubov‘s help was seen much more were those in which he had the most chances to win.
Despite this, Niepomniachtchi considered that the most logical thing would have been for Daniil to remain neutral. In an interview with him for the Russian Chess Federation, Ian commented: “Above all, I think it is an aspect of the business, because Daniil has been cooperating with the Carlsen team since 2018. On the other hand, we also worked together for a few two years, so it would make more sense for him, in my opinion, to remain neutral. On behalf of the team, however, we must thank Dubov, because my best chances of winning in singles matches came after those ideas that, it seems, can be attributed to Daniil’s manual work”.
What did Dubov reply about the controversy?
Of course, in the face of so many accusations, the Russian GM had to come out to defend himself. In an interview for championat.com, Daniil responded to the question of when he started working with Carlsen for the world title match: “Before the start of the Candidates. They asked me what I thought about the idea of helping. I replied that it would be ok. That is perhaps the first thing I would like to point out about this rather strange review. In normal teams all theagreements are formulated in advance”.
On the other hand, Dubov established a difference between a Carlsen-Niepomniachtchi match and one between the Russian and Norwegian teams, understanding that it is not the same for two chess players to play for the title as two countries. On the question of whether the world championship was by teams, the Russian GM replied: “So, of course, it most likely won’t help the Norwegians, but this was a Niepomniachtchi against Carlsen. And there are not only Russians on Ian’s team, as I understand it. Here, you could say, he is a blond haired boy against a dark haired boy”.
