Anish Giri commented on Denis Lazavik’s recent statements. Giri says that Lazavik is trolling, and believes that the situation will not cause problems for Denis. Anish spoke about it in an interview with ChessBase India.

Anish Giri

Anish Giri

Netherlands' No. 1

“Denis might be better at chess than Hikaru, but he’s a little new to the internet. And he probably didn’t realize that these streams… There might be 10 live viewers, but if you say something juicy, internet will eventually pull it out.

It’s really, really cool. It is kind of fun to see that Denis also has a trolling personality to him. Because he’s usually very reserved, very shy, just great at chess. But now he’s also quite good at trash talk.

Me and my friends we saw this interview. It was absolutely hilarious. We really loved it and it’s kind of funny how it happened.

I think it will, sort of, be fine for him. Because the funny thing is that, although he’s very mean, he actually beat him twice. You can’t say anything back actually. So, it is kind of interesting.

A little out of character, but again, I think it’s all good. He didn’t say anything too bad, as far as I know.

I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I saw some quotes. And I think, if you see them in context, it’s just a good trolling there by Denis.

It’s good that more chess players get into some online trouble and not just me. It’s good to see that.”

Denis Lazavik made a series of statements in an interview on the Chess Yaroslav YouTube channel. Lazavik commented on his win over Hikaru Nakamura in the semifinal of the EWC 2026, on Abhimanyu Mishra’s statement about difficulties with financial support, and on the division of Mikhail Shereshevsky’s chess training camps into men’s and women’s.

Credit: Michal Walusza / FIDE