The American Hikaru Nakamura is currently playing surprisingly successfully at the Grand Prix in Berlin. The Internet streamer invested much less time in preparing for the tournament than all of its opponents.
Photo: World Chess
Lower lip forward, eyebrows raised, head tilted to the side and a short shrug. This gesture has become Hikaru Nakamura’s trademark. Whenever the chess player is asked whether he is happy about a win, whether he regrets a move, whether he is annoyed by a defeat, he makes this movement and says dryly: “I don’t care anymore.” After all, he is no longer a professional chess player . “I have a real job now,” he says. Nakamura has been describing himself as a streamer for almost two years. But he is far from out of the scene. One could even claim that he has risen to become the second greatest chess star after Magnus Carlsen – thanks to Corona!
Born in Japan, Nakamura moved to the USA at the age of two. His stepfather became the first chess coach, and it quickly became apparent that the boy had talent. Nakamura defeated much older opponents, eventually won tournaments, and in 2003, at 15, became the youngest grandmaster the United States had ever produced. He took this record from none other than former world champion Bobby Fischer.
Like so many “child prodigies” before and after him, Nakamura was prophesied for a great chess career, so he followed the usual path of the professional, zipping around the world from one tournament to the next. Always on the hunt for wins, more points on the Elo rankings and invitations to the highest-paying competitions.
Despite being a five-time US champion between 2004 and 2019 and hitting the 10th-highest Elo rating of all time in 2015 at 2816, it’s hard to say he ever really made it – at least not financially. Although many consider the 34-year-old to be the best blitz chess player of all, he never became world champion, not in rapid or blitz chess and certainly not in the classic variant, in which games can sometimes last seven hours instead of just a few minutes. Without such a title, however, nobody manages to live from chess without stress in the long term. Basically, this only applies to Norway’s world champion Magnus Carlsen, who has dominated the scene for a decade and, unlike his opponents, has been able to conclude advertising contracts worth millions. Everyone else plays analog or online for four or, rarely, five-digit prize money. Only the top 20 in the world are likely to receive sign-on fees of a similar magnitude. Very few become rich with chess.
And then came the pandemic. No more tournaments, no more travel. Was it all over now? On the contrary: Everything at the beginning! All new – at least for Hikaru Nakamura. As early as 2017, he began to stream himself from time to time playing online chess on the Twitch platform. But only a few people saw the live broadcasts. Nakamura went online too sporadically, the picture and sound quality was too amateurish, and the content produced was too monotonous. A niche product for chess fans, that’s all it was.
But with the lockdown in early 2020, the chess world changed. Suddenly, millions of people around the world were looking for new hobbies to spend at home. At the same time, the Netflix series »The Queen’s Gambit« celebrated an unexpected hit with viewers and drove many to online chess. Nakamura also changed his approach. Instead of continuing to study and memorize thousands of opening moves, he put everything on the streaming card: While he was online for an average of two hours a month in 2017, by April 2020 he had increased a hundredfold. »GMHikaru« now sits in front of the camera and computer for up to ten hours almost every day and has long since ceased to only offer chess when he has 10,000 to 20,000 followers watching him. Nakamura plays video games, laughs his ass off memes, solves puzzles, or collaborates with other streamers from all walks of life. He’s also getting more and more creative in chess: he tries out wild variations, he organizes speed runs in which he defeats as many opponents as possible in the shortest possible time, or he discusses the latest gossip from the chess community.
Fun at work: Nakamura streams for hours every day for millions of followers.
Photo: Youtube
His number of subscribers on Twitch broke the million mark in February 2021, as did that of his YouTube channel, on which he uploads the best clips from his streams. Half a year earlier, the e-sports team TSM, which otherwise attracts two million young users with video games such as League of Legends or Dota, had signed Nakamura for an alleged six-figure annual salary. This is how the gamer became the e-sportsman Hikaru Nakamura.
Not even during his most successful days on the analog board did he ever earn as much as he does now – thanks to all the “emotes”, “subs”, “primes” and “donations” with which subscribers regularly reward their favorite streamers for the entertainment provided. However, Nakamura is hilariously amused by articles that certify that he has the greatest fortune of any chess player at 50 million dollars. He’s overestimated by at least ten times, and he can’t keep up with Carlsen. But one thing is clear: Nakamura has taken care of it. In the literal sense, he doesn’t have to worry anymore. Or, as he likes to put it himself: the worries that »normal« chess professionals have »don’t bother me anymore«.
For a few months now, Nakamura has also been going back to the analog board from time to time. At the World Rapid Championship in Warsaw in December, he finished seventh after a two-year break. A better placement in the lightning variant only prevented a corona infection immediately afterwards. That wasn’t surprising, after all, Nakamura plays almost exclusively the short versions online that last only a few minutes, in which intuition, quick reactions and creativity are particularly important. But can he still keep up in classical chess when opponents bombard him with more than 20 opening moves that supercomputers had previously worked out for months?
The American has been giving the impressive answer since February at the Grand Prix. Certainly also thanks to his increased popularity, the world association Fide had given him a wild card for the Grand Prix, which was divided into three tournaments in Berlin and Belgrade. There was also criticism of that. The Russian grandmaster Sergei Karjakin demanded that Fide should give his young compatriot Andrei Jessipenko a chance instead of inviting a player who has long since retired.
Because the Chinese Ding Liren couldn’t travel, they both made it to the first tournament in Berlin – and Nakamura clearly enjoyed it as he threw Jessipenko out of the tournament with a win and a hard-fought draw. Then he also defeated the world ranking tenth Richárd Rapport from Hungary and in the final the fourth in the ranking, Lewon Aronjan from the USA. The streaming retiree finished the tournament undefeated. He often fell behind in the game openings, but was able to free himself again and again when the human part of the game followed the chess prepared on the computer and intuition and creativity were required again.
But it seems much more important that Nakamura no longer feels any pressure, and that has freed him. He’s not afraid of the one blunder that shatters all hope. Because he has no hopes. On the other hand, the Hungarian Rapport in Berlin said: »When I was a student and didn’t take it that way, I enjoyed chess. Since it’s no longer a hobby, it’s all about results. If you don’t win, you may eventually run out of money. I don’t enjoy it anymore. I would probably be a lot happier if I had put all that time and energy into another job.«
The pressure is particularly high at the Grand Prix, because the two best bid for the last invitations to the World Championship Candidates Tournament, in which the opponent for World Champion Carlsen will be determined in June. Since the success in the first tournament in February, Nakamura suddenly has a good chance of reaching the biggest chess stage again. If he makes it to the semi-finals again in the last part of the Grand Prix at the World Chess Club Unter den Linden in Berlin, no one can oust him from the top.
But this time the start failed. Nakamura loses his first game, in the next two he just saves two draws. “I only play chess for fun anymore. I used to spend hours annoyed about missed opportunities. Now they don’t bother me for a minute,” he says almost defiantly after the opening defeat against Aronjan. “I’ll just start the next game.” So Nakamura puts on his coat, hurries across the street to the hotel, and sits down at the computer. No more analysis, instead he starts the stream because his subscribers at home are already waiting.
The next day he’s angry. He says he slept less than two hours. Not because of the loss. No, Nakamura was banned from Twitch for three days for showing another streamer’s game that he didn’t know was still banned. “It was unfair and exaggerated,” he says. Even worse: Because the organizer of the Grand Prix continued to show him in his stream during the tournament, Nakamura even threatened a lifelong ban through no fault of his own. ‘And that could ruin everything. That concerns me more than the tournament,” says the American. You probably have existential fears in every job.
The redeeming news reached Nakamura on Thursday evening. The ban on the streaming platform was lifted a day earlier than planned. After that, he slept three times as long, he reports. And he sits free on the board again. On Friday, Nakamura beat Aronjan in the second leg, giving him every chance of winning the tournament again.
