Solve Hikaru Nakamura's Birthday Puzzle Challenge‎

GM Hikaru Nakamura has broken all manner of chess barriers in 2020. According to the man himself, he's now a professional streamer, focused on his groundbreaking content on Twitch and YouTube, streaming for thousands of hours and becoming both the first Twitch chess channel to surge past 500,000 followers (currently at 654,000) and the fastest-growing YouTube chess channel, currently at 466,000 subscribers. Nakamura also became the first elite chess player to be signed by an esports org, TSM.

Despite Nakamura now considering himself a professional chess streamer first and foremost, he's had huge success over the digital board in 2020. Today, he celebrated his 33rd birthday by reaching the 2020 Speed Chess Championship Finals, where he may face World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen (should Carlsen defeat French #1 GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on Dec. 11 at 9 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. CET) in their fourth match of the year. Nakamura sensationally knocked Carlsen out in the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge earlier this year, and he contested two exciting finals against him in the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, and the Magnus Carlsen Tour Finals.

Today, we invite you to celebrate Nakamura's 33rd birthday with him by solving 33 puzzles from his career. Just as Nakamura keeps entertainment the priority in his streams, some of these puzzles are presented more for their entertainment value than for their value as traditional puzzles so don't be too upset if some have multiple solutions

#1: Stripunsky vs. Nakamura, 1998

#2: Nakamura vs. Adu, 1999

#3: Nakamura vs. Novikov, 2002

#4: Nakamura vs. Berg, 2003

#5: Nakamura vs. Karjakin, 2004

#6: Crafty vs. Nakamura, 2007

#7: Lenderman vs. Nakamura, 2007

#8: Krasenkow vs. Nakamura, 2007

#9: Xiangzhi vs. Nakamura, 2008

#10: Rybka vs. Nakamura, 2008

#11: Lie vs. Nakamura, 2009

#12: Nakamura vs. Barron, 2009

#13: Nakamura vs. Friedel, 2009

#14: Nakamura vs. Carlsen, 2009

#15: Gelfand vs. Nakamura, 2010

#16: Nakamura vs. Van Wely, 2010

#17: Caruana vs. Nakamura, 2013

#18: Minh Le vs. Nakamura, 2014

#19: Holt vs. Nakamura, 2015

#20: So vs. Nakamura, 2015

#21: So vs. Nakamura, 2016

#22: Nakamura vs. Carlsen, 2018

#23: Nakamura vs. Wheeler, 2018

#24: Nakamura vs. Bai, 2018

#25: Firouzja vs. Nakamura, 2018

#26: Tang vs. Nakamura, 2019

#27: Nakamura vs. Carlsen, 2020

#28: Nakamura vs. Xiong, 2020

#29: Firouzja vs. Nakamura, 2020

#30: So vs. Nakamura, 2020

#31: So vs. Nakamura, 2020

#32: Nakamura vs. Firouzja, 2020

#33: So vs. Nakamura, 2020

Did we miss one of your favorite Hikaru Nakamura tactics (or Twitch clips?!)? Be sure to share it in the comments!