GM Hikaru Nakamura's recent emotional outburst, and why it matters?

“Hikaru has completely lost his mind” GM Aman Hambleton (Chessbrah) titles his video in response to Hikaru's latest emotional outbreak.

This absolute dumpster fire in the chess world recently got ignited during the 2024 Bullet Chess Championship when Hikaru Nakamura; the already two times winning champion in this format and a fan favorite, winning most of the games and gets sent to the finals bracket faces off against Alireza Firouzja, the french challenger rising from the losers bracket ready to snatch Hikaru’s attempted hat-trick win in this tournament format.

Before the first match could begin Alireza requested the tournament organizers to allow a slightly longer break which Hikaru agreed upon – unbeknownst to him, this mistake would come back to bite him.

The tournament started off-schedule which was agreed upon by players and during the 11 hard-fought battles Hikaru was trailing behind by 3 points from Alireza’s fire-like and enigmatic chess, it was quite evident that Hikaru was starting to become more aggressive, blundering and committing to high-risk moves that Alireza wonderfully countered, this is further insinuated by the commentators discussing during the 11th game:

Benjamin Bok asked Aman Hambleton during the game in this position “Do you think Hikaru is tilted here? jamming the H-pawn on the board?” with Aman followed up a response “…prior to seeing the last couple games, I don’t really think Hikaru really tilts but, I think the main reason he doesn’t tilt is because…” and while Aman tries to vouch for Hikaru, he resigns the game and gives another win setting the score 8-4, which is followed up by Alireza laughing at Hikaru’s sudden resignation.

“Hikaru is looking tilted, lets see if he can shake it off” Benjamin Bok proclaims, providing hope to the fans watching the stream for Hikaru to win, however, the next game would completely seal the fate of any chance Hikaru had on winning this tournament, later during the 13th game Hikaru gives up his bishop, missing a crucial attacking move from Alireza causing him to immediately lose 6 games in a row with the new score being 9-4.

At this point it’s clear that Hikaru isn’t at his best state and has completely self-imploded, losing any chance of him winning and getting a hat-trick of his tournament wins, he reclined back to his chair expressing frustration and muted his stream.

I think from here on, it's best to see the highlight of the stream, where Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura ranked #3 in the world, and probably one of the most noticeable figures in the chess community expresses his frustration to the fair play arbiter and Alireza Firouzja:

In a fit of rage, Hikaru asks the rhetorical question to Alireza “…Who the f*** do you think you are? Seriously?”

Miraculously, the game later on continues and ends up with Alireza winning the tournament, after the tournament, Hikaru continues to stream and once again, I believe you should take a look at the video to understand why he deserves “the sportsmanship award”:

This kind of rage isn’t rare in a game as cruel as chess, humans tend to be emotional and make mistakes – even the best of us can have worst days, however such unfiltered anger and hostility between two chess players has rarely ever been documented in a live chess game being broadcasted to hundreds of thousands.

However, Hikaru being presented as a prominent figure of chess.com and Chess in general, coupled with the fact that he went ahead to use the tournament starting off-schedule as ammunition for an excuse later on despite initially agreeing to it, shows how two-faced of a person he is, out of the massive following Hikaru has most of them would be oblivious to this outrage as he has recently deleted his streams (however, the clips of him badmouthing Alireza and his family, including Aman Hambleton are still available in YouTube and Reddit).

Chess.com hasn’t penalised Hikaru Nakamura for the outrage towards Alireza and the tournament commentators, despite his apology on stream, I believe the lack of any action for chess.com to at least provide a statement or warning to Hikaru prior to his apology video does speak a lot on how unfair “the Fair Play policy” really is; excluding only a select few of players that are the mascot of chess.com (Please do correct me if I’m wrong if chess.com did provide any statement with a link of your evidence in the comments).

In my opinion, the only example I can think of that is close to rivalling an emotional implosion that was broadcast to countless chess fans and impacted the player itself was Magnus Carlsen leaving the post-game press interview during the Classical World Chess Championship in 2016 – this happened after drawing a winning game against Sergey Karjakin, which if not attended could result in a 10% penalty towards the 1.1 million dollars of prize money in accordance to the rules by FIDE (10% of 1.1 million dollars being 110,000 dollars, which is approximately the same amount of money that chess players approximately make in a year!)

Although it didn’t include any cursing to one another, the emotional impact that the draw had on Magnus was significant enough for him to lose 110,000 dollars, this case is similar to Hikaru losing potential chances of ever attending any further tournament due to him being disrespectful to another player.

I would like to know your opinions on what public chess scandal or situation you could think of that rivals a public emotional implosion similar to Hikaru’s! : )

 - Made with <3 from sh4hneel

True, even when seeing this entire situation in a objective lens, its evident that Hikaru seems to be very emotional in most online tournament games comparative to other players. For example once again, i remember Magnus Carlsen blundering his queen during a time skirmish with Hikaru Nakamura which caused him to tilt, sure, but he didn't badmouth anyone as far as I know after or during that tournament, this is how a high status chess player should aspire to be in a professional setting during a online tournament.

Even magnus curses. In one of the fabianos podcasts he said that magnus curses alot jn norwegian while he is lossing. So I think its normal cause it is said even ian curses in russian when he is lossing so if you ask me its normal. But he own a big appology to Alireza for that. Its better he does that. Kind of I would defend hikaru if serios things happen but Alireza took things well.

Remember the fight between eric and hikaru while fabiono was chillingly watching?

haha its a timeless classic, hikaru vs eric and hikaru vs aman (2 times in a row, hikaru started another beef back then and tried copyright striking chessbrah's videos i think 2 years ago - correct me if im wrong) and now we're introduced to another new chess drama that just started yesterday: Hikaru vs Hans Niemann 💀

lemme know if you guys want a post on that as well ; ) <3

Imagine a boxing match. Hikaru vs kramnik🤣(mike tysons new fight referrence)