Ladies and gentleman, Hikaru Nakamura is back

Ladies and gentlemen, Hikaru Nakamura is currently getting smacked around the board by Levon Aronian.

I just wanted to update this thread.

Edit:  Nakamura is putting up a strong fight.  He's making Levon work hard for the win.

The first 23 moves of that game were wild. Looked like some intense theory there.

I was wondering if it was theory.  It was crazy early.  

It's really crazy they're in the same rr,  given the grand prix implications of winning that section. Especially with Richard Rapport already at 20 points. 

Ladies and gentlemen, Hikaru Nakamura has been banned from twitch

...and ur point ?...op ?

Has he really?

Edit:  mmmkay,  it's only 3 days for not knowing about the rule of having a video of a banned person (if I understood that right). Weird rules if that's true. 

Naka struggled both rounds. He's gotta win this rr to have a chance at the candidates. 

Nakamura Hikaro!

I'm guessing his Twitch ban has negatively affected his performance. Twitch streaming has been his main career and lifestyle for the past few years.

Getting banned from the platform that makes up your livelihood would surely mess with your concentration.

On his YouTube recap, he said he has been unable to sleep from how upset the Twitch ban has made him. I'm quite curious to know if he learned about the ban before or after his game against Aronian ...

(Aronian is such a powerhouse player. One can't reasonably expect to do well against him with anything other than full concentration ...)

is it hee-kah-roo ?...or heeka-roo ?

say the 1st one slow & the 2nd one fast.

Hikaru:

hee-KA-roo

Stress on the second-to-last syllable.

If his name were something like Kaichi, it would be pronounced: ka-EE-chi (stress on the second-to-last syllable).

He's struggling against Oparin right now. He was lost for a brief moment but is right on the edge of being lost again.  I bet the twitch thing did affect him.

sad distilled. i wanted to laff ! 

Why was Hikaru banned?

Benko gave his spot to Fischer in 1971.

Not sure what the rules are on that.

Hikaru has white against Aronian today.  He's got 3 games to turn it around to have a chance to get into the candidates. I'm thinking he'll have to score 3 - 0 to have a chance.

It starts in 6 minutes.

Aronian will be a titanic opponent to face (as he always is). Hikaru keeps toying around with his repertoire, trying to surprise and confuse his opponents. He sprang the KID yesterday because, according to him, he wanted to be unexpected (even though he hadn't played the KID, classically, in half a decade).

I wonder if he'd perform better by simply sticking with his known repertoire, instead. (I don't play at that level, though, so perhaps this is a normal practice ...)

Also, his twitch ban ended a day early so he's back on there with only a 2 day ban. 

That seems to have improved his mood / play. Currently dominating Aronian at the board ...

Naka just won & it looks like Oparin will win his game also. So with 2 games to go Oparin is at 2.5 & Aronian & Naka have 2 with Esipenko at 1.5.

Naka has white against Oparin on Sunday & like I posted earlier Naka will have to win them both to have a chance to qualify for the candidates. 

Update:  Naka just beat Oparin. Aronian won also. They're tied with 1 game left. Naka has a good chance now.