Disgusting Video

Hikaru says things like he would have been world champ if it weren't for Magnus, and rates himself higher than players like Caruana.

Can we get some real chess players to comment? Not the worse-than-beginner Twitch fanboys?

Naka is not, and has never been, in the same class as players like Caruana. He broke 2800 once in 2015 when circumstances saw him stumble into the world #2 spot. But consistently across his career, he's been lower than 2800 and lower than world #5. He is currently world number 18.

Caruana is consistently (year after year) over 2800 and consistently in the top 5.

THIS IS NOT WHAT A TOP TIER PLAYER LOOKS LIKE AT AGE 32.

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Naka has never been a world champion contender. He doesn't belong on a list of players like Keres, Korchnoi, and Bronstein. He could have been WC if it weren't for Carlsen? He only qualified for one candidates tournament and he finished on 50% (3 wins and 3 losses).

Comparing himself to someone like Caruana who didn't lose a single game in a match with arguably one of the greatest players of all time is ridiculous.

Well... I would have been World Champion if it weren't for... like... 50,000 other players.

Maybe 75,000.

EDIT: OK, maybe 150,000.

Which is why if Naka made a video about being a lot better than you'd I'd agree with him.

But if he wants to compare himself to Caruana sans the BS we can look at the numbers... and the numbers are not very flattering to him.

Naka is a victim of his own speed chess success.  All that bullet has hurt his log time control game.

Naka isnt even the best in blitz anymore....

Not a very attractive title - _- but yeah, Naka is not that good, all that blitz and bullet had a toll on him 

of course he would, he couldnt handle not living with us

are you using your phone?

Didn't Levi put Hikaru there?

And look, I realize Naka wants to put himself higher because of social media.

But if that's the case then Agadmator needs to be on the list too because he has the most number of subscribers for any chess youtube channel AFAIK.

Yes, Levy read the speech Hikaru wrote for him before stream, which obviously counts for absolutely nothing.

But even after that Hikaru changed his position and put himself above Caruana.

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Let's put it this way, do a survey of all players who have ever been at least 2700 on an official FIDE rating list, and ask them to rank these players.

How many would rank Naka above Caruana?

They're not even in the same class. Naka thinks his Twitch followers count for something when they don't. Let him put himself on the top of a "best Twitch chess streamers" list and I'll have no problems. I mean, that's the only type of list Naka could top i.e. a pathetic one.

Otherwise, as I said, put Agadmator up there with Anand.

The bacon theory.

People don't kill chess. Bullets kill chess. 

The theory that F. Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. It was started in print in the mid‐19th cent., and is based partly on (supposed) internal evidence in Shakespeare's plays (the knowledge displayed and the vocabulary), and partly on external circumstances (the obscurity of Shakespeare's own biography, and the assumption that the son of a Warwickshire husbandman was unlikely to be capable of such skilful creations). Some holders of the theory have found in the plays cryptograms in support of it, e.g. in the nonceword ‘honorificabilitudinitatibus’ in Love's Labour's Lost (v.i), which has been rendered in Latin as ‘These plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the World’; the word, however, is found elsewhere as early as 1460. The best recent treatment of the topic is to be found in S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives (1970).

Could this be his premise? 

https://new.uschess.org/nakamura-vs-caruana-comparison-graph

We need a sharpie

I mean let's be honest about it. QxC has brought more players to chess than Naka... because his audience was mainly non players.

Naka has done, comparatively, nothing. Maybe he's introduced 2000 level players to U800 tournaments (pogchamps) but that's about it.

He's certainly desperate enough to rely on something like that. Sure.

Failing to defeat "Sauron" he's grasping at straws.

No he's grasping at Potter 

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/harry-potter-vs-sauron-finally

How do you know that Levi just read Hikaru's prewritten speech?

Caruana = secret wizard?

lol

I think I should look at this when I'm not so drunk. Something this funny deserves that much.

Oh God, it was so bad. He was mentioning Red Bull and saying how Naka was better Caruana and So. It was so bad I stopped the video right there. I couldn't watch any more.

Even the disgustingly stupid twitch chat was going nuts. They were spamming "paid actor"

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I mean... since your question is on the level of a child, I guess I should clarify. Do I think he literally read a speech Naka wrote for him? Maybe not. But Levy is just a low rated IM. He's smart enough to know that his social media clout, at least when it comes to chess, is closely tied to Naka. He's not good enough at pure chess to stand out on his own. But he's also smart. So he really could have ad-libbed the disgusting sycophantic speech, no pre-writing necessary, but whether or not Naka wrote it for him, it doesn't change the fact that no serious chess player would agree.

99% of serious chess players would rank Caruana above Naka.

It's not even close.