Hikaru vs Rey Enigma

"i mean i am playing 2 games, if chess.com wants to be mad at me so be it"

- Hikaru Nakamura on lichess vs @ReyEnigma

omg it actually is his chess.com account but he closed lol

"Only 2 games"

(plays them against a hot-topic player, and post speed chess championship interview mentioned how lichess is less laggy)

After all the money they've given him, seems a bit of a low blow.

that was a draw also hikaru was nice and gave him a draw here

His game against Karpov didn't impress me much, but watching his games with Hikaru, he was spotting things I didn't, so ok, I'll admit he's better than me

(hikaru's estimates for some moves are pretty insulting though, like "you have to be at least 2300 to play this)

draw by insufficient material and it was time pressure so cant blame enigma for blunder

well i mean enigma was winning a lot he just didnt have the tactical awareness as hikaru stated but around time pressure he just really struggled and blundered a rook tho that doesnt take away from his general skill at the beginning towards the middlegame which was very well done. i definitely might agree that rey enigma could be a titled player but in my opinion i speculate him to just be a very good player due to his experience and skill online

I don't know of course, but my impression was he's a tournament player i.e. he's not strong because of trashy online moves played quickly.

I mean, Hikaru said the same thing right? The guy's strength isn't due to tactics... so he actually knows things about chess, has probably studied and all that.

In particular getting a "draw" (on the board, not the clock) from that bad bishop position was impressive to me. You can't calculate your way out a positionally inferior game, you have to know a thing or two about what's going on for your moves to even make sense.

yeah i can agree with that and commend such precise technique from enigma

@ReyEnigma its still kind of sad we never know why he closed and moved away :/

interesting

I think Hikaru's a pretty good judge of playing strength, so if he thinks Rey is in the 2300-2400 range (FM-strength), then that's probably pretty close to the truth.

The big surprise, to me, is that Hikaru missed ...Rb2 in that game.

Granted, it was a subtle move, that's not immediately obvious. But it's certainly a move that Hikaru is capable of finding very quickly. (He has found far more difficult moves in far less time.) So him missing it kind was kind of surprising ...

Anyway, I think Rey Enigma is a really cool concept. Very fun idea, to have a strong mystery player wandering around, keeping everyone guessing.

I assume he's terrible lol

But maybe his videos with levy where they guess ratings has improved his ability to tell. Maybe he's not so bad at it these days, I don't know. I've honestly never watched one of those videos for more than 1 minute.

Enigma stated that his toughest street game since he started his 100 euros challenge (3 minutes) was an international master who lost in time when he had only 9 seconds in his own clock.

I haven't seen those "Guess the ELO" videos, either, though I think he does a good job of explaining his reasoning for his guesses (with Enigma) ... even if they end up being wrong.

Though one thing I've noticed about Hikaru is that he's very quick to change his mind about things. If he were to look at Rey Enigma's games again at a later date, I'm sure his estimate would change.

He does this, especially, when playing online blitz.

He'll say, "if he plays the knight here, I'll move my bishop here. .. hm.. Yeah, bishop here and we'll have a perfect right triangle ... *draws arrows; nods to music in headphones*"

The player then plays the exact knight move that Hikaru considered ... and Hikaru immediately plays something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

He does this quite often. It baffles me ...

well hikaru is also quite the enigma, his mind sure is interesting to delve in

Excellent internet sleuthing. *Applause*

I refuse to believe Hikaru knows anything about chess. I also refuse to believe he's smart enough to have done this investigative work himself. I assume someone messaged him this information, and he pretended to guess a 2375 rating.

I'm being a bit facetious of course, but to pin someone down to a 50 point range... it's just silly. I know most of his fans have no idea how to play chess, so they're entertained by it, but...

... maybe he just got lucky.

Some people think there are several different players under the mask, depending on the moment, but I don't agree. Some even have guessed it could be Pepe Cuenca sometimes.

Seriously?!