Why is Nakamura not playing the US Championship?

I thought he was going to. I'm sure he explained it, but I'm not sure...

he has something else as his sources of income... so its nothing to lose, or he might want to give younger generations bigger chances

He will be playing in the FIDE chess.com Grand Swiss, which begins a few weeks later. From what he said on his stream, he finds it more important to ramp up on study than play in both events like Fabiano.

Besides, he is a semi-professional streamer and doesn’t want to leave his viewers for longer than necessary

It is standard for Super-GMs to sometimes miss national championships.

Short and Adams have rarely participated in the British Championship.  

Svidler's incredible 8 wins in the Russian Championship were helped by the fact that Kramnik (3 appearances since 97) and Kasparov (1 appearance since 97) participated more rarely.  

There are several reasons:

1.  National championship prize money doesn't match the prize money in Super-GM events.

2.  Invitations to Super-GM events are often based on rating, so playing a large number of lower rated players risks those invitations.

3.  For a highly successful streamer like Hikaru, time at the board is time not streaming.  (It seems to me that Hikaru has been playing fewer Super-GM events recently - possibly this is the reason why).

4.  In a huge event, Covid infection control is going to be harder.

Hikaru has said, several times, that he consider himself more of a Twitch streamer than a professional chess player, these days.

Even when he attends GM blitz/rapid tournaments, he still comments, in post-game interviews, about how he's eager to get back home to his stream ...

Perhaps. I wouldn't hold it against him, though. He seems to have found his groove.
I can only imagine how tough Classical is at the Super GM level. And it probably gets harder every year.

Hikaru would likely need to stop streaming and devote his time to training, instead, if he wanted to keep playing Classical at the Elite level.

I don't see him wanting to do that, though ...

Nikkilikechikki:  Hasn’t been top 10 in over a decade?? My god, he was 2816 and world #2 classical in October 2015.  Get your facts straight.  

He literally doesn’t care, period.  

Literally.  

Actually, these posts are pretty accurate, which is rare on these forums. Usually the opinions are all over the place and by page 2 the arguments and insults start to fly. Good job y'all. 

Meh, I don't keep up on Nakamura and it was off the top of my head. I apologize for not knowing that he was that high six years ago. Catching me on a small error doesn't change the larger point. I've seen streamers say that they were afraid to keep playing because they had just crossed a ratings threshold. Nakamura's stakes are much higher.

If he gets draws against players he, at least by rating, is better than, he loses points. If he has a couple of disastrous losses against people who, by rating, worse than he is, he's off the list. He knows this. Of course he knows this.

He can talk about being busy or not having time or whatever, but odds are that he isn't playing in the US Championships because it could end badly and he could lose a coveted unofficial title.

Realraptor:  Nakamura isn’t competing because “Covid infection control is going to be harder”?   Really??  Where do you get this information?  Are you clairvoyant?  You’re just pulling sh*t out of your a$$ and posting it.  Stop! 

Nikkilikechikki   I accept your apology.  

I doubt Hikaru is afraid of losing his Super-GM status. He's pretty confident in his abilities. I could be wrong, though ...

As @Grandmaster2B pointed out, Hikaru will be playing in the Grand Swiss tournament later this month. That's Classical chess (100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game ...).

And the field has some of the biggest hitters, like Caruana, Aronian, Firouzja, MVL ...

So I suppose time will tell, as to how he'll perform.

He's not good enough.

In b 4 he doesn't finish in the top 10, and loses even more rating points.

Currently in the U.S., on both rating lists, he's #3 (uscf) & #5 (fide). 

I was just listening to commentaty by Maurice and he was talking about Jeffrey Xiongs being stuck in around the 2700 level. Hahahaha. I can't wait for Jeffrey to hear the replay. He'll be nice but it brings back memories of Maurice's interview with Magnus a few years back. It wasn't smooth. 

And if Nakamura is planning on playing on that fide grand swiss it means he's still serious about classical chess because I think the top 2 finishers are qualified for the next candidates and thats way more important than the U.S. championship.