Why is Nakamura not playing the US Championship?

naka would finish top 5 in us champs probably

but he hasnt played classical in like 2 years

Carlsen definitely has Nakamura's number. Though it's worth noting their high number of draws.

Their draw percentage, in FIDE games, is 66%.

That means for every 3 games they play, 2 of them are draws.

Unfortunately for Nakamura, that third game always goes to Carlsen ... And it seems unlikely that this trend will change.

There have been some exceptional players who've been dominated by other players, to a similar degree.

Anand, for example, played Kasparov 52 times, and only managed to win 4 ...

[really not appropriate, so removed -- MS]

But now, at least, you know. 

Lol

He has a positive record against people 20 years older than him. Good job Naka. You managed to beat someone in their 50s when you were in your prime.

So and Caruana have plus scores against him... (not that that's something to be ashamed of).

Strong players have been referred to by their last name for a few 100 years.

Capablanca's first name was Jose.
Fischer's first name was Bobby.

Nakamura is what chess players call him.
"Hikaru" is what twitch kids call him

(although sometimes I like to call him Hikaru as a sign is disrespect heh)

The comparison I like to make is Naka is to Carlsen as Shirov was to Kasparov. 

Shirov was a great player... just couldn't manage to win a single game off Kasparov for some reason.

lol, nice.

I wanted there to be joke with the line "I don't wanna be away from my subs for too long" for example your response could be "I don't want you to have other subs" but maybe that would be too forced.

I WROTE that and then changed it, 

There are certain styles that work better against other specific styles. That is one of the reasons (besides being a worst player) that Hikaru always gets pwned by Magnus.

But on top of everything else that was said above, another reason why he doesn't play classical is because he's peaked... and he knows that no matter how much he studies he ain't going to be #1 or world champ. So he probably doesn't think it's worth it going so in depth on opening lines (even though he could easily hire a bunch of seconds to do opening prep for him) for classical. Also, as good as he is/was, his main strength has always been playing fast.

So yeah as someone pointed he doesn't care. He literally doesn't care. He's also scared of dropping below 2700

You can't literally not care and be scared of dropping below 2700. 

he doesn't care about memorizing a bunch of opening lines knowing he is going to lose anyways when he is making much more money by streaming. But that's also an excuse because he is scared of dropping 2700

In time look up the meme hikaru doesn't care

I'm aware of the meme. 

He's said on stream that the reason he has chosen the Grand Swiss is because it has the benefit of helping him qualify for the Candidates. This much is certain.

He said that on stream? That's hilarious

He did. And is it? He also said he didn’t want significant time off steam due to sponsor obligations so he could only chose one or the other 

I'm just saying it's funny because qualifying for the candidates is something someone in the top 10 would aim for, not someone who should be wondering whether they'll be able to remain in the world top 20.

Maybe he sees a loophole in the system. Aleksenko and Wang Hao got in

You have to be Russian to get the wild card, like when they cheated MVL twice by giving it to Kramnik and Aleksenko... IMO of course.