Hikaru Nakamura Finds His Queen, Marries Atousa Pourkashiyan
GM Hikaru Nakamura has had great success on the chess board recently, but everything appears to work out off the board as well. The world number-two confirmed to Chess.com that he married WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan.
The chess world's newest super-couple has put a ring on it. Today Pourkashiyan shared the photo from the wedding ceremony with over 10,000 followers on Instagram, where congratulations are pouring in.
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Details of the ceremony are not known, but Nakamura also confirmed the news in a comment to a Reddit post quoting American billionaire Warren Buffett.
As Warren would say, "Marry the right person. I'm serious about that. It will make more difference in your life. It will change your aspirations, all kinds of things."
35-year-old Pourkashiyan is a seven-time Iranian women's champion. She made her debut for the Iranian national team as a 11-year-old in 2000, and has played a total of nine Olympiads, six of them on board one. She moved to the U.S. just a few years ago and officially changed federations to represent the U.S. last December. Her current FIDE rating is 2305, making her the eighth highest-rated woman in the country.
The couple has kept a low profile on social media, but the two have been seen together during chess tournaments for a while. This June, Pourkashiyan joined her future husband in Stavanger, where she played in the open tournament running alongside the main Norway Chess event.
The added support seems to have been a success, as Nakamura won the tournament and scored one of his biggest victories in recent years.
Another success came last week, when the chess superstar won the Bullet Chess Championship on Chess.com to clinch his fourth title. Nakamura is now headed for the FIDE World Cup which starts in Baku, Azerbaijan on July 30. until August 21.
Chess.com wishes Atousa and Hikaru a happy married life!
Tarjei Svensen is a Norwegian chess journalist who worked for some of the country's biggest media outlets and appeared on several national TV broadcasts. Between 2015 and 2019, he ran his chess website mattogpatt.no, covering chess news in Norwegian and partly in English.
In 2020, he was hired by Chess24 to cover chess news, eventually moving to Chess.com as a full-time chess journalist in 2023. He is also known for his extensive coverage of chess news on his X/Twitter account.
