13 highlights
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Born in Japan and raised in White Plains, New York, he became the country’s youngest American chess master at ten and its youngest Grandmaster at fifteen, besting Bobby Fischer for both distinctions.
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Known for an attacking style and a brash, arrogant manner, Nakamura became a controversial figure in the chess world. “Are you kidding?” he muttered to his opponent during a 2007 game, channelling more pro wrestler than chess scholar.
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In one Chess.com exhibition, he opened a new account, played every game with the Bongcloud Opening—a dubious second-move king advancement dubbed an “insult to chess”—and reached the site’s top forty players anyway.
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He has beaten several Grandmasters ten times back-to-back, a defeat so humbling that it’s referred to as an “adoption.”
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It is partly because of this online notoriety that Nakamura was given a wild-card selection to the International Chess Federation (FIDE) Grand Prix, a series of three tournaments that decide two of the final spots in the Candidates Tournament—the winner of which contends for the World Championship.
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Many top chess players take pride in—and are lauded for—their extreme devotion to tournament preparation. They spend several hours a day studying chess openings, calculating minute advantages in numerous variations that can extend twenty or more moves deep.
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Nakamura, on the other hand, spent a significant amount of time in the weeks leading up to the Grand Prix expressing how little he cared. In one stream, he floated that, if he won, he might give his spot in the Candidates to the Chinese Grandmaster Ding Liren.
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For the Grand Prix, each player would have ninety minutes for the first forty moves, with thirty seconds added per move. Nakamura’s relative weakness in opening preparation is rarely punished in short time controls; in classical, opponents have time to calculate the best sequence of moves to exploit a mistake.
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In a sport whose top players generally strategize in private, preventing competitors from glimpsing their thought process and preparation, Nakamura spent nearly half an hour explaining his moves and expounding on possibilities he considered and didn’t end up playing even after spending hours that day at the board
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“Now, one of the big differences between now and two or three years ago when I was playing chess professionally—that’s all I was doing for the most part—is that I literally don’t care,” Nakamura said. “What that means is that, in a lot of these situations now, I’ll just pick a line and play it at the board. I will not worry about trying to pick the precise line or something that I’ve looked at most recently. I will just choose to show up and play the line that I want to play.”
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As he rose up the world ranks, he treated opponents like enemies and used criticism as fuel, becoming a highly disliked member of the chess scene.
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The “I literally don’t care” mantra itself is a reference to Nakamura’s bitter reaction to a fluke online loss in which he repeated the phrase many more times than one would expect from someone who literally did not care.
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As the two stood side by side for a post-match interview, Nakamura was asked whether playing so many quick, online games contributed to his win. Acknowledging the sacrifices he made to opening preparation, Nakamura said yes. “In terms of just practically speaking, I’ve played more than anybody over the last couple years,” he offered. “I think it definitely helped, for sure.” But the main distinction, he said, is that he doesn’t panic anymore.