Champions Chess Tour Finals Hikaru drama: Personal thoughts

This Blog takes place following the events of Round 6 (December 11th 2023) of the Champion Chess Tour Finals. Today, I will share my personal thoughts and opinion regarding current shaming on Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. This post is not intended to exhibit anger and animosity towards anyone. Champions Chess Tour Finals are being broadcast on the Chess.com Youtube channel live, and whenever an update on Hikaru occurs, Live Chat seems to express hostility to him. This comments are mostly guided by the cheating "accusations" which GrandMaster Vladimir Kramnik is putting towards Hikaru Nakamura. Today, a few viewers on the Chess.com live chat were also commenting on Hikaru's Vulnerability.

     Throughout the tournament, Hikaru has been experiencing what we call "tilt". This basically means he isn't playing as good as he normally does. This could be due to emotional factors or the fact that Hikaru is facing 7 other top CCT players.  

Let's disclose the events of yesterday's segment regarding the matches between Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen.

Hikaru Nakamura faced GrandMaster Magnus Carlsen and managed to draw against Magnus twice which lead them into an armageddon match. My problem with the live comments on the broadcasted event were viewers calling Hikaru a cheater after losing his armageddon match against Magnus Carlsen. You all need to remember that Magnus Carlsen is the top active chess player today, and has been for years. I feel it's immature and irrational to call Hikaru a cheater after losing one game against the top chess player after managing to draw against him twice. It isn't a rare event for Hikaru to be beaten by Magnus Carlsen, especially online. Hikaru drawing against Magnus twice really says something about how good Hikaru played that day even with tilt. Keep in mind Hikaru also won games that day along with today.

     Even today, we see Hikaru making a slight comeback winning a match against Nodirbek and getting into an armageddon with Fabiano Caruana. Right after Hikaru's loss against Fabiano, viewers were again shaming him as a cheated. To make things more clear, the reason of viewers calling Hikaru a cheater is lead by that fact that the "accusations" apply to online chess, and the fact that Hikaru is tilting in Over The Board chess (OTB) is implying (to the accusers) that Hikaru is losing because he has no engine to cheat with. The problem with this is that I personally know that there are many differences playing over the board as opposed to online.

             OTB VS ONLINE CHESS

Depending on how much you play, one can be easier than the other.

• Environment: When you're playing Online, you are mostly alone behind a screen in a peaceful space. The only audience you may have will be family, friends, and live audience from streaming. When you're playing OTB chess, you're usually in a more open space with more of a public audience. Now of course, pressure relating to audience can vary due to who's actually watching you, so I will move on to the next point.
• The angle: This point is very straightforward and simple. When you're playing Online, you have a clear birds-eye view on what's happening on the board, this makes it easier to track pieces. In OTB chess, you're playing at more of a straighter angle. Both of these can benefit you depending on what you're used to.

Style of the board: Again, this is a simple point. Online users are used to the more simple 2D layout of their chess board. For example, I play on the standard chess.com board and perform worse when I change the board into an almost significantly different style (Clash of Clans style for example) This also applies to OTB chess. OTB involves wooden or plastic pieces that actually stand up when you look at them. Some online players will not be used to this right away. Since Hikaru mostly plays online, these points are potential factors worth considering.

Even if these points aren't factors impacting Hikaru's performance, keep in mind how he got his win streak. Hikaru was farming players with significantly lower Elo than him which gave him his win streak. Let's do the right thing and walk away from strict theoretical probability and consider Hikaru as a human. Some of us should know that online elo doesn't always dictate the performance of grandmaster. More on this in this episode of Fabiano's podcast

EMOTION SEGMENT

I'm going to keep this segment short to not waste the time of the readers any further. A lot of the toxicity today has been coming from Hikaru Nakamura's emotion. Here is what I have to say: This display of vulnerability is a normal human reaction to someone who doesn't want to lose. I suspect that Hikaru knows his worth as a chess player and reflects upon his moments of loss. I have seen many comments saying he's a sore loser and a cry baby. These statements are not true. You should not be giving hate to a normal human reaction that isn't intended to lower the worth of their opponents. All Hikaru did was barely shed a few tears, nothing more. In my honest opinion, the toxicity in live chat wouldn't have occured if it wasn't for cheating accusations against Hikaru.