Ahead of the football World Cup in Qatar, a picture of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo playing chess took the internet by storm. It has gone on to become one of the most viewed photos on the internet, and has been liked 41 million times on Ronaldo’s Instagram page alone. It was shot by internationally acclaimed portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz for the ad campaign of French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton. The shot has come out beautifully, no doubt.
It turned out the position in that photograph was actually from a game between two great rivals in today’s chess. World champion Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura played that game in the third round of the Norway Chess in 2017. Carlsen, with his characteristic sense of humour, tweeted: Second greatest rivalry of our time mimicking the greatest.
Carlsen is a five-time World champion and the World No. 1 since 2011. He is also the World No. 1 in rapid chess. Nakamura, however, is the World No.1 in blitz chess. He is also the reigning World champion in Chess 960 (Fischer Random), which encourages the creative – and not theoretical – side of a player.
Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay believes the American has been the world’s best blitz player over the last few years. “Carlsen is a wonderful player across formats no doubt, but if you look at the consistency with which Nakamura has played in blitz over the last six or seven years, you could find that he has been the best,” Thipsay says.
Nakamura wasn’t quite at his best though at the Tata Steel Chess India in Kolkata a fortnight ago. He could finish only the runner-up, to Arjun Erigaisi, in the blitz section.
When The Hindu catches up with Nakamura shortly after the closing ceremony, he admits he isn’t happy with the quality of his games. A month before coming to India, he had won the World Chess 960 championship at Reykjavik, Iceland.
He says he enjoyed playing in the tournament. He had beaten Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final. He rates the Russian as one of the three toughest rivals over the years in blitz chess, as well.
Who are the others?
“Magnus obviously and Vishy Anand, though he is past his prime,” he says. “Even playing him in the late 2010s, I found him very formidable.”
He says he has always liked playing blitz chess. “I think it has got to do with my attitude and the approach to the game,” he says. “The players are always on their own much quicker. From the start you have to make your decisions in a fairly timely manner. There is more space for intuition and making decisions than pure calculation and opening theory. That is the kind of chess I grew up with; it didn’t rely heavily on opening preparation. And that is also the reason I enjoy playing Chess 960 a lot. In it, the best player wins the game.”
As for the future of the classical World chess championship, he isn’t very optimistic. He points out some of the previous World title matches had produced too many draws. In Carlsen’s match against Sergey Karjakin in 2016, only two of the 12 games produced decisive results. Two years later, against Fabiano Caruana (2018), all the 12 games were drawn. Thus in both the matches, rapid games had to be played to determine the World champion.
Hikaru’s prediction: Nakamura feels that rapid and blitz games are going to become more and more popular in the future.
| Photo Credit:
DEBASISH BHADURI
“I feel there is going to be less and less interest in the classical World championship,” Nakamura says. “(After all those draws in the matches against Karjakin and Nakamura), in the match against Nepomniachtchi last year, Carlsen won the sixth game and the floodgates were opened. The appetite for those sorts of matches is not going to be there in the future. I see rapid and blitz games becoming more and more popular.”
What does he think of Carlsen’s decision not to defend his World title? (After dethroning Anand in Chennai in 2013, the Norwegian went on to defend it in all the four World championship matches since).
Nakamura thinks Carlsen took that decision because he did not enjoy preparing for those matches. Before the World title matches, both the players usually spend a huge amount of time on the opening preparation along with their ‘seconds’ (sparring partners).
“The windows for getting a game of chess where the players are on their own and creative in the opening phase are very hard to reach anymore,” says Nakamura. “The fact is that it is very difficult to play creative chess. That is the overriding issue for him.”
No easy solution
Carlsen had advocated some other format to determine the World champion. Nakamura feels there is no easy solution.
“Maybe FIDE can change the format somehow, but with the world rapid and blitz championship being held, I don’t know what they could do,” he says. “Personally I won’t enjoy playing a long World title match myself. Historically we have had World championship matches and one of the greatest things about chess is its history. Maybe after the World title match between Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren things will change, but I am fairly pessimistic. Things are probably going to remain the same.”
Looking back at his performance in Kolkata, he says he was glad that he was at least moving in the right direction with the World rapid and blitz championship coming up. “Here Wesley So blundered against me and I won, while I blundered against Arjun and I lost,” he says. “I hope to do better at the World rapid and blitz championship at the end of this month (in Kazakhstan).”
After the day’s play in Kolkata, Nakamura had found time to stream. He is hugely popular on Twitch and YouTube with some 1.5 million followers on both platforms.
Chess, in fact, is doing fabulously well on social media. It was the only sport that actually grew during the lockdown forced upon the world by the pandemic. There are several chess streamers around with massive following. Does he watch any of them?
“Not really,” says Nakamura. “I never watch chess streams. But I watch streamers who are very successful in other categories. I observe what they do and employ some of their strategies for my streams on chess. I find it very useful.”
As for that picture of Messi and Ronaldo, Nakamura’s reaction was short. “I was wondering why this chess position looked familiar!” he tweeted.
And what happened in that game between Nakamura and Carlsen? It ended in a draw.
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