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World No 2 Hikaru Nakamura has lashed out at FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky for “personal insults” aimed at him in a long tweet posted on X by Sutovsky recently.
In a video posted on his YouTube handle, the American GM Hikaru Nakamura called out Sutovsky’s long tweet where the FIDE official took potshots at the American GM. Some of the world’s most prominent players and FIDE have recently argued over the upcoming Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour, with players like Magnus Carlsen and Nakamura even contemplating pulling out of the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship in New York.
READ MORE: Random piece positions, 960 possible starts: What is freestyle chess, which led to Magnus Carlsen clashing with FIDE?
“I’m not the one creating this (the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour). So I find this really bizarre that I am the one he chooses to attack. I’m not spearheading this. This is being spearheaded by Magnus Carlsen and Jan Henric Buettner. This is a personal insult,” Hikaru Nakamura said in the video. “I don’t know why he has to try and attack me. I can also make personal attacks but I choose not to. I have no equity in Freestyle Chess. I don’t have any contract with them that I’m going to play every tournament or anything along those lines. So, it’s kind of weird to try and make this in some way about me. It’s funny that I’m apparently the bad guy.”
In 2025, the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour will be a series of five chess events in cities like Weissenhaus, Paris, New York, New Delhi, and Cape Town.
FIDE's top management has been at loggerheads with the organisers of the Freestyle Grand Slam Tour and the Freestyle Players Club, which includes Magnus Carlsen, over the upcoming tour. The bone of contention has been the organizers of the Freestyle event wanting to call their event a “World Championship”. FIDE has objected to this, stating that as global governing body of chess, they alone hold the rights to decide which event can be called a “World Championship”.
Hikaru Nakamura slammed Sutovsky for claiming that FIDE creates a lot of money for players.
Sutovsky had posted on X: “FIDE does provide a lot of income for top players. Hikaru may not have won any amount significant enough for a top streamer – but here are the prize funds: World Championship Match: 2.5M USD, World Cup 2M+, Rapid and Blitz 1.428M, Grand Swiss is about to have almost 1M, etc.”
At this, Hikaru Nakamura clapped back saying: “This is complete horses**t. This is complete horses**t. The players are not making 2.5 million dollars.”
Nakamura pointed out that all the sums quoted by FIDE CEO were overall prize funds for the entire field competing, besides the World Championship, where the prize money was split between two “lucky players”. He said that while FIDE CEO was trying to “make it look impressive”, the money was actually being split among the whole field.
“All this money gets watered down and players are not making that much money. The top players make most of their money from other events like Norway Chess, Grand Chess Tour and German Bundesliga,” Hikaru Nakamura said.
