Hikaru Nakamura sent D Gukesh’s king cartwheeling through the air into the 1000-plus fans sitting in front of them at Esports Stadium Arlington. Chess pieces are not accustomed to taking flight like that — certainly not the king, who can only take baby steps on the board. But world No.2 Nakamura had just delivered a checkmate on the world champion to neatly tie up Team USA’s 5-0 victory over the Indian team with a bow on top. So Nakamura celebrated without restraint, pumping his fist like a Rafael Nadal incarnate while Gukesh, despite his defeat, watched the king’s trajectory into the fans mouth agape, a hint of a smile on his face. It’s an unconventional celebration by traditional chess standards, one likely to be discussed at length like Magnus Carlsen’s smash of the fist was after the world No.1 lost to Gukesh at Norway Chess. There was some controversy about Nakamura giving Gukesh’s king the heave-ho into the fans, with Reddit message boards, comments on YouTube livestreams and X posts raging about Nakamura “disrespecting chess”. WATCH: Hikaru Nakamura throws Gukesh's king into crowd America shouldn’t be allowed to host chess events- they turn everything into WWE-style drama. An absolute mockery of the game.#Chess pic.twitter.com/yDJnsai7oX— Meru (@MeruOnX) October 5, 2025 But even that was revealed by YouTuber Levy Rozman to be a gimmick by the organisers. “Without context, it will look like an unprovoked gesture. But we were encouraged by the organisers to do that stuff. I forgot that if I won my game against ChessBase India’s Sagar Shah, or he won, we were supposed to break the king. It was for the entertainment angle. The winner of Gukesh and Hikaru’s game was supposed to toss the king into the fans. I don’t know if Gukesh would have done that. Hikaru spoke to Gukesh later and explained that it was all for show and no disrespect was meant,” said Rozman, who goes by Gotham Chess and was part of the American team. WATCH: Levy Rozman discusses the match against Gukesh ALSO READ | 'Vulgarity. would you take pants off if organisers asked': Vladimir Kramnik slams Hikaru Nakamura for throwing Gukesh's king in air Nakamura’s celebration, unlike Carlsen’s, came at an unconventional event with nothing at stake. Like Rozman noted, it was as much about entertainment as it was about the sport itself. The ‘Checkmate: USA vs India’ match was an exhibition event featuring five players from two of the world’s top chess nations. The game they played on the board was certainly chess, but the look and feel was far from the library-esque playing halls that the sport is used to. There were WWE-style announcements ushering in the players, esports-esque liberty given to fans to shout (as long as they did not scream moves), professional boxing-style walk-outs to the stage from between the thicket of fans and live renditions of national anthems like in cricket. ALSO READ | Checkmate organisers troll FIDE’s Emil Sutovsky after Nakmura-Gukesh incident: ‘We sincerely apologize if players and fans had a good time’ “I don’t think I have ever played with so much audience in a stadium and such energy in the arena,” Gukesh said before the start of his game against Nakamura as he looked down from the stage at over 1,000 fans in the arena, many of them Indian-origin kids. “It’s really great to see chess being appreciated by so many people,” Nakamura said in the middle of urging fans to make some noise, a far cry from him complaining about the noise during a recent Freestyle Chess event. Among all the players, Nakamura — who often speaks about how the sport and players should market themselves — embraced the noise and the atmosphere with full gusto, right from the moment he walked out to play while being draped in the American flag on his shoulders as if he was an Olympic medallist. “This was one of the best in-person experiences I have had as someone who has been playing chess for a very long time. We are so used to celebrating our victories by ourselves. chess can be such a lonely job, you don’t feel any validation for what you are doing. Even the Indian players, despite losing, had a great time. So this event exceeded my expectations,” Nakamura later said on his YouTube channel. Rule tweaks The exhibition event had tried its best to walk the tightrope between retaining serious chess fans while courting casual enthusiasts. As Salim Belcadi of Checkmate Strategic Ventures, the main organisers of this event, had told The Indian Express earlier this year: “This is built for fans — not just chess purists. Most chess events today are tailored for serious players, with heavy theoretical commentary. We’re moving away from that.” Resignations were prohibited. So was offering draws by threefold repetition, unless players were down to just kings on the board. If there was a draw by insufficient material in the 10-minute game, players would move to a five-minute game. If that too ended in a draw, they would play a one-minute game. The first two time controls would be played with no increments for moves — which is a staple rule of chess — until someone’s time trickled below one minute. Another caveat for players was that they could not play the same first move in the second game that they had in the first one. WATCH: Hikaru Nakamura discusses the match against Gukesh The teams too were not just made up of top players. Much before Gukesh lost to Nakamura, Arjun Erigaisi lost to Fabiano Caruana, newly-minted Grandmaster Divya Deshmukh lost to International Master Carissa Yip, ChessBase India’s Sagar Shah lost to Rozman, and 13-year-old International Master Ethan Vaz lost to 14-year-old Tanitoluwa Adewumi. Gukesh had managed to play out draws in the 10-minute rapid and the five-minute blitz games before the match descended into a one-minute bullet game with a one-second increment per move. There, the Indian was checkmated on the back rank by Nakamura’s queen with another bishop cutting off the escape square. Gukesh had held a healthy advantage on the clock at one time with the evaluation bar also showing that he had the upper hand. But against a player of Nakamura’s calibre in faster time controls, that initial edge proved to be inconsequential as the American soon surged ahead on the clock and put Gukesh under significant pressure on the clock before delivering a checkmate. WATCH: India take on USA in Checkmate: USA vs INDIA All the drama on the board was reflected in the response of the fans in the stands. They were encouraged to shout, but players were not given noise-cancelling headphones. A referee bore down on the chessboard like a bouncer instead of the usual chess arbiters who tip-toe around the playing hall. Players wore team jerseys — orange for the Indians, and blue for the Americans — and jeans. The stage itself was overshadowed by a massive 90-foot LED screen that flashed all the moves and the players’ heart-beat data. Players were also given haptic sensors (a red nuclear button-lookalike to usher the arbiter) instead of those old-age chess clocks. At one stage, after drawing with Nakamura in the 10-minute and 5-minute matches, Gukesh was seen practising making moves and hitting the haptic sensor, over and over with the flick of the wrist that would make a shuttler proud. Many of these innovations have been tried before in chess: the Global Chess League has colourful jerseys, Freestyle Chess shows heartbeat data, chess’ debut at the Esports World Cup saw players in front of massive in-arena audiences. But the Checkmate event brought every innovation they could find together in one neat package. Hence, they had the Esports World Cup’s in-stadia energy, the team atmosphere of the Global Chess League, and Freestyle Chess’ sense of innovation.
