‘Total fluff… nothing new… will just confuse fans’: Hikaru Nakamura’s ‘brutally honest’ review of Total Chess World Championship

In a half-an-hour-long rant on his YouTube handle, Nakamura expressed his dissatisfaction about the upcoming tour.

“The naming of this tour is just bizarre to me. As someone who tends to look at things from the outside versus the inside these days, calling it the Total Chess World Championship Tour sounds really really clunky to me. It does not sound catchy at all. Like I’ve been critical of Freestyle Chess, for example, but I feel like freestyle at least when you hear the name, there can be something kind of sexy about that. Total Chess World Championship Tour just sounds like a mouthful. Honestly it just sounds like a bad name if I’m being brutally honest. This is very minor of course, but the first thing that stands out to me about this is that the name actually sounds pretty corny. Like the Grand Chess Tour, for example, sounds compact. I like it even if there are issues that I have with the tour. Grand Chess Tour that makes a lot of sense,” Nakamura said.

Nakamura also was unhappy at other aspects of the new tour, which will come into effect from 2027 after a pilot event next year.

“The thing that stands out to me about this is I do not understand the purpose of this because we already have the Grand Chess Tour, which has regular classical chess, rapid and blitz events like the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz, the SuperBet in Zagreb, Croatia. So, to me, on the surface, I don’t understand the purpose of this at all,” Nakamura continued before taking a dig at the global governing body of chess, FIDE, with which he has feuded in the past as well. “FIDE is involved with this which is also never a good sign.”

WATCH: Hikaru Nakamura criticises the Total Chess World Championship Tour

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The new Total Chess World Championship will also condense classical games to 45-minute-per-player clashes, a time control the organisers called ‘Fast Classic’. FIDE has also said that for matches played in the Fast Classic format in the tour, the ratings will count in actual classical ratings.

“I don’t understand this. What exactly is going on here? We’re now going to count 45-minute chess as classical chess. I would have understood the notion of trying to maybe have games with one-hour counting as classical chess, but counting games in 45 minutes as classical chess, I’m really confused. I’m not going to lie. I’m actually really confused by this. Because to me, 45-minute chess is not classical chess. I don’t think it ever will be or it ever should be. This feels like a lot of fluff and trying to start something. It actually in some ways reminds me a little bit of freestyle. It feels like total fluff.

“We’re looking for the total chess player. I’m going to be honest, we already have the total chess player. That is Magnus Carlsen, who when he was playing chess very seriously from 2015 to 2020, dominated the Grand Chess Tour. The Grand Chess Tour was classical chess, rapid and blitz. Like we already have this. We already know who the winner was. We already know who the best player is. So what even is the point of this? Like I’m not even trying to be a super over-the-top negative Nancy here, but we had the Grand Chess Tour. Magnus dominated dominated the Grand Chess Tour. Like this is no different. So, this we’re looking for the total chess player just sounds absolutely absurd. Like, this just sounds completely nonsensical to me.

Nakamura did take a break from criticising the tour to concede: “Objectively, this probably is going to be very good for the top players. It’s more tournaments to compete in, more chances to make prize money. But as far as chess overall, I don’t get the point of this. I’m going to say that I don’t think this is a net positive. And the reason that I don’t think this is a net positive is because it’s only going to further confuse the audience and fragment the audience even further. Everybody’s going to get even more confused. There are already far too many tournaments, which in my opinion is one of the biggest reasons that the viewership is down outside the candidates and the world championship.”