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Journalism of Courage
After Hikaru Nakamura sent D Gukesh’s king cartwheeling through the air upon winning an exhibition game—called Checkmate: USA vs India—the entire sport of chess has been forced into a moment of soul searching. For the last few years, chess has made inroads into the mainstream. Multiple efforts have been made by tournament organisers across the world with format innovations to catch the eye of audiences that usually would not be watching chess, because it’s just too complicated to understand as a spectacle for anyone who does not play it. But Nakamura lobbing Gukesh’s king into the fans and celebrating like a pumped up tennis player to make the event look more like a sport is one of those moments that has made many in the game wonder if this is what the future of chess looks like.
The American’s act split the sport right down the middle, with FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky and former world champion Vladimir Kramnik—who have found themselves arguing with the American over multiple issues—leading the criticism of Nakamura. Others like Peter Heine Nielsen (the coach of Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen) and Anish Giri have found nothing wrong with the act.
Social media users from India, in particular, have been very vocal too, with Gukesh and Hikaru trending on X in India on Monday with multiple clips of Nakamura’s lob of the king being shared. Of course we are yet to hear from Gukesh himself if he was offended, but the general consensus on Indian social media is that Nakamura ”disrespected” the 19-year-old world champion and the sport itself.
But did he?
ALSO READ | ‘No disrespect’: Story behind Hikaru Nakamura tossing Gukesh’s king at fans after checkmating world champion
Did Sourav Ganguly disrespect the sport of cricket when he celebrated the NatWest Trophy win in 2002 by taking off his jersey on the balcony of Lord’s?
First, a little context that would go a long way. The event of the incident was far from an actual chess event. The whole idea for the Checkmate: USA vs India event—where India were represented by Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and Divya Deshmukh besides Chessbase India’s Sagar Shah—was to take it as far as possible from what traditional chess looks like. There were over 1,100 fans in the arena cheering. National anthems were sung before games. Players walked out to WWE-style announcements. Nakamura, who was signing autographs for kids one hour before the game, even draped himself with the American flag when he showed up.
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Players were asked to interact with the crowd. And interact with their opponent too in the middle of the game to spice up the contests! That is just what the Americans did: at one point during his game against Sagar Shah, right before the Gukesh vs Nakamura clash, popular streamer Levy Rozman egged on the fans to shout louder by placing a finger on his ear. Then, he also asked them to cheer for his opponent, who was thinking of his next move. After her win over Divya, in a previous game, Carissa Yip had picked up a king and had held it up in a fist. In their video recaps after the event, the two streamers who were part of the teams— USA’s Rozman and India’s Shah— recounted how players were nudged by the organisers to break the opponent’s king or lob it into the fans after winning their games.
This explains why Gukesh can be seen smiling as he sees his king sail into the fans. There’s no surprise or affront. “I don’t know if Gukesh would have done it if he had beaten Hikaru though,” pointed out Rozman in his video.
Shah, the man behind Chessbase India, gave an insight into how the build-up to the actual games had begun. There was a session on the day of the games, he said, where he trained with Divya and another Indian GM Harshit Raja, where music was blasted through speakers to simulate the noise in the arena as they played. Divya and Raja trash-talked Shah as they looked at positions. “They started saying things like ‘You’re so weak’, ‘You can’t even find a move’,” Shah recounted in a YouTube video.
Both streamers were keen to impress that while people looking at the act in a one-minute video without any prior context to the setting, would feel that Nakamura was going out of his way to show up Gukesh, anyone who was there on stage—or even the 1,100-plus fans—knew it was part of a deliberate act just to make it more entertaining for the fans. Nakamura and Gukesh had shaken hands before the game began like any other usual chess game.
Indian GM Vidit Gujrathi had perhaps the most nuanced take on the whole controversy. Posting a video on his Instagram handle, Vidit pointed out that for most Indians, chess was sacred, so by extension the pieces were also shown deference. But for Americans, chess pieces were mere objects.
“When I was in the USA last year to play an exhibition game against Hans Niemann, they told me to talk some trash like boxing. So I understand the context of how it happened (Nakamura throwing the king). But I also understand why it feels off to so many people. In India, we treat chess like worship. Chess is not just a game, it means something more. For me personally it would have been impossible to do something like this. But in the West, things are more casual. It’s just a game and this is just a part of a plan to make it more entertaining. It’s just a different lens of looking at things,” said Vidit.
What Nakamura did should not be looked at as an act of disrespect for Gukesh or the sport. One only needs to look at the history of chess to meet greats of the sport who did a lot worse than lobbing chess pieces for fans to catch. Emmanuel Lasker, the second world champion in history, was known to deliberately smoke foul-smelling cigars during games to unsettle opponents. Another world champion, Alexander Alekhine, would turn up drunk to games. Scores of Soviet era players would pre-arrange draws in tournaments, which would, in the present age, be called match fixing. Viktor Korchnoi was among the many Soviet Union stars that constantly tried to dismiss Vishy Anand as a “coffee house player” or a “player who does not think and just plays some tricks”, something these days we would call trash talk. Kramnik was accused by his opponent, Veselin Topalov, in a world championship match of cheating by visiting the toilet without any evidence. And we all know about the shenanigans from the Bobby Fischer vs Boris Spassky clash.
Nakamura’s act does open a debate for the sport though: for the last few years, it’s largely controversial moments that have been driving a surge of interest from outsiders to the sport. Magnus Carlsen’s accusations against Hans Niemann. Carlsen’s jeans-gate. Kramnik’s yet-to-be-proven accusations of cheating against multiple players. Carlsen’s smash of the fist against the board after losing to Gukesh. These incidents have almost set a template for anyone who wishes to make their event viral: make the players do something controversial—like ask them to crush a king after a game—and get quick eyeballs from just the shock value. What’s next? Pile-drive the opponent through the chessboard?
Certainly, organisers will look to get players to do these things for their own bottom line. But it’s for the players to draw a line somewhere. And throwing a wooden piece in the air for fans to catch certainly does not cross that line. For those wondering what the future of chess looks like, the Nakamura moment also offered a peek. Because right next to the fist-pumping Nakamura on stage stood a 19-year-old world champion who, regardless of what was happening around him, went about resetting the board quietly like he usually does despite heavy defeats.
