Nakamura’s impressive, lightly trollish chess gimmicks-blindfolded matches, matches without queens or rooks, solving as many puzzles as he can in five minutes-have spurred Twitch’s top personalities to try the game for themselves. Nakamura began removing more pieces, starting the game with fewer and fewer, until, Zheng says, “I finally won when he basically had nothing. Zheng thought, There’s no way he can beat me without a queen. Nakamura challenged Zheng to a game, but Nakamura would start without a queen. But since the pandemic has paused over-board, or IRL, tournaments, Nakamura has magicked his life as a chess pro into a full-time gig streaming and commentating on chess on Twitch. He helped the US win a gold medal at the 2016 chess Olympiad and, to this day, remains among the top 20 chess players in the world. At age 15, he was the youngest-ever American prodigy to earn the “grandmaster” title. Nakamura is a five-time US chess champion. The viral clip viewers created of that moment is titled “Talent.” His eyes shift back and forth, still unsure. Not yet realizing his mistake, Lengyel said, “ GG?,” or “ good game?”. Lengyel’s viewers completely lost it in his Twitch chat: “STALEMATE,” “SO BAD,” “you had checkmate,” and a barrage of Pepe the Frog and Omegalul emotes. “The guy has one move here.” Then, more doubtful: “He’s not gonna take with the rook and make a stalemate.?”Īfter a millisecond more mental math, Lengyel did just that. Streaming himself watching Lengyel’s match, Nakamura analyzed the board for his viewers. Despite fan and viewer criticism that Lengyel wasn’t very good, Nakamura believed that his pupil had talent. Ever-patient, Nakamura had been mentoring Lengyel, a top Twitch streamer and former Overwatch pro, on his chess journey since April. I hope we all can move forward from this, and focus on what matters most.One day in May, chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was watching the last two moves of Felix “xQc” Lengyel’s online chess game. Clearly I love this game, and my passion can at times get the best of me. As two of the game’s most high profile chess content creators, we have a responsibility to the community to at least meet as professionals.įor those disappointed in how we all have acted, I truly apologize. I will not do this in a public forum and will not speak publicly about him again. In regards to Chessbrah/Eric Hansen, we need to connect privately to try to resolve our issues. I appreciate what she has done for me and the world of chess, but it is time to move on with a new team. I will no longer be working with Chessbae. From now on, I will have more visibility into all things related to my account and business. While well intentioned, I fully acknowledge that those working on my behalf with me should not have aggressively pursued the copyright strikes. I need to be more aware of the actions of my team, and anyone working on my behalf. I know now that ultimately, this is *my* stream. I let others manage the behind the scenes activities because I was focused solely on creating content. I truly apologize, and will work on that.Īs I mentioned the other day on my stream, I am now going to take a much more active role in the management of my accounts. In hindsight, I realize that at times my demeanor when interacting with others has been negative. Having said that, this desire to win and my extreme competitive nature sometimes crosses over into real life. Our audience and fans have high expectations for how we all behave, and by this infighting and negativity we are letting them down - myself included.Īs you know, I have been a fierce competitor all of my life. This is not only bad for all involved, but bad for chess.
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