D Gukesh Vs Ding Liren: Hikaru Nakamura Thinks Indian Clear Favourite To Win World Championship

The 36-year-old Nakamura, one of the top rapid and blitz players in the world, however said Liren can win against Gukesh if the Chinese manages to draw a few initial games in the title showdown.

Nakamura, who guided the US team to gold at the 2016 Chess Olympiad, had played against Gukesh at the Candidates this year.

“Yeah, I mean, Gukesh is a clear favourite. I'd say 80-20 is my guess. The only way I see Ding winning is if he is able to draw the first 4-5 games and they come down to a situation where one game can shift the match completely or if he (Liren) wins the game early,” the American Grandmaster told PTI on the sidelines of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League (GCL) on Thursday.

Gukesh, 18, had held Nakamura to a draw in the sixth round of the Candidates in Toronto in April and finally ended the American player’s dream of making the World Championship final with another stalemate in the 14th and final round.

The champion player, who earned his Grandmaster title at the age of 15 and has ruled the rapid and blitz chess for a very long time, is not happy with the state of affairs in American chess, which, he said, was one of the reasons he decided not to compete in the Olympiad after being an integral part for seven editions from 2006 till 2018.

American GM Wesley So had, during the Olympiad in Budapest recently, said that the United States would have won the gold easily had Nakamura decided to play.

India made history in the event by winning its first-ever gold medals in both the men’s and women’s categories, leaving the world No.1 USA men’s side licking its wounds.

“I mean, I think that when Wesley So made those comments he was obviously very emotional after (losing) the event. It’s really hard to look at that statement and take it seriously simply because, at the end of the day, if you look at the event, Arjun (Erigaisi) and (D) Gukesh…they’re basically winning every game. And if we're being honest, that's two points in every match that they were winning,” said Nakamura.

Arjun and Erigaisi were the architects of the historic Indian victory as they won most of their matches. Arjun delivered an unbeaten run throughout the event, securing nine wins and a draw from his 10 matches.

“I think that when Wesley said that (I should have played the Olympiad), he was being emotional. I think he's just wrong. I mean if I played, would we have had a chance? Probably. But I don't know if it would have changed anything (given the way Gukesh and Arjun were playing),” Nakamura said.

He also criticised American players for the downfall of chess in the country.

“When I look at American chess, the big problem is that you have a lot of players who are sort of playing very minimal amounts of events or the closed events. I think some of the (American players’) ratings are a little bit inflated, I would say.

"When I look at Levon Aronian, he's keeping a 2750 ELO rating by playing a handful of events a year and whenever he plays an ‘Open’ tournament like in Spain, didn’t he draw or lose to one of the Indian kids? I think he lost a bunch of rating points very quickly. So, I think some of the ratings are also inflated and the players are not getting any younger.

“I think without any sort of new talents to replace these players, it's very hard to see the US being competitive down the road,” Nakamura, the ‘Icon player’ of the American Gambits team in the GCL, opined.

Nakamura added that one of the reasons he decided to skip the Chess Olympiad was because of the lack of financial incentives. He said his streaming and content creation on YouTube was more lucrative.

“As far as playing in the Olympiad, what I would say is that I obviously played seven times… but I said it many times, the financial conditions were not very good for the event. Whether people want to basically understand what I'm saying or pretend that I'm making it up, the fact of the matter is content creation is much more financially viable than playing these tournaments.

“And, if it's not a tournament where there's a bigger goal, say something like the World Rapid Blitz or the classical World Championship Candidates up, it simply doesn't make sense. So when I look at the financial offer, which has not basically changed since 2018, there was no reason for me to play.”