Chess paid no money at all... I spent time on poker and the stock market — Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura

World's No. 2, streamer

“[Chat: What got you into trading?] Chess paid no money at all.

Basically, when I was a broke boy playing chess, I was around 15-16 years old, I started having these thoughts like: ‘What if chess isn’t a real thing?’

At the time there were no events in St. Louis, just to give you an idea of context. The landscape was very barren in America to be a professional chess player. If you made it and you could get the top invites to tournaments in Europe then it’s a different story. But that required you being the top 10 in the world.

So basically, I started to see the writing on the wall that chess was very likely to be a very poor career and life decision. I started thinking about other things that I could do to make money.

Because I didn’t go to regular school. The idea of going and getting a degree was something possible, but it would take a lot of time. It would be very difficult. So, the two things that I spent time on were basically poker and of course the stock market.

[Chat: Did you not play matches with money?] That was not really allowed. There was one match I played in Washington Square Park so long ago. Playing for money is not really a thing.”