Hikaru Nakamura shared his opinion about elite chess players. Nakamura believes that all top players are arrogant, says that ego is necessary to become a strong player, and cited Wesley So and Viswanathan Anand as examples.

Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura

World's No. 3, streamer

“The reality is that every top player is very arrogant. Some are just better at keeping their emotions and their feelings inside as opposed to others.

But anybody who wants to pretend that other players are somehow very calm, they aren’t arrogant, or they don’t have a big ego — you’re just lying to yourself, basically. Because all of them do. And of course, I am too. Everybody’s arrogant. Everybody has an ego.

Because you have to have that in order to be a very, very strong chess player. You have to have it. It’s just the reality. There are certain players who are better at keeping it inside, but every top player has an ego. Even the Indian players.

[Chat: Wesley So?] What I would say about Wesley is, if you look at the Wesley of years ago, I would have said he had more than he does now. Because, I think, Wesley now is generally very happy to play the game of maximizing his financial situation more so than taking huge risks to try to win games. So, it might not be as much now.

Does Vishy have no ego? There was a book on Vishy some years ago that came out. There was something in that book about Vishy where basically the whole night he wasn’t sleeping or threw a chair or something like that. That’s still psychotic behavior. Let’s be real. And that still shows that he has a lot of passion, a lot of ego, and he wants to always win.

It’s nice to pretend, but come on… Everybody’s like that. I’m sorry, but that’s just the reality.”

Hikaru Nakamura shared his opinion in reaction to the video of Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru taking the lie detector test. In the video, Nakamura answered positively to the question of whether Carlsen is an arrogant person. Magnus noted that he didn’t disagree with Hikaru’s opinion.

Credit: Lennart Ootes