Hikaru Nakamura

American GM, streamer

“What are my thoughts on Magnus? A lot of people are probably going to write things like, ‘Magnus is washed’, ‘He’s no longer good enough to compete’, ‘Norway Chess was his downfall’, ‘He should retire’, and so on.

My general view is that Magnus seems to be struggling a lot with finding good moves when he gets low on time. It feels like the technique, or those little moments, he’s not sensing them the way he once did.

That doesn’t mean he’s not still a very, very strong player, or that he can’t win tournaments. But it feels like, in critical moments, that spider sense of using time or spotting little tactics is kind of fading a bit. And it has really cost him dearly, both in Norway Chess and in this tournament in Hong Kong as well.

This doesn’t mean he’s done. It doesn’t mean he won’t win tournaments or anything like that. But it definitely feels like this is the beginning of a shift of Magnus being the greatest player of all time. He’s still, of course, the greatest player and he’s still, I think, the best player in the world. But it feels like the edge is diminishing and everybody else is slowly but surely starting to catch up.”