Hikaru Nakamura

American GM

“As players, we were treated like we should just shut up and take the money, basically. In fact, someone within Freestyle said that directly. Which is basically: “We’re giving you good money. You should shut up and play the tournament. Don’t complain.”

But the reality is, a lot of the players, specifically myself and Fabiano, I think it’s forgotten, especially by the Freestyle people, that we went out of our way to basically support them. When the whole Freestyle Tour started in 2022, there was this big issue with FIDE and players like Fabiano and myself especially, we stuck our neck out on the line and we sort of were trying to stand up for what we thought would be a good thing for chess that would push us forward. And really, that kind of has been missed.

We did a lot of these things and took quite a big risk potentially and I feel that that’s really overlooked overall. So, that’s just my little bit, my one hot take of the day that I will say. But I think when that’s the view and the players are treated like that, as though they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know anything, it’s kind of not great.”