"In 2010 I agreed to a private Blitz match against Magnus. It was a huge mistake…" — Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura

World's No. 2

“In November of 2010 I played a tournament in Moscow, Russia — the Tal Memorial Tournament. After the tournament ended, there was a private blitz match held between myself and the five-time World Champion Magnus Carlsen.

Now, the obvious question is how on earth did this match come about, as both of us were there playing in the round-robin with the tournament having concluded? What was the case? What was the story?

The way that this match came about is that after the tournament had ended, on the final evening, I went out for dinner with one of my friends, someone who was involved with the Internet Chess Club at the time. That would be this guy Rui Moreira.

I went out for a nice dinner near the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where all the players were staying on Red Square. But during my dinner, somewhere as I was near finishing with Rui, I got a message from the chess journalist Macauley Peterson.

Macauley wrote a message and the question to Rui was: ‘Would Hikaru be interested in playing a match against Magnus Carlsen?’

Initially I thought: ‘What am I doing? I’ve had a nice dinner with a friend of mine. I’m relaxing. I’m enjoying my final evening. I’ve had a few drinks as well’. But ultimately, I thought: ‘Well, why not? There’s Magnus’.

At the time I don’t know if he was number one quite yet in November 2010. But it was very clear he was going to be the best player in the world. So, I thought: ‘Why not? I’m a great Blitz player. Let’s play against Magnus. Let’s see how good he is’.

In many interviews since this match, I have spoken about how I thought it was a huge mistake. And the reason I actually reached that conclusion later on, is that when I played against Magnus, what I realized is that in general he has a lot less weaknesses than I originally expected.

And there’s certain errors or certain weaknesses that I had at the time that I was actually a little bit unaware…”