American GM Fabiano Caruana shared who he considers overrated by rating points in an interview with Dina Belenkaya on her YouTube channel on January 16. Fabiano expressed doubts regarding Hikaru Nakamura’s rating, citing Hikaru’s frequent participation in regional and local tournaments as an example.

Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana

World No.3

“I don’t think anyone is massively overrated. I mean, to me, the question is — Hikaru, he’s very high rated. Is he like 40 points better than Pragg for example? I don’t think the results really shows.

So, I would probably have to say Hikaru, but again, alongside his Mickey Mouse tournaments, he’s shown the results for the last 3 years consistently. So, he definitely has shown a 2,800 performance. Would I give him 2810 if I had to rate it myself? Probably not.

I think that his tournaments were legitimate. He wasn’t playing the strongest players in the world. And it was kind of a soft field for him, for sure. I mean, he dominated the players he played there. He got 15.5 out of 16 or whatever it was. So in that sense, it didn’t feel like the best way to qualify for Candidates, but I wouldn’t blame him for that.”

FIDE revoked the “400-point rating” rule for top players (2650+), which made every game against lower-rated opponents a high-risk, high-reward, on October 1 due to Hikaru Nakamura’s long streak of victories over opponents rated 400-900 points lower. Magnus Carlsen voluntarily declined participation in the Candidates, which allowed Hikaru Nakamura (2810) to qualify for the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 via second-place position on the FIDE rating list.