Dutch GM Anish Giri expressed dissatisfaction with Hikaru Nakamura’s reaction to the conflict over the clash of dates between the Grand Chess Tour and the Esports World Cup. Giri denies that Hikaru single-handedly influences the amount of online viewership for tournaments and cites his own statistics as an example:

Anish Giri

Anish Giri

Dutch GM

“Hikaru keeps saying how he alone brings all this ‘viewership’, but honestly, even an ad I did for my website ‘ChessMonitor’ did barely worse on my completely inactive YT channel with 15x less subscribers than most of his recent videos.”

Nakamura responded to Giri, describing his statement as ‘rage bait’:

Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura

World No. 2, streamer

“Nice rage bait attempt. I’ve never said I bring all the viewership, mentioning Levy and Magnus frequently. My comments about viewership relate to livestreaming, not long form youtube content. Failing to understand the difference shows a complete lack of understanding.”

Giri explained that the main point of his complaint is that Hikaru is betraying his colleagues:

Anish Giri

Anish Giri

Dutch GM

“The problem is not the bad views. The problem is that you are attempting to backstab your colleagues, just to increase your chance of finishing second at the EWC. That is not nice.”

To which Nakamura responded that Anish mistrusts him:

Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura

World No. 2, streamer

“Hilarious! Chess players always going to think that everything is about strategizing. There’s no guarantee I’ll even finish in the Top-4, but have fun raging on twitter or going after people in facebook DM’s who are no longer with us.”

Elite world chess players have published an open letter addressed to the organisers of GCT and EWC on February 10. Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, Vincent Keymer, Praggnanandhaa R and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave called on the organisers to consider adjustments or practical solutions that would allow players to participate in both events.

The Esports World Cup is a premier annual international gaming tournament and festival held in Riyadh, with a $1,500,000 prize fund. Grand Chess Tour is an annual circuit of international chess tournaments with a $2,000,000 prize pool across 2 Classical tournaments, 3 Rapid & Blitz events and the Grand Finals.

Credit: Spectrum Studios