 "Hikaru Nakamura said that his trainers are responsible for his shock loss to Javokhir Sindarov at Fide candidates 2026. Image: Fide")
Hikaru Nakamura laid the blame on his trainers after suffering an embarrassing defeat to Javokhir Sindarov in Round 5 of the ongoing Fide Candidates 2026 on Friday in Cyprus. 2025 Fide World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov has taken a dangerous sole lead with 4.5/5 points, while Nakamura is seventh in the eight-player tournament with just 1.5 points so far from the first five games.
Having already beaten R Praggnanandhaa and Fabiano Caruana, the match against Nakamura was seen as Sindarov’s next biggest challenge. Some also felt that while Nakamura had been off colour, the World No 2 had enough wherewithal to get the better of the Uzbek Grandmaster.
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But that proved to be incorrect as Sindarov blew away Nakamura’s preparation with a novelty move, forcing Hikaru to waste over an hour on the next move.
Nakamura had begun the match with the Marshall Gambit in the Queen’s Gambit Declined and sacrificed two pawns by the first nine moves, but he was stunned on the 12th move when, rather than opting for the recommended e5, Sindarov chose to castle. This was completely out of Nakamura’s prep as he spent an eye-popping 67 minutes and 44 seconds to decide the next move.
Nakamura loses cool on trainer after losing to Sindarov
While the engine said that 13.Ne4! was the right choice, Hikaru went for 13.h4?! despite taking all the time in the world and from thereon, he had no chance of a comeback being two pawns down.
How Sindarov defeated Hikaru:
In a post-game stream, Nakamura lambasted his coaches and trainers for not preparing him for the possibility of a castle by the opponent.
“I can’t be mad at myself for this one. This is 100% on the people working for me," Nakamura said. “I had a file and it didn’t have the move castles. Honestly, it’s a novelty, but it’s such a human move and as soon as Javokhir played that, I was like ‘What is this?’”
“I guess you can say I had some way to figure it out, but it was impossible without knowing what the correct line is.”
Javokhir did not miss a chance to troll Hikaru as he took a dig at him for coming up with a losing move after thinking for an hour.
“He just thought one hour and played the wrong move, and after this, I took this advantage and played very well, in my opinion,” Sindarov told Chess.com.
Meanwhile, Nakamura also clarified on the post-game stream that he was not blaming his regular second, Kris Littlejohn, for the defeat against Sindarov, but another one of his seconds who is ranked around the top 20 in the world.