Hikaru Nakamura heaps praise on India's chess ecosystem: 'Everything is the way it should be'

India has made rapid strides in the world of chess in the last couple of years thanks to the rise of young stars such as D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa and more. It is this ‘Golden Generation’ of stars moulded by the legendary Viswanathan Anand that has been responsible for transforming India into a force in chess, dishing out clinical performances collectively as well as individually.

The young Indian stars had helped India land a historic maiden Olympiad medal in the ‘Open’ as well as ‘Women’ categories in 2022, and would complete a golden sweep at the same event two years later .  More recently, Gukesh had become the youngest winner in the history of the Candidates Tournament as well as the FIDE World Championship and while Praggnanandhaa had won the Tata Steel Chess tournament earlier this month.

Also Read | Gukesh, Arjun lead the way as the golden generation of Indian chess finally comes of age in 2024

American chess star Hikaru Nakamura, for one, is all praise for the “ecosystem” that is currently in place in India, which he believes is what has helped transform the country into a chess superpower.

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“When I look at chess, there’s one country that’s doing very, very well, where the whole ecosystem is developed the way that I wish it were say in the US. That country is obviously India where there is no great imbalance,” Nakamura told ChessBase India on the sidelines of the opening Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event in Weissenhaus, Germany.

The Japanese-American Grandmaster goes on to explain how things are starkly different in the West – primarily the United States – where there exists an “imbalance” within the chess community that results in professional players, even those who have dedicated their lives to chess, struggling to make a decent living from the sport.

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“So when I look at chess – and I’ll just use the US as an example because it’s where I’m from – you have the imbalance where you have the very top players who have some success, but they’re not really superstars. And you have the content creators like Levy (Levy Rozman, a.k.a. GothamChess) and myself who are doing better than the pure pro players, and so you have this imbalance that I think causes a lot of jealousy, a lot of negativity because you feel like things aren’t the way they should be.

“You have players who spent their entire lives playing chess and you have people who frankly have put in a fraction of the time making more money than the pros. So I think in the West because of that, it’s very good that you have some of these tournaments coming in,” Nakamura added, justifying the existence of the lucrative Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour as a financial blessing for professional players.

The 37-year-old added that “India is the perfect example” of how a chess ecosystem should be, and was “sad” to see it not replicated elsewhere.

“On the flip side, if I look at India I think everything is basically as it should be. I think India is the perfect example; you have the top players who are extremely successful, they are superstars. People who are professional players are the most successful.

“It feels like the system, everything is the way it should be. Everyone is doing very well, and so in India, things are going to continue that way. Jealous is the wrong word to use, but it definitely makes me a little bit sad to see that it isn’t that way elsewhere,” Nakamura added.

Nakamura is currently competing at the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour that got underway on Friday, where he was tied on two points along with Gukesh, world No 1 Magnus Carlsen and German Grandmaster Vincent Keymer after five rounds.