Hikaru Nakamura

All Things Chess
1

Moderator Mode: Off

I just went to Twitter and read Hikaru Nakamura’s tweets.

You guys need to quit taking his writings out of context, and you need to quit misconstruing what he has written.

First let’s look at his position on this team. He is playing the 1st board, meeting the other teams’ toughest players.

He is currently our best player.

Now, here are some quotes of his and the discussion about them:

[/quote]
Hikaru Nakamura ‏@GMHikaru

@SonofPearl Funny how people seem to misconstrue certain comments as slights. We’ve had a great run, but we were hoping for more.
[/quote]

Here he is speaking of,…guess who…

Alright, the above gives almost all of the full context of his comments regarding that statement about relying on your teammates and their abilities.

He was not attacking or dressing down anyone.

Now on to his latest, today (it’s much shorter)

You see, he is known for making double edged tweets.

He also is very good to Robson and his win.

He is unabashedly objective about his loss, as well. And he did say his team carried him this last round.

I personally don’t read that much into his statement about carrying the team. He was first board and the bedrock of the team.

Objectively:

Round 1 had Hikaru not playing and the USA had a clean sweep of it over Jordan. Hikaru did not carry.

Round 2 had Hikaru, Kamsky and Robson winning and Akobian drawing over Lithuania. Hikaru did not carry anymore than Kamsky or Robson.

Round 3 had Hikaru drawing with Kamsky, Onishuk and Robson winning against Venezuela. Hikaru did not carry.

Round 5 had Hikaru winning, Kamsky losing and Onishuk and Akobian drawing against India. Hikaru did carry, but only to a draw for the team.

Round 6 had Hikaru, Kamsky, Onishuk and Akobian all drawing against Germany. Hikaru did not carry.

Round 7 had Hikaru, Kamsky and Onishuk winning with Robson drawing. Hikaru did carry but not anymore than Kamsky and Onishuk.

Round 8 had Hikaru not playing with Kamsky and Onishuk losing and Akobian and Robson drawing. Hikaru was not there to carry but we lost the match.

Round 9 had Hikaru and Kamsky winning with Onishuk drawing and Robson losing. Hikary did carry but not more than Kamsky.

Round 10 had Hikaru, Kamsky and Akobian drawing with Onishuk losing. I don’t think we could say anyone carried anyone else in the US for this match.

Round 11 had Hikaru being the lone loser. Kamsky and Robson won and Onishuk drew. This is where Hikaru says the team carried him.

So, there was only one round where it could be said that Hikaru carried the team by himself and that was in Round 5. In the other rounds he either was not playing (in 2) or shared the carrying with at least one other player.

Methinks, Hikaru was just being a bit brash in that statement about carrying the team. He did acknowledge the team carried him today.

Anyway, that’s it on Hikaru. He certainly isn’t that bad at all.

2

I haven’t noticed anyone here taking his writings out of context or misconstruing what he said. He has a long history of saying things that he later has to clarify or disavow. Among other instances, do you recall what he said about Kasparov?

You make it sound like people are picking on him unreasonably. I don’t see that, but I do see that he is too self-centered in what he says. Other than that, he’s ok with me.

3

I have to respectfully disagree with you here. Public figures are held to higher scrutiny for what they post. That’s part and parcel of being a public figure. His initial statement is pretty clear. And one person’s context is another person’s backpedaling.

His established and acknowledged excellence as one of the world’s top chess players (and our undisputed #1) has nothing to do with his claim that he carried the men’s Olympiad team for 10 rounds.

Personally, I thought it was pretty arrogant, and ill timed, given the tough loss in round 10. Now, one can dispute that contention, and make a good argument in the process. But the statistics make it pretty clear that Nakamura didn’t exactly carry the team by himself. (Kamsky played all 11 games, and earned the bronze on board 2 with a 2796 performance rating.)

The moral of the story: some thoughts are better left unexpressed. Nakamura’s not the first person to trip over his Twitter feed, and he won’t be the last.

4

Moderator Mode: Off

Well, when a few here took his one comment about carrying the team for most of the Olympiad without the rest of what he said, that is what I’m talking about. If you take his complete comment in, you will see that he is saying Robson and the rest of the team did the work for the team this last round.

I agree that a number of the things he says should be edited before he says them, especially that comment about Kasparov.

I’m just saying that the instance with his comment about the team dynamic was taken as him making less of Onishuk for losing, and he wasn’t at all, as his later writings clarified, along with this latest have been taken out of context and/or misconstrued. Mind you, I don’t think it was hard to misconstrue what he said, and he should have been clearer in what he said, initially.

Boyd, you’ll see that in my initial post I pointed out that there really was only one round where it could be said Hikaru carried the team, and that one was to a match draw.

I agree that Kamsky really did the yoeman’s job in this tournament. The others didn’t do that badly either, all in all.

5

All Nakamura needs to do is to hire a manger/publicist and let them tweet and speak for him. Nakamura seems to be a decent sort but unfortunately has the " Open Mouth, Insert Foot Syndrome ".

6

…exactly!

7

Nakamura was 4th best on 1st board
Kamsky was 3rd best on 2nd board
Onishuk was 9th best on 3rd board
Akobian did not place in the top 20 on 4th board
Robson was 6th best among the alterates

I think both Nakamura and Kamsky ‘did the yeoman’s job in this tournament.’ Playing a team’s top board round in and round out (granted, Kamsky did that when Nakamura didn’t play) is tough work - take it from somebody who knows.

8

@ Ron Suarez
One must take care when agreeing with me (especially with “!”)
Several posters have suddenly disappeared within days of so doing. :laughing:

9

I didn’t make that statement at all. I’d say our top two players shared the load. If Nakamura doesn’t lose to Wojtaszek in the last round, he probably medals on Board 1. As it is, he finished fourth.

The US, as team, finished fifth. The fact that our top two players posted two of the 10-12 best performance ratings among all Olympiad participants really speaks to just how much our top two players shouldered the load for that fifth-place finish. They need some help, to be sure.

The good news is that said help is most definitely on the way, led for the moment by Ray Robson. I also note that Timur Gareev’s federation switch gives us yet another strong young GM who will challenge for 2014’s team. Future prospects look good, even if Onischuk’s Texas Tech work keeps him away from the next Olympiad.

(In a different thread, I idly speculated about just how good the US team would be if Fabiano Caruana could be convinced to switch back to representing the US - which won’t happen, but it’s fun to think about it. Imagine a US team with an in-form Kamsky on board 3. Yikes.)

10

Tweets? You are taking tweets seriously? They are only tweets, man. We are not talking about the games. Just tweets. Who cares about tweets? It is how you play in the games. Don’t worry about the tweets. Tweets don’t count in the games. (Homage to Allan Iversonn)

11

Moderator Mode: Off

Uhmm, I’m the one that started this thread in favor of Hikaru. I agree that he did a big job for the team.

I still feel and agree, with no one in particular, that Kamsky did an outstanding job. He played in every round with only one loss and three draws for a tournament score of 8.5, out of 11.

Yes, Hikaru had only one loss and four draws, but also did not play 2 rounds, for his score of 6.0. He also played the best of each team when he played.

I certainly don’t mean to take anything away from Hikaru. Kamsky, did do more Chess work by playing in every round and had an outstanding performance. That’s all.

12

[quote=“tmagchesspgh”]
Tweets? You are taking tweets seriously? They are only tweets, man. We are not talking about the games. Just tweets. Who cares about tweets? It is how you play in the games. Don’t worry about the tweets. Tweets don’t count in the games. (Homage to Allan Iversonn)[/quote

I started to sing “Rockin’ Robin” or was it “Rockin’ Robson”? :sunglasses:

13

I think the ‘ironman’ performance by Kamsky is given a bit too much credit. Yes, Kamsky played two more rounds than Nakamura, but keep in mind what that meant. He played the first round, against a 2392 rated player - really little more than a warm-up for a player of Kamsky (or Nakamura’s) strength. If Nakamura had played that round and they had sat Kamsky, would we really be having this discussion? Kamsky also played first board against a 2566 player - only 1 player that Nakamura played was rated lower than that.

Bottom line, it’s great that Kamsky performed as well as he did, but with 2 rest days, I’m not so convinced that, given the games where Nakamura sat, it tips the balance of the performance between the two of them decidedly in Kamsky’s favor.

14

@ Randy Bauer

Reminds me of a Soviet purge. When someone was no longer in favor, their faces were air-brushed out of every official photo they were ever in. Rewriting of history.
Kamsky was the man. None of your hypotheticals will change the facts. It was the coaches call who to play or sit.
Live with it.
:unamused:

15

Eye roll.

I’ve presented plenty of logical observations that suggest that both Nakamura AND Kamsky were ‘the man.’ Their performance ratings were statistically a dead heat. One was the fourth best on first board, the other third best on second board. The only real difference is the extra two games played by Kamsky - against inferior opposition.

For those of us who have played chess team competitions, three words: NO BIG DEAL.

I don’t have to ‘live with it’ but would suggest you learn to ‘analyze it’ in a way that isn’t just emotional but based on reason.

16

Or a real recent Russian one. Don’t expect to see Tomashevsky on the team going forward.

17

Ron is right that a sense of proportion is useful.

As in golf and tennis, the public image of the leading players affects the image of the game. Not only has Nakamura not had untoward encounters with fire hydrants nor line judges, he’s a brilliant and charming young man.

Today’s tweet was intended to be gracious, and Reggie Jackson did eventually get his own candy bar.

18

A lot of you are sitting here and judging Naka… how many of you have sat down with him for 30 minutes or an hour to talk to the guy and see things through his eyes? I know I have at the Olympic after party yesterday…

Or is it all just about you?

19

The tweets were a tempest in a teapot. The interpretations may be based on past experience or interactions with HN. Judgemental, perhaps, but not any more than usual in a 24/7 social media world. I doubt he cares not a jot about what others think about him. Well, he might care what his local Macaenas thinks, but that is about all.

Gushing, dewy eyed, name dropping defenses of “Naka” may also be over the top. Oh, what worldly wisdom did he impart at the party? Please feed our parched souls with some Wonderwall tidbit. What is it like to be an “insider” and part of the entourage our USCF dues is paying for? :unamused:

20

“Macaenas” ? “Wonderwall”?

Thanks, you had me running to my dictionary!