Hikaru Nakamura is one of the best chess players in the world, but is more known for his entertaining streams and charismatic personality.

By Joshua Altman

With the onset of the pandemic, over the board chess became impossible and chess was forced to switch to the digital world. This digital world encompassed chess streaming, playing, learning and more. At the forefront of this digital chess world was and still is Hikaru Nakamura. Nakamura, now 34, is currently the #22 ranked chess player in the world, and #5 in the United States. However, despite his talent and chess prowess he is most known for his popular streams, videos and overall chess content. Nakamura has 1.2 million youtube subscribers, an average of 18,000 twitch viewers per stream and 347,000 twitter followers, making him by far the most popular chess content creator. 

Being at such a high level in chess, one might think that his streams would be monotone and filled with elegant and complex chess rhetoric. However, his content is quite the opposite. Nakamura makes his content accessible to both beginners, masters, and non chess players alike, through his simple explanations and content surrounding chess. Nakamura always explains the reasoning behind his moves in a simplistic way, that anyone with a basic understanding of the rules could understand. Furthermore, Nakamura frequently does meme reviews and reaction videos relating to chess, to generate comedic and humorous content. Thus, it is no surprise that Nakamura is sponsored by and supported by chess.com, the premier online chess site in the world. 

Nakamura was born December 9, 1987 in Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. He moved to the U.S. when he was two years old with his mother and brother. Nakamura picked up chess at the age of seven and quickly climbed the ranks becoming a grandmaster at 15. At his peak he was the number one ranked player in the U.S. and number two in the world. Outside of chess Nakamura is very interested in the stock market and finance. When prompted with the question “If you had the opportunity to have any other career, what would it be?” Nakamura responded by saying “Probably somewhere in finance or Wall Street; probably in trading if I had to take a guess. I do have quite an interest in the markets as well.”In addition, Nakamura is a big fan of tennis and enjoys playing it in his free time. Nakamura is not married nor does he have children – he spends the bulk of his time creating chess content. According to an article by Wired, Nakamura’s primary motivation with his content creation is to “ bring a populist movement to chess that runs up against the game’s marked culture of elitism.”

Speaking as a chess player myself and someone who’s played competitively for over ten years, I can agree that elitism in chess is a big deal. Chess leadership and publicity has been primarily dominated by the same group of older figures who want chess to be a closed-off game- they want chess to be only available to the great players, the grandmasters, and the young prodigies. 

While Nakamura could be part of this ideology (he is one of the top players in the world) and the elite culture of chess would certainly welcome him, he chooses instead to promote chess to the greater public in order to spread his love of the game.

Overall, through his genius and accessible content creation, Nakamura is the face of chess at the moment, and will continue to be for a long time to come.