The world’s number one chess player Magnus Carlsen made his grand comeback on Twitch, and he couldn’t resist poking fun at Twitch’s best chess star Hikaru Nakamura.
The Norwegian chess grandmaster has spent most of his adult life dominating chess, no matter what opponents he came across. He has been a world champion since 2013 after becoming a grandmaster in 2004, and has played with almost all the best players.
This includes Twitch star Hikaru Nakamura, who has been running the category on the streaming platform for some time, and is also an extremely high-profile player himself.
However, after entering Hikaru’s domain, Magnus couldn’t resist hitting the streamer, joking about his skill level.
“You shouldn’t compare me to Hikaru,” he said in a chat on January 3. — This guy is a regular streamer. I’m not even verified on Twitch. How could I have more viewers than him?
“This is unfair competition. It’s like when we play chess tournaments and I’m a professional chess player and he’s a professional streamer, it’s not fair.”
While Magnus was a bit ironic, his assessment was also based on reality. He has a clear record of wins against Hikaru in classic and fast games, but similarly Hikaru is much higher than him in terms of the number of viewers on Twitch.
Magnus decided not to defend his title at the FIDE World Chess Championship 2023, refusing the honor that will go to the winner of the match between Yan Nepomnyashchy and Ding Lizhen.
It is unclear whether he will seek to regain the title in the future.
