By Hikaru Nakamura on 10/15/2008 12:47 PM

Greetings from Seattle! Tonight I will be playing in the US Chess League for the last time during the regular season. So far it has been a great run and I've enjoyed it immensely. Since I have not commented on last week, I will make some brief comments. Unlike last year when I lost to Bhat, (largely because I wasn't paying attention) this year was simply that I made a very stupid blunder in a much better position. However, despite my misfortune, our board 3 Readey also missed plenty of wins in his game so it wasn't solely my fault. Another note which I'd like to comment on is that I recently noticed GM Wolff annotated the game Esserman-Lian and said the Smith-Morra is a bad opening. I do not believe someone like Wolff who has been retired from chess for so many years and would rather make money at a hedge fund than play chess has any right to comment on the current state of chess theory. I would also straight up say that in a 10 game match in the Smith-Morra, Wolff would lose to Esserman if he played black. In...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 10/3/2008 11:42 AM

Hello again. Sorry if I have not been blogging much lately, but between the US Chess League and some rather unfortunate computer issues I have been quite busy. I will start off with the US Chess League. So far, so good as I am now 3/3 having beaten GMs Benjamin, Mitkov and Fedorowicz. Although I was not particularly crazy about the first 2 wins against Benjamin and Mitkov, my performance was good enough. However against GM Fedorowicz I played a double edged variation of the Kan and got a reasonable position out of the opening. In the middlegame, I think he missed some chances when he decided to play 24.Bxh7 instead of the sharp 24.Nd4 which would have led to a complicated tactical melee. In the ensuing endgame, Fed just got a bad position and lost without putting up much of a fight. Fortunately, Andy May won a very nice game on board 4 while Vancouverite Marcel Milat had a miracle save on board 3 which was enough for us to win the match. As of right now, pretty much everyone (Greg,Arun,etc) seems to have absolutely...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 9/14/2008 12:26 PM

Hello, this will be a rather brief blog as I am about to head off to Balcarra National Park in a short while. I now have the list of questions from all the members, and I would like to thank them. All of the questions look interesting, so I hope that after the interview everyone will be pleased with the answers.

Hikaru

By Hikaru Nakamura on 9/11/2008 4:08 PM

Greetings to everyone from sunny Vancouver! Last night I played my first game for the Seattle Sluggers in the US Chess League. When I played last year for the New York Knights, I must admit that it did not go particularly well as I started out with a loss against GM-elect Vinay Bhat. After that traumatic loss in my first round, I never really was able to get on track as I only won 1 game against IM Eli Vovsha and drew the rest. One of the major issues which I found at the time was that playing on a computer made it much more difficult to focus and I tended to treat the games less seriously. Therefore, I made a conscious decision to not play solely on the computer this year. Fortunately, Seattle has DGT boards which allow players to make moves on a normal board while being relayed to ICC. In the first game of the season for me, I was paired against GM Joel Benjamin with White. I started off with 1.g3 and we reached a relatively standard position after about 7 moves. The game then took a rather unusual turn of events...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 9/5/2008 11:55 AM

Hello again! Once again, I find myself apologizing for not keeping up with the blog during the tournament, but I was quite busy. The last time I blogged was after I drew against GM Charbonneau in round 4 of the tournament. At that point I was doing quite well, tied for the lead with GMs Charbonneau and Shulman. Unfortunately, in round 5 I proceeded to play very badly. Against IM Zugic, I played quite a bit too aggressively instead of being content with a draw. Somewhere around here, I realized that I was off form. Unfortunately, the rest day did little good for me as I proceeded to play a highly dubious Rauzer setup against GM Nataf and was close to losing if not lost in the final position. After this, I played against GM Mark Bluvshtein whom I have known since we played way back in the World Youths in 2001. The game was quite balanced, although I obtained a small initiative out of the opening. This eventually led to an endgame where I was a pawn up, but due both to feeling slightly sick (more on that later) as...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 8/28/2008 10:31 AM

Hello again everyone! I did not have a chance to post a blog yesterday as I was out exploring Montreal for the first time since I arrived on Sunday. I spent much of the morning walking along various paths of the Mont Royal which has some great  natural beauty and spectacular views. After going up the Mont Royal, I went to Old Montreal and walked along some of the nice streets and shops which are quite crowded with tourists. One of the interesting things I find about Montreal is that it very much reminds me of France with both the language as well as the whole atmosphere and culture. This is why despite absolutely loving Montreal, I doubt I could ever live here as it is just too reminiscent of Europe. Considering that I almost exclusively play in Europe these days, it is nice to not be in the same sort of area as that in which my profession is spent. This is probably why I will end up staying in Vancouver, BC instead of coming back to the east coast.

Onto the rounds! In round 3 I was paired against IM Thomas...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 8/26/2008 12:43 PM

Before, I get right into this post, I'd like to start off by offering my apologies for posting blogs the day after the round. Unfortunately, after the round ends, I am usually quite tired, so I come back to the house, eat dinner and then spend the rest of the evening playing pool or just listening to some great people speak some excellent French. Therefore, it is unlikely I will be posting after rounds end. Yesterday, I was paired against American GM Varuzhan Akobian. I first remember seeing Akobian pop up on the American chess scene around 2001-2002. It was during this time that he emigrated from Armenia to the US and chose to live in Los Angeles. Akobian stalled somewhat after his big run during that time, but due to some good results (Gibraltar,Australia) he has improved his rating significantly to the 2600+ mark. During these past years, we have had many matchups with the overall score being +1 for him from 5 games. The lone decisive game was in the Imre Konig Memorial way back in 2002. Since then we have...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 8/25/2008 9:03 AM

Well, hmm, where to start? I arrived in Montreal the afternoon before yesterday on a surprisingly short flight from New York (1 1/2 hours). Overall the first day was nice as I am staying with the Charbonneau's, his great sisters and mum who I have not seen in years. So I had a pretty good day to start, but that was before the tournament began. Yesterday, I was paired with Black against fellow American Grandmaster and current US Champion Yury Shulman. Although I was feeling good for most of the day, I proceeded to play the game like a total beginner. It started when I simply forgot a move order in the opening by playing 9...0-0? instead of 9...Nfd7 which was correct. Unfortunately for me, Yury found the right idea by playing 10.Nd2 Nfd7 11.Nd3! The point being that unlike the main variation with 9...Nfd7 10.Nd3 dxc4 where I am up a pawn, here the knight on d2 protects c4. However, despite my horrible mistake, I proceeded to find some play with 10...b5 11.c5 e5!?. Later on, I got a slightly worse position and was...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 8/17/2008 7:24 PM

Ohaio gozaimasu from Japan! The tournament reached its finale yesterday as I won again to finish on 7/7. Overall, I did not have to face anyone particularly strong as the second highest ranked player, FM Akira Watanabe 2356 (Japan's Number 1) did not win his sixth round game to force a penultimate showdown. Therefore, I cruised and probably am sitting right at 2700 Fide now. I'll just wait to see what the actual numbers are come October. For now though, I am going to shift my focus to the Montreal International Round Robin since it is my last rated event before the October Fide rating list. In general though, I find that paying too much attention to ratings (Live Top Ratings in particular) is quite a distraction and not worth the stress or effort to look. My attitude is just to play every game one at a time and see where you end up in the end. I would like to once again extend my thanks to Ms. Watai the head of the Japanese Chess Association for inviting me for the 3rd year in a row. Although the competition itself...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 8/16/2008 5:56 PM

So I won both of my games yesterday to remain perfect with a score of 6/6. Very shortly I will be playing the 7th and final round which I hope to win for obvious reasons. Japan has been another fun and interesting experience for me although the more I come here, the more it seems less and less exotic of a travel destination. That being said, I will always enjoy coming back to my homeland and look forward to it each and every year. The only downside (note to travelers) is that the weather has always been in the mid-high 80's with extreme humidity which makes the 20 minute walk to the playing site rather less than enjoyable to say the least. However, such is life and so far it doesn't seem to be affecting my play. Since I haven't done much with this website recently, there are several updates to report. On the "homepage" there is the What's New tab with all the most recent news on me. I have also changed the events page slightly so that it now is in a calendar format which I hope makes it slightly more lively. Another...

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