World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura exploits Candidates system and he is not the first

PUNE: As 15-20 ‘real’ aspirants for the two of eight World Chess Championship Candidates spots are battling it out in a strong FIDE Grand Swiss event at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, another aspirant is charting his own dubious path.


World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura, who has not yet qualified for the eight-player Candidates tournament that will determine the challenger to World Champion D Gukesh in 2026, is not playing the ongoing strong event (avg rating 2640). The American is aware that he can clinch one Candidates slot — available for the highest-rated player who has not qualified by other paths — by just maintaining his rating ahead of his rivals and by fulfilling the criteria of playing 40 games in a year.

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Hence Nakamura is playing rating tournaments in a weak field at Iowa, New Orleans etc. Even if he loses points, they won’t go to his rivals in the rating race. And he is also confident of beating the players in the chosen field and accumulating 0.8 Elo points per win. These tournaments had two rounds per day, the kind of which Nakamura wouldn’t play otherwise.

In the strong Norway Chess classical event earlier this year, Nakamura (Elo 2807) could add only three rating points. But in the 11 games since, he has added about nine playing against rivals having the Elo range of 1812 and 2250. In a normal situation, Nakamura won’t even consider these players as FIDE rated players. Nakamura is now 11 games shy of the 40-game mark.

His closest rivals for the Candidates spot can also take part in ‘such’ tournaments. They can also arrange such tournaments. But they start the race slightly on the back foot — having 30-35 Elo points behind Nakamura. Plus they have tournaments like FIDE Grand Swiss and knockout FIDE World Cup on the anvil where prize money and competition would be good but gaining rating points will be tough.

However, the loopholes in the system are exploited in the lower-level tournaments too. Some junior Indian players smartly choose their tournaments so that they can make easy norms, increase rating to reach norm requirement and withdraw before playing the full tournament — either after ‘hitting’ the mark or after bad results that dent their rating. The Open Swiss League tournament allows players to withdraw from the event any moment citing health or family emergency as reasons.

The players who are leading generally don’t pull out. D Gukesh has never withdrawn from any tournament despite suffering many tough moments early in his career.


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