Hikaru Nakamura expresses satisfaction over how his chess career panned out: 'Why would I not be satisfied?'

World No 2 Hikaru Nakamura has expressed satisfaction over the way his career as a professional chess player has panned out, especially the resurgence he has experienced over the last five years. The 38-year-old Grandmaster is among the most decorated players in American chess history and is also ranks among the best players in the current generation after world No 1 Magnus Carlsen.

The five-time US champion, however, had experienced a free-fall in the Fide ratings not too long ago, falling out of the world top-10 and plummeting as low as 19th or 20th – at which point Nakamura felt that his days of playing chess at the highest level were over.

Nakamura highlights post-2020 resurgence in career

Nakamura, however, has made an impressive comeback since then, winning the World Fischer Random Chess Championship in 2022 and establishing himself as the highest-rated player in the world after Carlsen in the latest Fide ratings. And it's not just Classical chess where Nakamura has established himself as he also happens to be a former world No 1 in the Rapid as well as Blitz formats.

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"Of course I'm satisfied with my career. Why would I not be satisfied? ... In 2019, my rating went off a cliff and I was down to something like number 19 or 20 in the world, and at that point, I really thought that my professional chess career was over," Nakamura, who is the tenth-highest-rated player in chess history, had said recently.

"The chess world has completely lost its ability to remember anything beyond... beyond the past month. They have. Like if Sindarov goes and has one or two bad tournaments now after the Candidates, everyone's going to be like 'Oh Sindarov is terrible, he’s washed, Gukesh is suddenly the favorite again.'

"The world of chess is so messed up with how they look at players and their ratings and everything else," he added, referring to Javokhir Sindarov, who will be challenging reigning world champion D Gukesh for his title later this year.

Besides being among the top players, Nakamura is also a popular streamer on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch and has thus helped spread chess outside its traditional audience.