Hikaru Nakamura’s ‘king toss’ vs D Gukesh at Checkmate USA vs India stokes controversy
The USA’s Hikaru Nakamura courted controversy after flinging world champion D. Gukesh’s king into the crowd following his victory at the Checkmate USA vs India event on Sunday at the Esports Stadium in Arlington.
The American Grandmaster’s win sealed the USA’s 5-0 triumph over India in an exhibition contest designed to enhance spectator engagement through showmanship — shorter time formats, boxing-style player walkouts, WWE-like announcements — and modified rules that prohibited resignations and draws by repetition.
Nakamura’s actions, wildly uncharacteristic in the usually restrained world of chess, were criticised by many as disrespectful to Gukesh, who appeared part-shocked, part-amused as the incident unfolded.
“This is not just vulgarity, but already a diagnosis of degradation of the modern chess,” wrote former world champion Vladmir Kramnik on X.
The event organisers, through a sarcastic social media post on Monday, confirmed that players were encouraged to disregard usual chess protocols at the five-match event to make it more engaging for the fans,
“On behalf of the organizers, we admit having forced the players to have fun, to please the crowd and to forego the FIDE Etiquette. We sincerely apologize if the players, the live audience and the vast majority of online viewers had a good time,” read the X post.
Nakamura himself admitted that his celebration was pre-planned. “If I won, I was always gonna throw the King. The fact that it was a dramatic bullet match made it even better. I hope the fans enjoyed it.”
Popular chess YouTuber Levy Rozman, a member of the USA team, backed his teammate and added that Nakamura later spoke to Gukesh to explain the gesture.
“Without context, it will look like an unprovoked gesture. But we were encouraged by the organisers to do that stuff. I forgot that if I won my game against ChessBase India’s Sagar Shah, or he won, we were supposed to break the king. It was for the entertainment angle.
“The winner of Gukesh and Hikaru’s game was supposed to toss the king into the fans. I don’t know if Gukesh would have done that. Hikaru spoke to Gukesh later and explained that it was all for show and no disrespect was meant,” said Rozman.
Published on Oct 06, 2025