Fifteen of the top 20 seeds have been knocked out of the Chess World Cup in Goa early, giving the tournament a level of unpredictability seldom seen before.
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That, however, did not stop American Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura from sticking his neck out and making bold predictions for the remainder of the tournament. But the World Cup continued to spring surprises and Nakamura ended up getting six out of his eight predictions wrong.
Speaking on his live stream, Nakamura revealed his ‘affinity’ towards Pentala Harikrishna, one of the two Indians still in the fray until Sunday, describing him as ‘someone who knows how to grind’. Nakamura said he expected Harikrishna to beat Peru’s José Martínez, largely because of the Indian GM’s experience. He noted Martinez’s threat in the rapid and blitz chess, yet expected Harikrishna to win in classical portion of the round.
“Harikrishna is somebody who is very, very positionally sound. He is another player I have great affinity for because he’s someone who’s played in a lot of youth tournaments at the same time I was. Someone that I know very well. But also someone who has pretty much retired from professional chess. So I got to support my fellow retiree,” Nakamura had said. “He’s somebody who knows how to grind and exploit bad openings or dubious openings. Harikrishna to win in regulation. Rapid or blitz, Jose becomes favourite.”
WATCH: Hikaru Nakamura’s predictions for FIDE World Cup
However, in a tournament where few matches have followed the script, Harikrishna lost only after 30 moves and Martinez got his third higher-rated scalp of the World Cup. He is now within touching distance of a spot in the Candidates tournament, for which the players finishing in the top three will qualify.
Speaking on his live stream, Nakamura then declared Russia’s Daniil Dubov as his favourite to win the title, mainly because of his strength in rapid and blitz chess. He predicted that the Russian would beat Sam Shankland while calling him ‘the best player in the entire field’ in rapid chess.
Yet again, the favourite would bite the dust as Shankland breached the defences of Dubov, who had earlier taken out R Praggnanandhaa.
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In other matches, Nakamura gave Alexander Donchenko little chance against Le Quang Liem but the German stunned the Vietnamese player 4.5-3.5. Similarly, in the contest between Wei Yi and Sam Sevian, he backed his compatriot Sevian. However, he lost to the Chinese 0.5-1.5.
The only two predictions which Nakamura got right were the duels between Frederik Svane and Javokhir Sindarov, in which he picked the Uzbek to win — and he won — and expected Nodirbek Yakubboev to ease past Gabriel Sargissian, which is what happened in the match.
Nakamura described the match between Levon Aronian and Arjun Erigaisi as completely open. He admitted that he was rooting for Aronian for the same ‘reason he was rooting for Harikrishna’. However, Erigaisi won the clash of the heavyweights to emerge as the sole Indian hope in the World Cup.
