Magnus Carlsen’s coach Peter Heine Nielsen defends Hikaru Nakamura’s controversial action of throwing D Gukesh’s king | Chess News

Magnus Carlsen‘s coach Peter Heine Nielsen has defended Hikaru Nakamura’s controversial action of throwing World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju’s king piece into the gang. The incident occurred throughout an exhibition match referred to as Checkmate: USA vs India in Arlington, Texas.Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik and FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky had been amongst those that criticized Nakamura’s gesture after his victory in opposition to Gukesh.Nielsen responded to a video of the incident with help for Nakamura’s actions: “There are a lot of things elderly conservative chess-guys like myself find hard to accept. But at least we should agree this makes chess look like a sporting event. Spectators at the venue who care. Teammates who act like teammates in a sport. Players celebrating when they win.”The incident sparked outrage amongst Indian followers, who considered it as disrespectful to each the sport and Gukesh. When a fan urged there was bias in opposition to Indian gamers, Nielsen responded by highlighting his credentials.Nielsen reminded critics of his affiliation with Indian chess: “I am by a considerable margin the most winning Indian chess coach ever. Please have some respect.”Vladimir Kramnik expressed sturdy disapproval of Nakamura’s conduct on social media: “This is not just vulgarity, but already a diagnosis of degradation of modern chess.”Kramnik additional criticized Nakamura in one other submit: “There are players who show respect and mature gentleman behaviour, many prominent players in fact (Wesley So, Gukesh himself, and many others). Promoting for years the player known for his awful behaviour instead, deliberate action, damaging our game in my opinion.”Popular chess streamer Levy Rozman, often known as Gotham Chess, who was half of the American staff, provided context for the incident.Rozman defined: “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.“The state of affairs has created a divide within the chess neighborhood, with some viewing it as leisure and others seeing it as disrespectful to chess traditions.According to Rozman’s rationalization, the gesture was pre-planned and inspired by the occasion organizers as half of the leisure facet of the exhibition match.