Hikaru Nakamura reveals Gukesh’s ‘biggest weakness’ after beating world champion

Hikaru Nakamura outlasted Gukesh in the 5-8 classification spot match on Wednesday. Both players played out two draws in the classical portion and then had another draw in the rapid tiebreak. The fourth game between the pair finally provided a result with the American World No 3 winning against the reigning world champion.
The result means that Gukesh has not won a single game in the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.
After his victory over the 18-year-old from Chennai, Nakamura explained what was going wrong in Gukesh’s game.
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“I would say probably the biggest weakness Gukesh currently has is that when he gets low on time, I don’t think his intuition is that great, and he simply couldn’t work through the calculations,” Nakamura said on Chess.com broadcast after his win over Gukesh.
Nakamura was also surprised that Gukesh was analysing positions with World No 2 Fabiano Caruana before games. At the Freestyle Chess events, players are told their opening positions out of 960 possible variations just 15 minutes before they have to play. The tournament rules also allows players who will play with the same colour to discus opening ideas with each other before the games start. Most players like Magnus Carlsen, Nakamura, Caruana have been analysing together.
DEEP DIVE: Against Fabiano Caruana in the quarters, Gukesh was down to ONE SECOND on his clock at one point while in a completely losing position in the end game. Despite that, his heart rate was at 78 beats per minute. How does Gukesh do it? It’s all in the mind, experts tell The Indian Express
World champion Gukesh competes in the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event in Weissenhaus. (PHOTO: Lennart Ootes via Freestyle Chess)
Even before the rapid tiebreaks on Wednesday, Nakamura and Javokhir Sindarov analysed the position at length, but Gukesh and Caruana sat themselves on their board looking at the position alone. Sindarov and Caruana were playing in the semi-final.Story continues below this ad
Nakamura found it strange that Gukesh had never used the opportunity to discuss games before the matches with other players.
“I think it can only be to your disadvantage if you don’t analyze together. I don’t know why Gukesh doesn’t analyze with Fabiano. To me, that’s just insane. Whether I’m analyzing with Fabiano, or even if I’m not, I look at his game, and I just try to follow what he does. You know, I just believe in Fabiano, so it’s much easier if you can do that,” Nakamura said.