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 crowd. The incident occurred during an exhibition match called Checkmate: USA vs India in Arlington, Texas.Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik and FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky were among those who criticized Nakamura’s gesture after his victory against Gukesh.Nielsen responded to a video of the incident with support 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 among Indian fans, who viewed it as disrespectful to both the game and Gukesh. When a fan suggested there was bias against Indian players, Nielsen responded by highlighting his credentials.Nielsen reminded critics of his association with Indian chess: “I am by a considerable margin the most winning Indian chess coach ever. Please have some respect.”Vladimir Kramnik expressed strong disapproval of Nakamura’s behavior on social media: “This is not just vulgarity, but already a diagnosis of degradation of modern chess.”Kramnik further criticized Nakamura in another post: “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, known as Gotham Chess, who was part of the American team, offered context for the incident.Rozman explained: “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 situation has created a divide in the chess community, with some viewing it as entertainment and others seeing it as disrespectful to chess traditions.According to Rozman’s explanation, the gesture was pre-planned and encouraged by the event organizers as part of the entertainment aspect of the exhibition match.
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