Controversy broke out on the final day of the Chess final at the Esports World Cup when American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was awarded the third-place match on Saturday. Nakamura was leading Alireza Firouzja 3-1 when a technical glitch brought the game to a lengthy pause. Nakamura, meanwhile, had no idea what transpired and sat alone for a good 20 minutes before the final verdict was delivered.
The screens of both competitors went blank, and after minutes of trying to fix the issue, Nakamura and Firouzja were left clueless with no solution in sight. In an ideal scenario, the competitors would have stayed on and waited, but the frustrated Firouzja forfeited the match, got up and left the arena.
After the match was awarded to him, Nakamura blasted Chess.com left, right and centre. But here’s the twist. His outburst stemmed from a misconception. The fault was not at Chess.com’s end, but with the EWC, prompting Nakamura to retract his statement and issue an apology. It was chaos with multiple disconnections and then Alireza’s untimely departure from the event. I now know I was wrong.
I was left hanging for 20 minutes until I was finally told that the match would be recorded as a forfeit by Alireza,” he posted on X. Nakamura had earlier lost to 19-year-old Denis Lazavik in the semi-final on Thursday. Magnus Carlsen eventually won the title, defending it successfully against Lazavik, winning both sets 3-1.
“After the forfeit decision, I was then escorted to do interviews and I said that I thought it was a chess.com issue and that I was fully frustrated by this. “Today’s match with Alireza certainly didn’t go well for anyone.
