The Latest Controversy in Chess Is the Cupcake Gambit
World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura needed to hit a minimum number of games for a shot at the world championship. He sparked a firestorm by beating up on lower-ranked players to get there.
Chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura played in low-stakes tournaments to meet FIDE’s 40 classical games requirement for the Candidates tournament.
Nakamura’s strategy exploited a 400-point rating cap, allowing him to play weaker opponents with minimal risk to his high rating.
FIDE responded by eliminating the 400-point limit for players rated above 2,650, a change that has sparked controversy in the chess world.
Pawn pushers at a couple of low-stakes chess tournaments in Iowa and Louisiana recently sat down at their boards only to discover a surprising competitor: one of the highest rated chess players ever to live.
Hikaru Nakamura, the No. 2 player in the world and five-time U.S. champion, had flown in as a last-minute entrant, making him far and away the top player in the building. Not only was he rated several hundred points higher than anyone else in the fields, he was also exponentially more famous, as the planet’s leading chess influencer.
It was the chess equivalent of Aaron Judge showing up to play Little League.
Nakamura wasn’t there to tee off on inferior opponents—or for a few thousand bucks in prize money. He was exploiting an arcane loophole on a much larger mission to become the next chess world champion. But Nakamura’s maneuver hasn’t gone unnoticed. In the process, his tactics have sparked a rule change from FIDE, instant backlash to the change, and sent the chess world into a full-blown freakout.
It began with Nakamura needing to qualify for the most prestigious tournament in chess, known as the Candidates, where eight players compete for the right to challenge the defending world champion. The Candidates reserves one spot for the player with the highest rating, which would be Nakamura because world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from contention.
Only FIDE, the game’s international governing body, requires that players have at least 40 classical games under their belts before the cycle is up. The problem is that Nakamura, who spends most of his time streaming to millions of followers and favors shorter formats in competition, keeps a light tournament schedule. As of June 1, he had played only 18 classical games this year.
That left him scrambling to rack up games anywhere he could—with little risk of letting his rating drop. Even he dubbed the exercise a “Mickey Mouse” tour.
At the Louisiana State Championship and the Iowa Open Championship, he played a combined 11 games, winning all of them. And his opponents were simply in awe. They found themselves in the rare position of meeting a genuine chess celebrity, while also being manhandled by him on the board.
“I was paired against an absolute icon, got a nice chat, pictures, a signed sheet, and now a recap of my mistakes,” one of his opponents in Louisiana, Nahum Jose Vilamil, wrote on social media. “What else can you ask for?”
Not everyone in chess was so thrilled.
Last week, FIDE adjusted its bylaws, with its president specifically saying that Nakamura’s activities had triggered the change.
The controversy boils down to the esoteric rules that govern the game’s rating system. When a player wins or loses a match, their rating change depends on the relative strength of their opponent—a system devised by Hungarian physicist Arpad Elo more than 50 years ago. So if someone beats a stronger opponent, their rating will go up more than it would if they beat a weaker one. The same logic applies to losing.
Yet the calculations are capped at a difference of 400 rating points—a nuance that played right into Nakamura’s hands when his opponents in these tournaments were sometimes far more than 400 points beneath him. In other words, he could grind through them with minimal risk to his own standing.
The practice is dismissively referred to as “rating farming.” And everyone in chess seemed to agree that Nakamura was taking advantage of it.
“I kind of admire the way he’s going about it because it’s so shameless,” Carlsen said on the Take Take Take podcast. “It’s pragmatic and probably the right thing to do.”
So last week, FIDE got rid of the 400-point limit for games involving super-elite players with ratings above 2,650, of which there are currently 70 in the world.
“No more farming,” FIDE president Emil Sutovsky wrote on X. “If you are a 2,650+ player, do prove your skill vs. opponents of comparable strength.”
Top players soon pointed out wonky flaws, such as how the measure could inadvertently hurt lower ranked players. Which is why many feel the attempted solution might be more problematic than Nakamura’s cupcake tour.
“FIDE has definitely made mistakes,” Nakamura wrote in an email. “I think my general view is that they are failing to balance perceived criticism on the internet from a very loud minority as opposed to the actual reality.”
Still, Nakamura has no choice but to keep hunting for games before the year is out. He remains 11 short.