Hikaru Nakamura

“Critical thinking is the most important factor with chess. As it is in life, you need to think before you make decisions.”

“I'm into hiking and mountains and I follow hockey and basketball pretty avidly.”

“I play quite a bit of tennis on the side.”

“It's certainly an honor to have kids who are looking up to me, but at the same time, I'm just trying to do what I can to raise the profile of chess.”

“You can't follow or understand the game unless you play chess yourself, unlike poker which you can pick up in five minutes.”

“It's interesting to find new things with the game. It's fun finding new positions, new openings and new strategies.”

“A lot of people see a future where you could make a living as a chess player.”

“I had been playing a lot of chess and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I decided to go to college to see what else is out there for me. But after about six or seven months away from the game, I just decided that the whole college life wasn't for me and that's why I decided to come back.”

“Winning the second title feels better to me than the first.”

“I would say out of all the things I studied growing up, math was probably one of the things that I liked the least.”

“I want to be ranked in the top 100 players. If I can achieve that, I'll think about the world championship.”

“In chess, everyone's accepted. That's what's great about it. You can be a little bit different. You can be an oddball.”

“It's easy to become angry, but when you get better, you channel your energy into the game.”

“I like the feeling when you don't have much time and you have to think fast.”

“What was great about Fischer is that when he became world champion is that chess was being covered everywhere. It was in all the major newspapers, it was on TV.”