"I'm Not Bobby Fischer"
My profile of chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura as a young man.
Hey there. The other day I read this story about pro chess player Hikaru Nakamura, who’s also the top chess streamer on Twitch.
In October 2005, I went to the Lausanne Young Masters Tournament in Switzerland to profile then 18-year-old Nakamura. I didn’t know much about chess - and still don’t - but he was a fascinating young guy: competitive, ambitious, embattled. He represented a new generation of players raised on hip-hop and video games. As I wrote at the time:
Nakamura models himself after a more formidable character: Steve McNair, the quarterback of his favorite football team, the Tennessee Titans. "He's always trying to get better," he says. "No matter how much he gets beaten up, he plays through the pain."
You can read the rest of my story, “I’m Not Bobby Fischer,” in Salon here.
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