GM Hikaru Nakamura this weekend scored 7/7 to win the 2025 Louisiana State Championship in New Orleans. Why was the world number-two playing a $3,000 event where his toughest rival was 2344-rated FM Nicholas Matta? It’s all about qualification for the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, with Nakamura notching up six of the 22 classical games he needs to play to be eligible for a spot based on rating.
Nakamura Makes Shock Late Entry To Louisiana State Championship
Imagine showing up to a local tournament where the three-time defending champion is a FIDE Master and suddenly you find out you’re playing the U.S. number-one and the world number-two. That happened this weekend in Loyola University in New Orleans, and Nakamura’s opponents had absolutely no complaints!
It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but Nakamura scored a perfect 7/7 to win the tournament, a point ahead of Ralph Tan (2224) and Vijay Srinivas Anandh (2265), while Matta, on 5.5/7, became a four-time Louisiana State Champion as the highest-placed local resident.
The rating gain wasn’t the point, but Nakamura still “farmed” the minimum 0.8 points for each win except the first—for a classical game involving a 2700-player to be rated the time for 60 moves has to be at least 120 minutes, while the first round was played with a 60 minutes + 30-second increment time control. The 4.8 points took Nakamura to 2811.8, 27.2 points (or 34 more such wins!) behind world number-one Magnus Carlsen.
For Nakamura, however, who registered one day before the event began, the feeling was more one of nostalgia.
Honorary 2025 Louisiana State Chess Champion! Jokes aside, tournaments with players of all ages and backgrounds, 2-3 games a day and the typical rush to get food between games really reminds me of why I fell in love with chess all those decades ago. pic.twitter.com/8LCtliCEqQ
— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) September 1, 2025
But why was Nakamura playing in New Orleans? For that we need to look at qualification for the FIDE Candidates.
Nakamura Hunts Rating Spot For FIDE Candidates
World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju will defend his title in a match next year, and the opponent he faces will be decided in the eight-player 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament. Here’s how the eight spots in that crucial event are allocated:
| Route | Location | Dates | Player(s) |
| FIDE Circuit | Worldwide | 2024 | Fabiano Caruana |
| FIDE Grand Swiss | Samarkand, Uzbekistan | September 4-15, 2025 | Top 2 |
| FIDE World Cup | Goa, India | November 1-26, 2025 | Top 3 |
| FIDE Circuit | Worldwide | 2025 | Winner |
| Rating | Worldwide | August 1, 2025-January 1, 2026 | Top-Rated Player |
Nakamura isn’t planning to play in either the FIDE Grand Swiss (starting Thursday) or the FIDE World Cup, but he doesn’t need to since he’s a huge favorite to claim the rating spot.
👏 World Champion 🇮🇳 Gukesh D has arrived in Samarkand for the FIDE Grand Swiss!
♟️FIDE Grand Swiss 2025
📍 Samarkand 🇺🇿
🗓 September 4–15
📺 Live on FIDE’s YouTube & Twitch#FIDEGrandSwiss pic.twitter.com/5qaKvpsZwQ
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) September 2, 2025
The relevant regulation reads as follows:
The highest-rated player according to the 6-month average rating based on FIDE Standard Rating Lists from August 1st 2025 till January 1st 2026 provided the respective player has played at least 40 games calculated for FIDE Standard Rating Lists from February 1st 2025 till January 1st 2026 (including at least 15 games in any of the 6 consecutive rating lists).
We’ve already entered the six-month period that counts, with the August (1. Carlsen 2839, 2. Nakamura 2807, 3. Caruana 2784, 4. Praggnanandhaa 2779, 5. Arjun 2776) and September (1. Carlsen 2839, 2. Nakamura 2807, 3. Caruana 2789, 4. Praggnanandhaa 2785, 5. Arjun 2771) lists behind us. Unless we see a shocking late twist Carlsen won’t play the Candidates, while GM Fabiano Caruana has already qualified through the 2024 FIDE Circuit.
That leaves the Indian stars, but Praggnanandhaa is almost sure to qualify via the 2025 FIDE Circuit, if he doesn’t do so by another method earlier, while Arjun can also qualify by other means—it’s noteworthy, for instance, that his 2024 FIDE Circuit runner-up spot would see him qualify via the World Cup if two already qualified players reach the Semifinals. Even if Arjun remains in the rating race, however, it would take a massive swing for him to overhaul Nakamura in the coming four months.
That leaves one issue, however. Nakamura had played 18 classical games in 2025—eight in The American Cup 2025 and ten in Norway Chess 2025—so still needed another 22 games to reach the 40-game requirement. He’d already flagged the issue after beating Caruana in round one in Norway, when he commented: “If I do well here, I’ll go and find some Mickey Mouse tournaments and get to 40 games!”
He did do well, with a +1 classical score in the strongest event of the year, and would return to use “Mickey Mouse” when describing his bid to play the needed 22 games:
We’re LIVE streaming my Road to Candidates Mickey Mouse Tournament 1 and they very kindly hooked up a dgt board. My team should have coverage today, tomorrow and Sunday. https://t.co/nfL9CiLrPN @GMJacobAagaard you can come watch what happens when you follow FIDE’s rules.
— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) August 30, 2025
It was Candidates qualification drama, but drama we’d seen before!
Nakamura Stirs Up Controversy, But We’ve Been Here Before
Nakamura built up his sky-high rating playing almost exclusively against the world’s best players, but the decision to play an event so far beneath his level inevitably sparked criticism. Two-time Candidates winner GM Ian Nepomniachtchi lamented the situation.
Year after year @fide_chess literally doesn’t care about the rating spot in the Candidates
🧘🏻♂️
— Ian Nepomniachtchi (@lachesisq) August 31, 2025
Coach, publisher, and author GM Jacob Aagaard, who was referenced by Nakamura above, asked either to remove the rating spot entirely or make it dependent on a certain number of games against the top-100.
I am wondering if @fidechess will step in and disallow legal events from being rated again, to gloss over how ridiculous the rating spot is… Nakamura is a great player and have done immense things for chess. But his path to the Candidates should go through elite level events.… pic.twitter.com/kfVw8RivNl
— GM Jacob Aagaard (@GMJacobAagaard) August 30, 2025
This is far from new, however. Before the 2024 Candidates GM Alireza Firouzja overtook GM Wesley So at the very last moment. First a series of matches arranged for Firouzja by his club in Chartres wasn’t counted for rating by FIDE on account of how it was registered. That didn’t stop the Iranian-born Frenchman, however, who then played the Rouen Open for €700 instead of playing the $1 million 2023 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz. He beat GM Gata Kamsky on the way to 7/7 and a Candidates spot.
Firouzja was chasing rating points on the January 2024 list (FIDE has changed to a six-month average to stop such last-minute bids), while in 2022 GM Ding Liren found himself in the same situation as Nakamura, with the required rating but needing to play a lot of games to be eligible. He did it, though the events organized for him in China raised questions.
Ding Liren can finally take a break!
He’s finished his marathon as world no. 2 @2700chess and is eligible to take Sergey Karjakin’s vacated place in the Candidates: https://t.co/Mpr9LqLhtR #c24live pic.twitter.com/GsCs9JbpQE
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 24, 2022
Ding would go on to finish second in the Candidates but play, and win, a world championship match after reigning champion Carlsen decided not to defend his title.
If you go back to the 2020 Candidates, then the rating qualification spot also proved controversial, with GM Anish Giri taking the decision to drop out of the FIDE Grand Swiss rather than risk his lead in the race for the rating spot. It proved the correct decision as he qualified for the Candidates, though many pointed out that a system that encouraged top players not to play was far from ideal.
The rating spot is not the only controversial aspect of Candidates qualification, however. In 2023 Gukesh was losing to Giri in the race to qualify via the FIDE Circuit before the first edition of the Chennai Grand Masters suddenly appeared. The Indian star won, took the Candidates spot, won the Candidates, and then defeated Ding to claim the world championship title. After that FIDE introduced a rule that required tournaments with 2700 players to be announced at least a month in advance, but that’s no issue if you’re playing a well-established event such as the Louisiana State Championship.
St.Louis this, St.Louis that.
For the next three days, New Orleans will be the capital of chess in the United States.🍿
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) August 30, 2025
Let’s get to the games!
Nakamura Posts A Perfect 7/7
Nakamura’s return to his roots began with a triple-header day, and his first opponent was 1563-rated Harry James. A DGT board hadn’t yet been hooked up to show the game, but in Nakamura’s recap he showed how he began with 1.b4, to “have the most fun playing something offbeat,” and had to do some work before eventually delivering checkmate.
Nakamura summed up about facing an opponent over 1200 points lower-rated: “Obviously this is not ideal to start the tournament, but nevertheless I am providing a very special and unique experience for this player, who otherwise would never have the opportunity to compete against top-level competition.”
The second game, against 1812-rated Mitchell Costanza, had Nakamura questioning whether his opponent was aiming to follow in the sacrificial footsteps of New Orleans’ most famous chess son, Paul Morphy, when going for 7.Qa4!?. Nakamura saw no reason not to grab a pawn and went for it, and when he consolidated the advantage he had no doubt about the outcome of the game.
Nakamura related how Costanza, a player in his 60s, described the blunder at the end: “He said he just suddenly panicked and played the move without thinking.”
The final game of the first day, against 1933-rated Colombian player Nahum Jose Villamil, was altogether tougher, with Nakamura unhappy with his decision-making. He called 24.Qe3?! a “big mistake,” elaborating:
I was playing “hope chess,” when you play a move and you believe your opponent won’t find the best move… I thought, nah, he’s 1900, he’s never going to find it. This is the exact reason you should not play against people who are much weaker than your own rating, because you start making decisions that you would never make against a top player.
I was playing “hope chess,” when you play a move and you believe your opponent won’t find the best move.
—Hikaru Nakamura
Villamil had chances to hold in the endgame, but ultimately couldn’t avert defeat.
Nakamura concluded after ending the first day on 3/3 that he’d need to be “a bit sharper, not as casual about the game” on day two, and things would indeed go very smoothly.
In the first game of the day, Nakamura felt Tan’s early 8.Nd5?!, after thinking 36 minutes on the previous move, was a sign of the “Hikaru factor,” nervousness when facing a much higher-rated opponent. Everything went very smoothly for the U.S. number-one as he got to deliver a second checkmate of the tournament.
The next game also went very smoothly, but perhaps partly because of how much respect Nakamura showed his opponent, 2088-rated Mark Schulingkamp.
In case you’re just tuning in: @GMHikaru is at 5/5 in the Louisiana State Championship after a win over Mark Schulingkamp seen here. This morning he plays FM Nick Motta in the first of two rounds. Livestream at https://t.co/4br63JxfLW pic.twitter.com/g0GswuS5i2
— US Chess (@USChess) September 1, 2025
Nakamura got to know his opponent as they “analyzed in the skittles room” after the game, something Nakamura said he hadn’t done in over a decade.
Close to 60 years old, but he’s somebody who played a lot of chess in his youth. He actually was around master level, he’s someone who played before computers took over the game. Unfortunately in 2005 he actually lost everything during the Hurricane Katrina disaster that occurred here in New Orleans.
Unfortunately in 2005 he actually lost everything during the Hurricane Katrina disaster that occurred here in New Orleans.
—Hikaru Nakamura on Mark Schulingkamp
Nakamura also showed a brilliant sacrifice by his opponent that he’d witnessed while walking around the playing hall.
In the round-five game, however, Nakamura said he was “in a mode of trying to allow zero counterplay,” which he achieved with a very smooth win.
That left Nakamura on 5/5 and knowing he’d face his toughest rival on the final day.
Nakamura was paired with Matta in the penultimate round, and the three-time and defending champion made quite an entrance as he arrived 5-10 minutes late. Nakamura explained:
Second floor of the Loyola University here in New Orleans. I saw him walking toward the entrance with a big Louisiana trophy and sunglasses on his face as well!
Matta, who had once made a draw against IM Levy Rozman that Nakamura commentated on, would eventually hold on to the trophy for another year.
He kept the trophy as the highest-finishing Louisiana resident, but though the game against Nakamura ultimately didn’t go his way he did manage to surprise, and even scare, the world number-two.
Nakamura felt that should wrap up the tournament, but his final-round game against 2138-rated CM Charles Campbell proved to be tougher than expected. Campbell was not entirely unused to the big stage, having played for Nigeria in the Chess Olympiads in 2008 and 2010.
The game was balanced in all stages, but Campbell eventually lost his way in a tough endgame. Nakamura took over and got to play what he described as “a temporary Botez gambit” before finishing with a knight sacrifice to queen his pawn.
“Both players should be very, very proud of their performances!” said Nakamura about his opponents on the final day, but it was mission accomplished, as he’d notched off six games from the required 22, while also giving his rating a boost.
Fake moral outrage!
Earlier today, I posted about Hikaru Nakamura 7-0 results in the Louisiana State Chess Championship. It is very rare for a world class player to play in small open tournaments, on his own dime.
Hikaru did not do this in secrets. He openly tweeted and… pic.twitter.com/zb9oyjCdl5
— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) September 2, 2025
Nakamura commented in his recap:
I’m a little bit emotional, because I’m not going to lie, I’m in the twilight of my career, I probably figure I have one Candidates, maybe two more at most. Definitely it is very nostalgic returning to the roots of how I began playing chess!
I’m in the twilight of my career, I probably figure I have one Candidates, maybe two more at most.
—Hikaru Nakamura
Where now? We probably won’t learn that until the next tournament starts, with Nakamura revealing he’d looked at events in the U.S., Canada, and even Europe before deciding to begin his quest in Louisiana.
