Chess’ biggest Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura, or GMHikaru, has responded to not winning Chess Streamer of the Year at the Streamer Awards, claiming that he doesn’t care and that he’s “won enough” in his career.
Chess has always had a decently-sized presence on Twitch, especially when it blew up off the back of the success of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, and spearheading that category was GMHikaru.
Even now, he still averages around 10,000 viewers per stream, far ahead of his closest competition, dominating the Chess category.
Despite that, Hikaru didn’t win at the Streamer Awards, with the Chess Streamer of the Year accolade instead being handed to Levy ‘GothamChess’ Rozman.
Speaking on the snub, Hikaru directly addressed not winning the award, saying that it doesn’t bother him.
“Let’s just be honest, I’ve won so many things, so many awards, you think that really I’m going to be super angry about winning this?” Hikaru explained. “If you were to ask me, am I supposed to care about this when I’ve won things like the US Championship? Of course I don’t care.”
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Hikaru Nakamura reacts to not winning Chess Streamer of the Year pic.twitter.com/IxRkVrr7ba
— Juan Del Pueblo 🇵🇷 (@juandelpueblo02) March 15, 2023
Hikaru also added that “You look at Levy, you look at Botez, or people of that sort, they’re never going to win anything when it comes to chess. That’s just a reality. So why should I be upset that they win these awards?”
Of course, as mentioned, Hikaru doesn’t necessarily need an award to prove his prowess either on the chess board or on Twitch, having won multiple tournaments in his career, played against the very best, and dominated chess streaming for years.
If there were to be a tournament among the top chess streamers, you’d be hard-pushed to find someone to beat Hikaru — and ultimately, that’s what his goal is anyway. He just so happens to do it very well while live on Twitch.
Another possible “snub” conversation has also been made around xQc, but Hasan argued xQc’s continuing dominance means he’s less likely to win awards each year. Perhaps the same is true of Hikaru.