[jwplayer 91I9RIGm]In a surprising twist to the heartwarming rise of Chess on Twitch, Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel has had to apologize for sleeping through the PogChamps 2 tournament following “animosity” with Hikaru Nakamura.
Soon after being signed to TSM, Chess GM Hikaru was part of TSM’s losing effort in a Fall Guys tournament. Ever the joker, xQc teased about the organization’s failings on stream, spurring a sequence of drama with Hikaru being offended, the Canadian feeling bad about offending him, subsequently skipping the PogChamps 2 tournament so that the two wouldn’t need to interact, and, finally, him apologizing and clearing the air.
As TSM struggled, sitting at 20th place in a Fall Guys Tournament, xQc joked on stream that “TSM has got a lot of wins over the years, today is not a day that they will Tweet about getting a W.” Annoyed over their performance, Hikaru saw the clip and was visibly disappointed, reacting by saying “this what it’s come to, really?
Following this uncomfortable quasi-interaction between the two, xQc was a no-show for the PogChamps 2 Chess tournament, understandably eliciting a negative reaction from Hikaru and the community. Another chess streamer, EasyWithAces, was not shy about voicing his annoyance: “I don’t care if he’s the biggest streamer on Twitch … I hear that xQc didn’t show. What a d**khead … That’s rude as f**k.”
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Eventually, the air was cleared and the drama was squashed. On his end, xQc explained on stream that Hikaru “looked mad at me … and I felt really bad” and did not want the chess pro to have to engage with him at all during a tournament “while he had animosity or saw me differently.”
Further, in DMs shared by Hikaru on stream, xQc apologized personally and let him know that he “f**ked up” and that the TSM comments were simply “org banter,” which “had nothing to do with [Hikaru].”
In the spirit of competition, xQc’s match was actually postponed as PogChamps 2 decided to accommodate the scheduling snafu and he made amends by actually showing up for his match against ‘itshafu.’