Hikaru Nakamura interview on ICC
07-01-2009
, 02:53 PM
07-02-2009
, 02:39 AM
07-02-2009
, 12:43 PM
Gotta say Watson is a very nice guy but his interview style puts me on complete tilt. He 100% agrees with everything his interviews say no matter what. He's always inappropriately calling things fantastic and wonderful. Like okay I understand why Hikaru may not want to play in American tournaments much, but to immediately respond to that by saying "That's fantastic, that's wonderful!" is just really strange and unprofessional.
Also I find him completely unprepared. I mean wtf, he's interviewing Hikaru and doesn't even know any of the players in the major tournament that he's been invited to for months and begins in one month. You can figure this out with a 1 minute google search. I think for some reason he knows but he feigns ignorance so that Hikaru can run down the players instead, but it rubs me so wrong. Watson should be saying who the players are, not asking Nakamura. An interviewer shouldn't be wasting time asking silly factual questions that he obviously knows or should know the answer to. He should immediately say something like:
So Hikaru, you've been invited to this big tournament of which some of the major names in the event are "x, y and z". Who do you think are the biggest threats, which of these players do you feel most confident against etc. etc. Instead he's like "So you are playing in a big tourney, who else is in it?"
Anyway I think you get the idea
I could easily go on.
Also in my own personal opinion Hikaru is going to do very well in this group of tournaments he's playing in. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see him take first place in one of the three. I don't think he's one of these 2700's who's just there for a cup of coffee, I think he's going to crack the World elite and stay there for a long time.
Also I find him completely unprepared. I mean wtf, he's interviewing Hikaru and doesn't even know any of the players in the major tournament that he's been invited to for months and begins in one month. You can figure this out with a 1 minute google search. I think for some reason he knows but he feigns ignorance so that Hikaru can run down the players instead, but it rubs me so wrong. Watson should be saying who the players are, not asking Nakamura. An interviewer shouldn't be wasting time asking silly factual questions that he obviously knows or should know the answer to. He should immediately say something like:
So Hikaru, you've been invited to this big tournament of which some of the major names in the event are "x, y and z". Who do you think are the biggest threats, which of these players do you feel most confident against etc. etc. Instead he's like "So you are playing in a big tourney, who else is in it?"
Anyway I think you get the idea
I could easily go on.Also in my own personal opinion Hikaru is going to do very well in this group of tournaments he's playing in. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see him take first place in one of the three. I don't think he's one of these 2700's who's just there for a cup of coffee, I think he's going to crack the World elite and stay there for a long time.
Last edited by curtains; 07-02-2009 at 12:52 PM.
07-02-2009
, 01:44 PM
Quote:
Gotta say Watson is a very nice guy but his interview style puts me on complete tilt. He 100% agrees with everything his interviews say no matter what. He's always inappropriately calling things fantastic and wonderful. Like okay I understand why Hikaru may not want to play in American tournaments much, but to immediately respond to that by saying "That's fantastic, that's wonderful!" is just really strange and unprofessional.
Also I find him completely unprepared. I mean wtf, he's interviewing Hikaru and doesn't even know any of the players in the major tournament that he's been invited to for months and begins in one month. You can figure this out with a 1 minute google search. I think for some reason he knows but he feigns ignorance so that Hikaru can run down the players instead, but it rubs me so wrong. Watson should be saying who the players are, not asking Nakamura. An interviewer shouldn't be wasting time asking silly factual questions that he obviously knows or should know the answer to. He should immediately say something like:
So Hikaru, you've been invited to this big tournament of which some of the major names in the event are "x, y and z". Who do you think are the biggest threats, which of these players do you feel most confident against etc. etc. Instead he's like "So you are playing in a big tourney, who else is in it?"
Anyway I think you get the idea I could easily go on.
Also in my own personal opinion Hikaru is going to do very well in this group of tournaments he's playing in. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see him take first place in one of the three. I don't think he's one of these 2700's who's just there for a cup of coffee, I think he's going to crack the World elite and stay there for a long time.
Also I find him completely unprepared. I mean wtf, he's interviewing Hikaru and doesn't even know any of the players in the major tournament that he's been invited to for months and begins in one month. You can figure this out with a 1 minute google search. I think for some reason he knows but he feigns ignorance so that Hikaru can run down the players instead, but it rubs me so wrong. Watson should be saying who the players are, not asking Nakamura. An interviewer shouldn't be wasting time asking silly factual questions that he obviously knows or should know the answer to. He should immediately say something like:
So Hikaru, you've been invited to this big tournament of which some of the major names in the event are "x, y and z". Who do you think are the biggest threats, which of these players do you feel most confident against etc. etc. Instead he's like "So you are playing in a big tourney, who else is in it?"
Anyway I think you get the idea
I could easily go on.Also in my own personal opinion Hikaru is going to do very well in this group of tournaments he's playing in. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see him take first place in one of the three. I don't think he's one of these 2700's who's just there for a cup of coffee, I think he's going to crack the World elite and stay there for a long time.
In the 1st London Chess Classic being held Dec. 8-16, "England's top four" ( Adams, Short, Howell and McShane ), Carlsen, Kramnik, Hua and Nakamura are confirmed ( should be interesting! ).
Will Nakamura make it to the "top ten" and stay there for awhile? That's difficult to say ( IMHO, he'll be at best a slight favorite to ) as there are so many excellent young players today: e.g., just looking at the July 2009 FIDE rating list, players that are about as young or younger than Nakamura who are in the top 50:
3) Magnus Carlsen 2772 ( who will almost certainly be world champion )
8) Teimour Radjabov 2756 ( KID fans like him )
11) Vugar Gashimov 2740 ( a flash in the pan? )
13) Wang, Yue 2736 ( China's highest rated )
20) Sergey Karjakin 2717
26) Hikaru Nakamura 2710
29) Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2703 ( 18-year old French prodigy )
39) Wang, Hao 2690
41) Evgeny Tomashevsky 2689
49) Nikita Vitiugov 2681
Another rising star is Caruana, an Italian prodigy with Elo of 2670.
07-02-2009
, 05:35 PM
Actually I am curious about this. Can you expand here or is this observation super secret?
07-02-2009
, 06:15 PM
I'm also curious about this (even though I know Curtains won't see this post because he thinks I'm a cretin).
07-02-2009
, 06:35 PM
I was actually expecting much worse from the ICC. Like one of those game of the day's where the guy can't wait to finish and hates his life so much because he's stuck analyzing some game.
I thought the questions were really good in this interview but you are right, he could have been more prepared - it didn't bother me much though. In regard to the quoted text re: "thats wonderful," I thought he was genuinely happy that Nakamura, being so talented, was making a push to become a top international player, rather than choosing to play in American tournaments with lesser fields for other reasons. Am I wrong about that? I'm certainly glad that Nakamura is eschewing U.S. tournies to go become World Champ
.
07-03-2009
, 12:00 PM