By: Sports DeskOctober 7, 2025 10:18 AM IST 3 min readWorld Champion Gukesh Dommaraju reacts (right) after Hikaru Nakamura (left) throws his king into the fans at the Checkmate: USA vs India clash in Arlington, Texas. (Screengrabs via ChessBase India YouTube)Magnus Carlsen’s coach Peter Heine Nielsen has defended Hikaru Nakamura throwing Gukesh’s king into the fans after defeating the world champion in an exhibition game in the USA. Nakamura came under heavy criticism from many former players, including ex-world champion Vladimir Kramnik and current FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky about throwing the piece after the win at an exhibition clash called Checkmate: USA vs India.But Carlsen’s coach Nielsen, while reacting to a video of Nakamura throwing the king in the air, noted: “There are a lot of things elderly conservative chess-guys like myself find hard to accept. But at least we should agree this makes chess look like a sporting event. Spectators at the venue who care. Teammates who act like teammates in a sport. Players celebrating when they win.”Many Indian fans have found the act distasteful and have accused Nakamura of disrespecting the game and Gukesh himself. One of them even argued with Nielsen indicating that there was a culture of hate towards Indian players.Story continues below this adTo this, Nielsen reminded him of being Viswanathan Anand’s second for four World Chess Championship titles, writing: “I am by a considerable margin the most winning Indian chess coach ever. Please have some respect.”Nakamura’s action earned him some withering criticism from Kramnik.“This is not just vulgarity, but already a diagnosis of degradation of modern chess,” Kramnik posted on his X handle.In another tweet slamming Nakamura, Kramnik accused Nakamura of damaging the game: “There are players who show respect and mature gentleman behaviour, many prominent players in fact (Wesley So, Gukesh himself, and many others). Promoting for years the player known for his awful behaviour instead, deliberate action, damaging our game in my opinion.”Story continues below this adOne of the world’s most popular streamers, Levy Rozman, who goes by Gotham Chess and was part of the American team, came to Nakamura’s defence explaining that the gesture was pre-planned and encouraged by the organisers. He said that Gukesh also knew about it.“Without context, it will look like an unprovoked gesture. But we were encouraged by the organisers to do that stuff. I forgot that if I won my game against ChessBase India’s Sagar Shah, or he won, we were supposed to break the king. It was for the entertainment angle. The winner of Gukesh and Hikaru’s game was supposed to toss the king into the fans. I don’t know if Gukesh would have done that. Hikaru spoke to Gukesh later and explained that it was all for show and no disrespect was meant,” said Rozman in a YouTube video.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd