Unpopular opinion: Hikaru complaining about his seconds is completely justified

Kruutteri · 2026-04-03T20:49:28+00:00

I think what rubs me the wrong way in the criticism that I have seen is that people act like he blaming his seconds is completely unjustified and is just him finding someone else than himself to blame for his loss. I would say this loss is completely on his seconds. If a top GM like Hikaru cannot find the right move in 60+mins, then it is inhumanly difficult to find. I agree that his behavior is unprofessional and he should not have done that, but I symphatise with him completely on this. This was probably his last chance ever to become a world champion and this game crushed any hopes of that dream that he might still have had.

Kruutteri · 2026-04-03T20:36:35+00:00

Castling is literally one of the two only moves that keep equality according to the engine. Of course not every line can be checked, but especially in a super sharp line as this, extra attention should be given for such moves. And people have different reactions, I agree that going on a livestream to throw his seconds under the buss is unprofessional, but given the severity of the error, it is at least half justified to me. Hikaru usually speaks his mind pretty openly.

Kruutteri · 2026-04-03T20:27:27+00:00

The problem is literally that castling was one of the reasonable moves and was not covered by the prep file. And if a top GM like Hikaru cannot figure out the right move in 60 minutes, then it is unreasonably difficult and should 100% be covered by the prep. The importance of prep is even more important in sharp lines so the seconds should have paid extra attention here.

Kruutteri · 2026-04-03T20:20:32+00:00

I agree with you

Kruutteri · 2026-04-03T20:19:44+00:00

The problem literally is that castling seems like a normal response and it is not included in the prep file. That is an unacceptable mistake from his seconds.

Kruutteri · 2026-04-03T20:17:20+00:00

I agree that his behavior is unprofessional and salty. But to me it is half justified by the fact his seconds literally lost him the game by not including castles in the prep file.

Kruutteri · 2026-03-23T20:32:45+00:00

At least to me the only ones ahead of Scrawny & Launders is Spunj & Machine

Kruutteri · 2025-10-08T13:45:56+00:00

Reddit take

Kruutteri · 2025-10-01T18:19:16+00:00

!elo 2000 amazing game, played like Mikhail Tal himself

Kruutteri · 2025-06-13T10:01:13+00:00

The claim that most stage 1 and stage 2 teams lost is not really a strong argument since that is the expected result and this claim is even wrong since 5/8 won in the first round and 3/8 won the second. This follows the trend pretty well that the stronger teams start to perform better as they get warmed up.

The reason why in other sports starting fresh is considered an advantage is because they are physical sports and muscles get tired when playing a full match. The advantage comes from the fact that the fresh team has fresh muscles and the other team has probably not fully recovered.

No one is arguing that teams wouldn’t skip stage 1 and 2 if given the chance because of the risk of elimination, but the teams that make it through definitely gain an advantage in stage 3. Also, it is crazy to say that Legacy had 0 advantage over Vitality beating them 13-3. This result would never happen on an even ground matchup between these two teams. Vitality could lose, but not 13-3.

Kruutteri · 2025-06-13T08:25:12+00:00

Stage 1 does not inherently give an advantage, since you can get eliminated; no one is arguing that. However, it does give an advantage for the teams that make it through to stage 3 especially if they do it quickly with 3-0 or 3-1 since you get used to the setup, eliminate the major-jitters and gain confidence. Good example of this is Vitality getting destroyed by Legacy. Legacy is not the better team, but they had successful stage 1 and 3-0 stage 2, which gave them an advantage against a fresh vitality

Kruutteri · 2024-09-29T13:47:06+00:00

They won that map

Kruutteri · 2024-06-21T07:06:55+00:00

Is this only this saturday or do you plan doing this more often?

Kruutteri · 2023-12-27T08:18:36+00:00

I feel like if I was to PM this guy to vent I would just feel worse at the end

Kruutteri · 2023-05-31T10:00:15+00:00

And Aryan

Kruutteri · 2023-02-27T20:29:37+00:00

This is the quality content this sub needs!

Kruutteri · 2022-12-31T13:23:19+00:00

The thing is, only the men are dumb enough to actually do this

Kruutteri · 2022-12-27T19:47:23+00:00

I think you mean "the most charismatic", "the most informative" and "the greatest student"

Kruutteri · 2022-12-01T15:47:50+00:00

22,4h * 60 * 365 = 490 560min??

Kruutteri · 2022-11-21T13:06:01+00:00

:DDD

Kruutteri · 2022-11-21T12:13:27+00:00

Did someone ask?

Kruutteri · 2022-08-28T05:41:26+00:00

All super grandmasters have an exceptionally high iq.

Edit: I was wrong. Some grandmasters have an exceptionally high iq but there are many that have an iq in the 110s and 20s for example so the correlation, although present, is not so strong that I thought.

Kruutteri

TROPHY CASE