12-year-old Halifax woman competes in opposition to world No. 2 chess participant at P.E.I. tourney

Michelle Zhang isn’t even an adolescent but, however that didn’t cease her from placing up a powerful combat in opposition to among the best chess gamers on the planet on Saturday.

World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura made a shock look at a Prince Edward Island event over the weekend. 

“Perhaps he, like, underestimated me just a little bit,” mentioned Zhang, 12, after holding Nakamura at bay for 65 strikes in a first-round match on the Maritime Open Chess Championship in Summerside, P.E.I.

Zhang, who lives in Halifax along with her household and has been taking part in chess since age 6, says she competes within the event nearly yearly. 

However Nakamura, who lives in the USA, was an unlikely last-minute addition.

A well-liked chess streamer on-line who boasts greater than three million subscribers to his YouTube channel, Nakamura is an simple celebrity within the sport.

He’s so well-known that when Zhang, an everyday viewer of his streams, walked by Nakamura at breakfast, she might hardly imagine it. 

“I used to be like, ‘Hey, is that Hikaru?'” she mentioned in an interview on Sunday. “No approach he’s coming right here, proper?”

Quickly sufficient, Zhang realized Nakamura can be her opponent. 

“I used to be like, half nervous, half excited,” she mentioned.

Amongst chess gamers and followers on the Maritime Open, Nakamura may as nicely have been Taylor Swift. 

“It’s been enjoyable. It has been fairly chaotic. It has been quick, lots of people asking for autographs and signatures,” he advised CBC Information. 

He mentioned he noticed his journey to P.E.I. as an opportunity to “give again to the chess neighborhood.” 

“It’s fairly good however it additionally jogs my memory of once I was a child as soon as travelling round and taking part in tournaments and assembly grandmasters,” mentioned Nakamura.

On his YouTube channel, Nakamura elaborated, telling viewers he’d enrolled within the Maritime Open as a result of he must play 11 classical-rated chess video games earlier than the top of the 12 months to qualify for the 2026 FIDE Candidates event, a serious occasion that brings collectively a few of the top-ranked gamers on the planet. 

For Zhang, nonetheless, the stakes weren’t fairly as excessive. However she nonetheless sees room for enchancment.

“It’s clearly an awesome expertise,” she mentioned. “I needed that, like, I possibly had, like, a greater end result. On the finish, I did get beneath low time and I simply form of blundered.” 

In his post-match recap on YouTube, which Zhang eagerly watched as soon as it went dwell, Nakamura complimented her expertise, and provided an in depth breakdown of the place she went incorrect. 

“I felt like I laid plenty of traps, and till this remaining second, she truly was holding her personal,” Nakamura mentioned within the video. “I actually can breathe a sigh of reduction after successful this primary spherical.” 

Zhang says watching the recap was an awesome academic alternative. It additionally felt good for her to listen to him admit he was nervous throughout the match. 

“I realized rather a lot and I used to be, like, joyful to see … that he mentioned, like, he was involved throughout the sport,” she mentioned.

At 37, Nakamura has about 25 years on Zhang, which provides her loads of time to practise within the maybe unlikely occasion of a rematch.

“I don’t actually have a dream. I simply need to … get higher on the sport and … proceed to enhance,” mentioned Zhang.