Hikaru Nakamura's one last push for an 'unprecedented' 3500 blitz rating
The video's title is just four digits, and its comment section filled more than six times faster than a usual full first day, much of it treating the number as reached.
GMHikaru
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 413,350 views a day, 7.4 times a normal first day on this channel (55,506).
3500
Hikaru Nakamura spent October 5 chasing a number, and he named the video after it. "3500" follows what the description calls one last push to an unprecedented 3500 blitz rating, a mark high enough that the channel had already posted a separate explainer titled "Why 3500 Matters" the same day.
For Hikaru the push fits. The five-time U.S. champion built much of his online fame on fast chess, and his channel's about page introduces him as number two in the world. This was his specialty, played at a height where very few players can stand.
The response came quickly. Seventeen hours after it went up, the video had passed 350,000 views, where a new video here usually opens with about 55,000 across a whole day. The comments outran even that: more than six times a usual first day's worth in under a day.
Read those comments and the push sounds like it ended where it was meant to. The most liked ones call it history, and several point to the final game, in which the opponent let Hikaru deliver checkmate instead of resigning. Others marvel at how little each win was worth at that altitude, or joke that he now plays at a computer's rating. A running gag predicts that GothamChess, Levy Rozman's channel, will soon be making a video about it.
The chase sat in the middle of a busy stretch. The same day brought Slowkaru episode 59, his educational rapid speedrun, which also drew a large crowd, and the day after came a "Beat Hikaru for $1k" challenge.
Published on Trari
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What viewers say
Be ready hikaru. Only 3000 elo to go. I'll be catching up.
@ConfusedScreaming-x8xSee it on YouTubeAwesome from the opponent on the last game to allow Hikary win the last point with a checkmate instead of resigning
@DerchyTRSee it on YouTubeBro can no longer say "For a 3500 computer it might be a move but for a mere human it's impossible to find"
@nawarrustom4982See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- GMHikaru
- Subscribers
- 3,250,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 8,915,500
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,606,236 (on a normal day: 1,118,899)
- Video published
- October 6, 2026
- Video views so far
- 356,941 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 413,350
The numbers
A title of four digits brought one of the strongest first days among the channel's recent uploads, with comments arriving far faster than likes or views alone would suggest.
💡 Test your knowledge
The Elo rating system, which gives chess ratings like 3500 their meaning, is named after whom?
The system was devised by Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor and chess master, and was adopted by FIDE in 1970.
