Hikaru Nakamura is better than Magnus Carlsen?

Magnus definitely holds the top spot in the blitz/rapid format, though Hikaru seems to be climbing.

In the St. Louis Blitz/Rapid leg of the 2021 Grand Chess Tour, Hikaru walked all over the top players in attendance. He went all 27 rounds undefeated.

Magnus didn't participate in the GCT, unfortunately. No doubt, he would've contributed some stellar games.

And it would've been fun to see him and Hikaru clash yet again.

Though 960 is the one format where Carlsen can't claim total dominance. There, Wesley So is the current king. Surprisingly, even Magnus seems to stand no chance against him.

They did face each other many times in the Champions Chess Tour this year, in the six events both played Carlsen finished ahead of Nakamura every time. So S:t Louis was a bit of an outlier in Nakamura's case.

As for Carlsen standing no chance against So in Chess960, that was certainly the case in the 2019 final of the first World Championship. But as far as I recall Carlsen has won the other Chess960 events he played and that was the one where he finished second, so difficult to say if he just had a bad event that one time.

True, they did play a few times in the CCT. Good catch. From what I saw, their head-to-head record was: Carlsen 11, Nakamura 7.

I wouldn't call Hikaru's victory in the GCT an outlier, though. He is the world #2 in blitz and rapid, after all. It's kind of expected that he'll be near the top of any blitz/rapid field.

And I do think it's possible that Carlsen had a bad event against So. Though it's also possible that So is just that good at Fischer Random.

If you've seen his recent 960 game against MVL, Wesley found a brilliant opening sequence (including a piece sacrifice and an exchange sacrifice) that even Stockfish struggled to find. He seems to have found a real groove in 960 play.

I'd be willing to bet significant money that if Magnus and Wesley play a FR match again that The Magster wins the next one.  I think that was a one off result. No matter how great a champion is in anything, none of them ever win 100% of all events. Boxing & mma shouldn't count in this example because opponents in those are chosen, cherry picked like the world chess championships in the old days. I wish fide used all the data from all FR/960 events to create a rating list.

By the way, the fide rating formula for blitz is very flawed. The multiplier, the k factor it might be called, is like 40 or something crazy instead of 10. It should be far less like 5 perhaps. Because what we keep seeing is crazy jumps or drops in ratings/ranking lists based on a single event. The ratings should be an average of a bunch of tournaments, not 90-95% weight given to the most recent blitz event, just ignoring most of their previous work/results. A player can be rated 2600 in blitz and have one good event and jump to 2850! It's bizarre. 

I didn't know that about the blitz rating system. It's quite interesting.

About Magnus vs. So in 960: you could be right. Carlsen is obviously one of the strongest players (if not the strongest player) to ever play the game. I wouldn't count him out of anything chess-related.

I do think that Wesley So is outstanding at Fischer Random, though. He has a talent for finding really clean, logical ideas from those random setups - sequences that look so obvious, but only after he has played them. Carlsen might be able to best him the next time they meet in 960, no doubt. Though I expect So will always put up a tough fight.

Nakamura is #5 in the U.S. right now and The Magster is #1 in the world right now (has been for 11 years in a row now) . Just sayin... 

Carlsen’s blitz skills were somewhat unknown for a long while. He kept playing on secret online accounts, and the relatively low rating on his official ICC account led people to believe that his blitz wasn’t all that great. Once he went out in the open and played official events, it became clear that he was at least as dominant at faster time controls as at classical chess. Magnus has won the world blitz championship twice, in addition to numerous other strong blitz events. He’s the only player to hold the world championship titles at all three time controls (classical/rapid/blitz) simultaneously, and is undefeated in blitz tie break matches over a period of more than 10 years. His current blitz rating is 2948, the highest ever. That’s 80 points ahead of Nakamura, 97 points ahead of Vachier-Lagrave and more than 100 points ahead of everyone else. At the Norway Chess 2017 Blitz, he won with 7.5/9, a full two points ahead of a field consisting of the world’s top ten players. He followed that up with 14.5/19 in the very strong Leuven 2017 Blitz event, 4.5 points ahead of his closest rivals, arguably the greatest blitz result since Fischer in 1970.

Who are the 10 chess players that won the highest number of super tournaments, and how many did each of them win? - Quora

Okay,

Quora might be outdated.

2700chess has Naka a mere 8 points behind Magnus in blitz:

Blitz Chess Ratings - 2700chess.com

ICC has Naka at 3750

Highest ICC ratings (kivij.info)

I think this is getting relevant again https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vTC9M98IF04

Perhaps Carlsen feels he doesn't have to prove himself anymore ..

The guy may also be tired of everyone kissing his feet and singing him praises..

Maybe yes,  maybe not.
Blitz?   yeah Nakamura might be better then Magnus.
Classical chess.   so far that hasn't been the case. 

but who knows what the future brings. 
And for sure Nakamura is a strong contender.   But I secretly hope Anand becomes number one

Here's Hikaru in an otb tournament trying to find the mouse.  Too much online speed chess.

lol

He was ready to click it.

Who wants some pizza?

Interesting thought. In classical, both are great but Carlsen is clearly better, in rapid it's a bit closer perhaps but Carlsen still is better I believe, in blitz though things get tricky. I believe Nakamura is about even in online blitz but if he has a good day or Carlsen has a bad day, he will definitely win. In over the board blitz however, Nakamura is great but Carlsen is clearly better and his results in World Blitz Championships to me are better than Nakamura's higher rating. In the final game of I believe the 2017 World Blitz Game for example, Carlsen I believe was still lower rated but he kept Nakamura back and took home the win. This in mind, I will slightly give Carlsen the win even in blitz. As for bullet, they are not very tested but I find Nakamura much more practiced and in a time control that seems young and without nearly any players I would consider top level at it, Nakamura sticks out and I say he is better. Of course we can look at even shorter time formats but in the end, Nakamura is in my opinion better at time management though he's gotten somewhat slower and more calculating recently, while Carlsen is weaker at time management but better at calculating and finding underground ideas so I have to give Carlsen the win unless in quite short time formats.

Chess.com rating is irelevant

After Magnus two 11 game and 9 game winning streaks I may retract my statement.

Does anyone have the total online score between Magnus and Hikaru? Surely they must've played a few hundred speed games on several websites combined. I'm guessing the majority of which would've been on here.