India, Aug. 15 -- Controversy broke out on the day of the Chess final at the Esports World Cup as American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was awarded the third-place match 3-1 against Alireza Firouzja on Saturday. Nakamura was leading Firouzja 2-1 when a technical glitch caused a lengthy pause to the game, and despite efforts to fix the issue, a solution couldn't be found. Off came the headphones as the arbitrator listened to Nakamura's concerns. In an ideal scenario, the competitors would have stayed on and waited a whole lot longer, but five minutes into the outage, and frustrated by the situation, Firouzja forfeited the match and left the arena.

Nakamura, meanwhile, had no idea what had transpired as he chatted with the referee. At first...