Hikaru Nakamura
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Hikaru Nakamura |
Hikaru Nakamura, (中村光
Nakamura Hikaru, born
December 9 1987) is an
American chess Grandmaster (GM).
He was born in
Osaka,
Japan, to Japanese father and an American mother and moved with his parents to the United States when he was two years old. Nakamura began playing chess at age seven and, within three years, aged 10 years and 79 days, Nakamura achieved the title of
chess master from the
United States Chess Federation (USCF), becoming the youngest American ever to earn the title. In 2003, solidifying his reputation as a
chess prodigy, Nakamura, aged 15 years and 79 days, earned the grandmaster title, breaking by three months the record of
Bobby Fischer for youngest American to have claimed the GM title.
Nakamura is generally regarded as an aggressive player who is reluctant to draw games early, preferring instead to exploit all prospective winning chances; the USCF describes Nakamura's style as marked by "astonishing creativity...relentless determination...[the making] of unexpected moves and a will to win". [
1]
On
June 20,
2005, Nakamura was selected as the 19th
Frank Samford Chess Fellow, receiving a grant of $32,000
U.S. dollars to further his chess education and competition.
On the January 2006
FIDE ratings list, Nakamura had an
Elo rating of 2644, ranking him 65th in the world and third in the United States, behind only
Gata Kamsky and
Alexander Onischuk. Nakamura's rating also placed him sixth in the world among junior players and behind only
Teimour Radjabov and
Sergey Karjakin among players born in 1987 or later. On the December 2005 USCF ratings supplement, Nakamura, with a rating of 2762, held the top spot for the tenth consecutive month, bettering Kamsky by 31 points.
Though primarily a chess player, Nakamura has also served as a commentator and game annotator, most prominently on the
ChessNinja website, operated by chess author
Mig Greengard.
Nakamura, who plays chess using the
Internet Chess Club server under the
screen name Smallville, is an adept
speed chess player, holding, as of January 2006, the ICC record for highest marks achieved in "blitz" and "bullet" chess by a human player.
Between
November 5 and
December 31, 2005, the ICC service conducted five blitz tournaments open to all registered players; Nakamura won four of the five tournaments, taking purses of $500 each.
He also currently holds playchess.com's highest Elo rating under the screen name "Star Wars."
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2003 U.S. Chess Championships |
A resident of
White Plains,
New York, Nakamura often plays in the weekly
New York Masters chess tournament, which he has won several times.
Nakamura qualified for the
2004 world chess championship, contested in
Tripoli,
Libya, and reached the fourth round, defeating grandmasters
Sergey Volkov,
Aleksei Aleksandrov, and
Alexander Lastin before falling to England's
Michael Adams, the tournament's third-seeded participant and eventual runner-up.
He won the 2005
U.S. Chess Championship sponsored by
Chessmaster (held in
November and December 2004), scoring seven points over nine rounds to tie grandmaster
Alex Stripunsky, with whom he had drawn in the tournament's third round, for first place; Nakamura defeated Stripunsky in two straight rapid chess playoff games to claim the title and become the youngest national champion since Fischer. Nakamura finished the tournament without a loss and, in the seventh round, defeated grandmaster
Gregory Kaidanov, then the nation's top-ranked player.
Off his victory, Nakamura played a challenge match dubbed the "Duelo de Jóvenes Prodigios" in Mexico against
Ukrainian grandmaster
Sergey Karjakin and defeated his fellow prodigy, 4.5-1.5.
In
November and December 2005, Nakamura entered the FIDE World Chess Cup seeded 28th (of 128 players) but failed to advance beyond the first round, losing each of his two games to Indian grandmaster
Surya Ganguly and becoming the second-highest-ranked player to leave
Khanty,
Russia, without having won a game.
Other important tournament performances include Nakamura's fourth-place finish in the "B" group at the April 2004
Corus tournament at
Wijk aan Zee and his win at the 2001 World Youth Chess Championship for boys 14 years old and younger.
Nakamura also helped the US team win the bronze medal in the International
Chess Olympiad.
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*
20 crucial positions from his games*
Play through Nakamura's 2005 US Championship Games 
