Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura (中村光, Nakamura Hikaru, born December 9, 1987) is an American chess grandmaster.

He is a four-time United States Chess Champion, who won the 2011 edition of Tata Steel Group A and represented the United States at five Chess Olympiads, winning two team bronze medals. He has also written a book about bullet chess called Bullet Chess: One Minute to Mate.

His peak USCF rating was 2900 in August 2015. In October 2015, he reached his peak FIDE rating of 2816, which ranked him second in the world. In May 2014, when FIDE began publishing official rapid and blitz chess ratings, Nakamura ranked number one in the world on both lists.

Early life

Nakamura was born in Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, to Shuichi Nakamura, from Japan, and Carolyn Weeramantry, from the United States. When he was two years of age his family moved to the United States. His parents divorced in 1990. He began playing chess prior to the age of five and was coached by his Sri Lankan stepfather, FIDE Master and chess author Sunil Weeramantry.

Magnus Carlsen

Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (Norwegian: [sʋɛn ˈmɑŋnʉs øːn ˈkɑːɭsn̩]; born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster, No. 1 ranked player in the world and reigning World Chess Champion in classical and rapid. His peak rating is 2882, the highest in history.

A chess prodigy, Carlsen became a Grandmaster in 2004, at the age of 13 years, 148 days, making him the third youngest grandmaster in history. On 1 January 2010, at the age of 19 years, 32 days, he became the youngest chess player in history to be ranked world No. 1. In November 2013, Carlsen defeated Viswanathan Anand in the World Chess Championship 2013, thus becoming the new world chess champion. On the May 2014 FIDE rating list, Carlsen reached his top Elo rating of 2882, the highest in history. He successfully defended his title in November 2014, once again defeating Viswanathan Anand. In 2015, he won the inaugural Grand Chess Tour, a series of three supertournaments featuring the 10 best chess grandmasters in the world.

Nakamura

Nakamura may refer to:

Places

People

Hikaru

Hikaru (ひかる, ヒカル) is a Japanese verb meaning "to shine" (光る), and it is the dictionary form of the word Hikari (光, light). It is also a Japanese given name that can be given to either sex and rarely used as a surname.

Possible writings

Hikaru can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:

The name can also be written in hiragana or katakana

People

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Chess is played by millions of people worldwide, both amateurs and professionals.

Each player begins the game with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently. The most powerful piece is the queen and the least powerful piece is the pawn. The objective is to 'checkmate' the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting their own. In addition to checkmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation by the opponent, which typically occurs when too much material is lost, or if checkmate appears unavoidable. A game may also result in a draw in several ways.

Chess is believed to have originated in India, some time before the 7th century; the Indian game of chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of xiangqi and shogi. The pieces took on their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century; the rules were finally standardized in the 19th century.