Hikaru Nakamura

Hikaru Nakamura was born in Hirakata, Japan, in 1987 and grew up in White Plains, New York. He learned the game from his stepfather, FIDE Master and chess author Sunil Weeramantry, who coached him from the age of seven.

In 2003, aged 15, he became the youngest American grandmaster up to that time, breaking Bobby Fischer's long-standing record. He has since won the US Championship five times (2005, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018), took Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee in 2011, won Olympiad team gold with the United States in 2016 and was crowned World Fischer Random Champion in 2022. His classical rating peaked at 2816 in 2015, and he finished second at the 2024 Candidates Tournament.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest blitz and bullet players of all time, he topped both of FIDE's first official rapid and blitz lists in 2014. Off the board, he has changed how chess reaches new audiences: through his GMHikaru channels on Twitch and YouTube, the latter with more than three million subscribers, he has become the game's most influential streamer and a central figure of the online chess boom.