Hikaru Nakamura - Other

Other

Nakamura is very skilled at blitz chess, and has been called "easily the best blitz player in America" and "one of the best blitz players in the world".

Nakamura is well known in the chess community for playing on the Internet regularly. He plays primarily on two chess sites: Internet Chess Club ('Smallville'(Which he does not use)) ('Capilanobridge'(His current account)) and Playchess ('Star Wars'). He is the strongest bullet, blitz and standard player on the server and he has set many rating records under different categories.

Nakamura has served as a commentator and game annotator, most prominently on the ChessNinja website, operated by chess author Mig Greengard.

Nakamura has been described as having an uncommon enthusiasm for chess and as being much more approachable than other players of his ability. For instance, just after winning his first U.S. Championship in 2005, he played numerous 1-minute games with all comers in the lobby of the hotel where the competition had taken place.

Nakamura attended Dickinson College for a short while in Pennsylvania as a member of the class of 2010. He is also an avid hockey fan, and frequently attends games of the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks.

Nakamura maintains a Twitter account under the username "GMHikaru". After what was to him a disappointing tournament at the 5th Edition of the Kings Tournament in Medias (although Nakamura placed third of sixth among a cadre of top Grandmasters), Nakamura tweeted that he was focusing on the 2011 World Series of Poker, in which he played, although busted out on the second day. Kasparov, who has been training Nakamura in chess, has publicly grumbled about his interest in poker.

Hikaru has set several "youngest-ever" records in U.S. chess history, including:

• Youngest to defeat an International Master in a USCF-rated game (10 years, 0 months); later surpassed by Praveen Balakrishnan at 9 years 29 days; Recently surpassed by Awonder Liang at 8 years 118 days;
• Youngest to defeat a Grandmaster in a USCF-rated game (10 years, 117 days; later surpassed by Fabiano Caruana at 10 years, 61 days); Recently surpassed by Awonder Liang at 9 years 112 days;
• Youngest International Master (13 years, 2 months; later surpassed by Ray Robson at 13 years, 1 month).