A look back at Nakamura

At 17, he’s ‘the next big hope’ for U.S. chess
Lynda Richardson
Published: MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2005
International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK: Hikaru Nakamura, 17, sat at a red leather banquette in a brownstone-style building in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village that houses the Marshall Chess Club. It is a venerable membership-only club that has been visited by many of the world’s chess greats, from José Raúl Capablanca, the Cuban grandmaster and world champion in the 1920s, to Bobby Fischer, the American legend and former world champion.

Nakamura played a masters tournament there on a recent Tuesday night for what he described as lunch money —$300 to $400. He is now generating considerable chatter at the private clubas its most famous active member.

Nakamura believes that he is “the next big hope for American chess.” It seems an audacious statement coming from a teenager. Yet Nakamura, who lives in White Plains, New York, proclaims it with the utter confidence that perhaps can come only from youth and prodigious achievement.

In December, at age 16, he won the U.S. chess championship in San Diego, organized and sponsored by the America’s Foundation for Chess, making him the youngest player to hold the title since Fischer won the championship at 14 in 1957.

On Friday, the World Chess Federation, the international governing body for the game, placed Nakamura 43rd on its list of the top 50 chess players in the world. “Not too shabby,” he said.

Now, he is ready to take on the world.

“If I am able to get up there and play for the actual title of the world championship, then once again, everyone will be excited,” Nakamura said, noting how chess gained wide appeal when Fischer toppled Boris Spassky, the Soviet world champion, in 1972. “There have been plenty of great players since Fischer but none have been American players.”

Here is the full article.