The Field

At fifteen years and 79 days Hikaru Nakamura became the youngest American Grandmaster in history. Although that record has since been broken, his reign as a chess prodigy did not stop there. At the age of sixteen he qualified for the FIDE World Championship 2004, and advanced to the fourth round taking down three other Grandmasters along the way. When he turned eighteen, Nakamura got selected for the Samford Chess Fellowship. In the five years after that, he won two US championships, and became a top ten player in the world. In 2011, Hikaru won the Tata Steel Masters tournament and received a key to the city of Memphis. 

Nakamura took a third US Champion title in 2012, and in 2015 his peak FIDE rating of 2816 was the second highest in the world. In 2018, Nakamura won the rapid section of the Tata Steel India tournament, as well as the Paris and Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz legs of the Grand Chess Tour. Nakamura clinched the title of 2018 Grand Chess Tour Champion with the defeat of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the London semifinal match. He is the reigning U.S. Champion after winning last year with a powerful performance of 8/11 points.

In 2010, Shankland won the US Junior Championships which qualified him for the US Championship the following year. He took third place in that 2011 Championship, and then went on to achieve the biggest upset at the FIDE World Cup later that year by defeating Super-GM Peter Leko. Two years later, Shankland was part of the US National Team that won the Pan-American Championship that year, where he had a performance rating over 2800. He then received the 27th Samford Chess Fellowship, later that year. 

In 2014, Shankland became one of the top 100 players in the world. He also won a gold medal at the 41st Olympiad for best reserve board player. He was undefeated ending with a score of 9 out of 10 in that Olympiad. He also defeated GM Judit Polgar in her last ever rated game during that tournament. Due to that performance, he played board one in the World Team Championship 2015, taking down some of the top fifteen players in the world at the time. In 2018, Sam Shankland had a stellar performance at the U.S. Championships. He won the tournament with 8.5/11 and crossed the 2700 barrier for the first time.

This American chess prodigy holds some of the top records in the United States. As a child, he received training from the legendary Garry Kasparov and Grandmaster Alexander Chernin. In 2012, he became the World U12 Champion. Sevian is credited as the youngest American Expert level player and American Grandmaster, getting his GM title at 13 years, 10 months, and 27 days old. This achievement also puts him in the top ten youngest Grandmasters in the world.

During his appearance at the 2015 US Championship, Sevian defeated Wesley So, one of the top ten Grandmasters in the world. In 2017, he won the American Continental Chess Championship, being the youngest in history to do so. Recently, Sevian played in the Junior Speed Chess Championship, making it to the quarter finals.

Grandmaster Lenderman’s chess career began in Brooklyn, New York when he was four years old. He improved quickly, and by the time he finished high school, he had led his team to four straight national titles. In 2008, Lenderman scored numerous small victories throughout the US Chess Grand Prix to secure him first place overall - a feat which he repeated the following year. He also won the 2009 Atlantic Open and co-championed the 2019 US Open. 

Lenderman is no stranger to championship titles. He won the International Bavarian Chess Championship in 2014. In 2015, he was on the US team for the World Chess Team Championship where he took home a gold medal for the second board with a score of five out of seven. He also won the World Open that same year with a score of seven out of nine. Lenderman had a brilliant performance in the Isle of Man tournament in 2017, where he had a performance rating over 2750. Recently, he has been in top form with a current rating of 2632 FIDE, just two points below his all time highest rating.

Alejandro Ramirez has become a frequent face at the Saint Louis Chess Club as he transplanted from Texas and now lives and works in Saint Louis. Ramirez began playing chess after being inspired by the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer when he was four years old. He became FIDE Master at the age of 9, an International Master at 13, and earned his Grandmaster title by the age of 15. That achievement set Ramirez as the first Centro-American to earn the elite title and at the time, the second youngest grandmaster. 

A competitor in three U.S. Championships, Ramirez displayed some of his finest chess in May 2013, when he pushed reigning champion Gata Kamsky to a playoff for the national title. He drew the first two playoff games with Kamsky before losing an Armageddon game where he had 19 minutes and 45 seconds against Kamsky's 45 minutes. Ramirez studied video game design at the University of Texas at Dallas, earning a master’s degree in Arts & Technology, and he now serves as an editor for the popular chess news website ChessBase. Ramirez expertise has made him the natural selection for the Saint Louis University chess team head coach position. The team made it to the final four of the Pan-American championship in its first year. Along with coaching chess, Ramirez is a regular broadcast commentator in both English and Spanish for the Saint Louis Chess Club.