Hikaru Nakamura

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.