Hikaru Nakamura, who combines streaming to over a million followers with a comeback to classical chess in his mid-30s, has won the American Cup, a $200,000 knockout including $60,000 for the winner. The defeated finalist, Wesley So, snatched a poisoned pawn and lost his queen in a 19-move decider.
The 35-year-old five-time US champion won through a bruising trilogy of matches at St Louis to defeat his fellow world top-10 GM. Nakamura had hoped that the competition format, two-game mini-matches with progressively accelerating time limits, would allow him to halve his way to his three-minute blitz speciality.
