Dos
Hermanas has always been considered the biggest, best and strongest
online blitz tournament in the world - and fittingly, the latest
edition, the 11th Dos Hermanas online tournament, hosted exclusively on
www.chessclub.com,
was won in convincing style by arguably the strongest and best online
blitz player in the world today: GM Hikaru Nakamura of USA.
Seattle-based
Nakamura fought his way to the 32-player KO Finals (held 19th-20th
March) after top-scoring in winning one of last week's 12 qualifiers
(spanning 144 rounds). He was the top-seed and fan favorite for the
finals, which had a prize-fund on offer of over $10,000.
Dos Hermanas though has a long history of being the graveyard of top seeds; but it wasn't to be this year. Nakamura (Smallville) beat GM Simonian Hrair (EREBUNI), IM Federico Perez Ponsa (Federicov), GM Rodrigo Vasquez Schroeder (Kastor), and then GM Yaroslav Zinchenko (MEGAYARICK) in the final to take the title and $2,700 first prize.
It's been quite a year so far for Nakamura since he won his second US Championship title last May in St. Louis: his book Bullet Chess: One Minute to Mate (co-authored with Bruce Harper) was published; he beat Magnus Carlsen to win the BN Bank Blitz in Norway; two superb performances at elite tournaments of London Chess Classic and Corus A Group; individual gold for his outstanding top-board performance at the World Team Championship that inspired Team USA to silver in Turkey; and now winning Dos Hermanas, the world's biggest, strongest and best online tournament hosted on www.chessclub.com.