American Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura defeated Norwegian Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in a close final to win the 2022 Speed Chess Championship and claim his fifth title in that genre of chess. This victory earned Nakamura a prize of $15,178.57, while Carlsen took home $4821.43 as the runner-up.
Meanwhile, India’s national chess champion Arjun Erigaisi, 19, has landed a strong sponsorship deal of US$1.5 million with Quantbox Research, a team of programmers and mathematicians associated with the best of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This year Erigaisi won the Tata Steel Challengers, the National Championships, Delhi Open, Silver Medal on Board Three at the 2022 Chess Olympiad, the Abu Dhabi Masters, Death Match 2, and Tata Steel India Blitz. From a FIDE rating of 2632 in classical chess, Erigaisi has pumped up his rating to 2722 as of December 2022 making him the 25th strongest player in the world. And as a statistic, Erigaisi defeated Carlsen at the Aimchess Rapid Tournament recently.
