American Chess Magazine 26

American Chess Magazine #26: WHEN A GIANT AWAKES After more than a two-year hiatus from competitive classical chess, American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura brought his A-game to the FIDE Grand Prix, gaining qualification for the World Championship Candidates Tournament! From February to April, the main focus of the worldwide chess community was directed on the FIDE Grand Prix series. Here American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was able to demonstrate top-class play, amazing resourcefulness, and mental stamina to run the gauntlet and emerge as the overall winner, thereby joining Fabiano Caruana as a second U.S. candidate for the World Championship. In this issue, Hikaru's contemporary, GM Robert Hungaski, presents his personal choice of the Grand Prix winner's most notable games from the series, supplemented by a couple of games by another candidate's qualifier Hungarian GM Richard Rapport. On the same topic, GM John Burke looks at the individual performances of all five U.S. representativ