Das Keyboard, a leader in high-end mechanical keyboards, has announced the winners of this year’s Ultimate Typing Championship, a competition to find the most talented speed typists from around the world.
From computer science and medical students to software developers, female esports professionals, returning champions and fresh-faced high-schoolers, 25 of the best speed typists aged 14-35 years old came together in a heated battle during the Ultimate Typing Championship 2020 held Saturday, August 22nd live on YouTube. The contestants were from the United States, Israel, Norway, United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand.
With strong performances from the young and veteran typists alike, these amazing esports athletes duked it out on their keyboards over a series of challenging typing races that tested speed, accuracy, endurance, and ability under pressure until the winner was finally declared.
Ultimate Typing Championship 2020 Winners and Prizes
After three elimination rounds including the Quarterfinals, Semifinals and Championship, the favorite to win the competition, Anthony “chak” Ermolin, 17, of the United States was victorious and crowned the winner of the Ultimate Typing Championship. Ermolin received the grand prize of $5,000 and was named the new champion after dominating the first three out of five races, saving his tournament’s best showing with a blazingly fast, top WPM speed of 210.40 WPM in Race 2. Going into the competition, Anthony already held the fastest speed, 233.0 WPM, in the “Hall of Fame” on the competitive typing website used for the competition, Typrx.com. During the five races of the Championship round he averaged 180.88 WPM against the UTC’s 2010 champion, Sean Wrona.
The defending champion, Sean “arenasnow” Wrona, 35, of the United States, was named the runner-up with a high speed of 184 WPM and an average typing speed of 172.72 WPM in the Championship round. Wrona took home $500 in cash, a Das Keyboard 15th Anniversary Pen, a keyboard and keycaps from Uniqey, and a limited edition Das Keyboard artisan keycap.
The third-place winner Emre “eiko” Aydin, 19, of the United Kingdom, with high speed of 175.3 WPM in Race 4 of the Semifinals; and fourth place winner Kathy “Iaani” Chiang of the United States, with a high speed of 182.5 WPM in Race 4 of the Semifinals were neck and neck to the runner up, and took home a medley of non-cash prizes. All top 25 typists took home a premium mechanical keyboard, the Das Keyboard 4 Professional mechanical keyboard.
“It’s so overwhelming and exciting to win the Ultimate Typing Championship,” said Anthony Ermolin. “During the races, I found some of the texts extremely challenging, and while I kept thinking that my opponents like Sean Wrona could pass me at any moment like they have before, I tried to just stay focused on winning. It’s been a great experience to be part of the Ultimate Typing Championship this year and I hope to inspire others to get involved in competitive typing.”
Competition Highlights
This year’s competition contained unique challenges that tested a variety of typing skills, such as long-form English text, non-standard text and completing tricky text with typos intended to create obstacles. Highlights from the competition include:
- The UTC 2020 had a total of 414 registrations and more than 94,000 typing races completed during the qualifying week alone.
- Typists who qualified for the competition represent eight different countries, with 15 typists in the US, three in Canada, two in the UK, and one in Israel, Norway, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Poland.
- Typists needed a minimum qualifying speed of 170.7 WPM to qualify for the top 25.
- The youngest top 25 qualifier, Adam “Adamsky” Fallon was just 14 years old.
- The average age of typists that competed in the top 25 for the Championship title was 22 years old.
- Rayna “trashfish” Xu and Kathy “Iaani” Chiang were the only female speed typists among the top twenty-five qualifiers.
- Jesse Garcia competed in 9,000 races to improve his average WPM to advance to the top 25 Eighthfinals.
- The most difficult text was also the trickiest of the competition, which appeared in Race 5 of the Eighthfinals. The text started with what appeared like the alphabet, but the reality was that there were intentional typos included in the quote throughout, which tripped up every racer, producing an overall WPM average of just 47.78 WPM.
- In the Eighthfinals, Matthew “’matthewyangcs” Yang, a student at Georgia Tech, surprised everyone with a very impressive showing, making the Top 10 by securing the #8 spot in the Quarterfinals. Matthew was originally ranked in the 23rd spot and barely qualified for the top 25 Eighthfinals, but blasted through five races, surprising everyone as he was previously a completely unknown typist.
- In the Quarterfinals, well-known typist Kathy “Iaani” Chiang, who is the Assistant Director of the esports department at the University of California, Irvine, surprised the field when she secured the 4th spot in the Semifinals against Anthony ‘chak’ Ermolin, Sean ‘arenasnow’ Wrona, and Emre “Eiko” Aydin. Kathy came into the competition ranked in the 10th spot in the Top 25 Eighthfinals.
- In the Championship races, Anthony “chak” Ermolin, who is just 17 years old, put up dominant scores in the first three races, securing his victory by sweeping Sean Wrona. In the second race, Anthony put up a superhuman WPM speed on a standard English long form quote of 210.4 WPM with 99.30% accuracy for an adjusted score of 208.93. This is one of the fastest speeds ever recorded in a live event, with the highest typing speed ever recorded being 216 WPM in 1946 by Stella Pajunas according to RataType.com.
“We’re extremely thrilled with the global diversity and performance at this year’s Ultimate Typing Championship, and we were very excited to reboot this competition virtually during a time when many of us are spending most of our time at home,” said Daniel Guermeur, co-founder and CEO of Das Keyboard. “To come together and see these amazing typists and the talent they possess is awe-inspiring. The younger contestants bring an air of incredible freshness and excitement to the world of typing and remind us that typing is a useful and practical skill that can propel individuals forward in their schoolwork or current and future professions.”
For more information about the Ultimate Typing Championship, visit www.ultimatetypingchampionship.com