On Saturday, August 22nd, 2020, a new Ultimate Typing Champion was crowned, Anthony Ermolin, dethroning former Champion Sean Wrona in an intense battle for the $5,000 first prize.
The competition started out with a total of 414 registered participants, who completed over 94,000 total typing tests on the competitive typing website, Typrx.com, before the top 25 qualified for a spot in the Eighthfinals, where they competed for a spot in the Quarterfinals, which was live streamed on YouTube.
The top twenty-five typists aged 14-35 years old came from the United States, Israel, Norway, United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, and competed during the 2 hour 45 minute tournament. The field of expert typists was made up of high-school, college computer science and medical students, software developers, and a female esports professional, among others. Sean Wrona was ready to defend his title against an eclectic group of typing veterans, and newcomers in their teens.
Winners and Prizes
After one of the most intense typing competitions in history, comprised of three elimination rounds including the Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and Championship, the favorite to win the competition, Anthony “Chak” Ermolin took home the Ultimate Typing Championship Trophy and the $5,000 cash prize after his decisive victory. Ermolin was crowned the new Ultimate Typing Champion after dominating the first three-out-of-five races against former Champion, Sean Wrona. During the five races of the Championship round Chak averaged 180.88 WPM.
Chak saved his best highlight of the entire competition during the second race of the finals, when he posted an incredible speed of 210.40 WPM on standard English long-form text. Coming into the competition, he held the fastest speed record of 233.0 WPM, in the “Hall of Fame” on Typrx.com, and so it’s no surprise that he also held the fastest speed during the Championship.
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 and a bevy of keyboard and typing related prizes.
All top 25 typists took home a premium mechanical keyboard, the Das Keyboard 4 Professional mechanical keyboard as they completed a series of challenging typing races that tested speed, accuracy, endurance, and ability under pressure until the winner was finally declared. The third-place winner Emre “eiko” Aydin, 19, of the United Kingdom, with a 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 as they took home a medley of non-cash prizes.
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. See full quotes and results here.
Highlights from the competition include:
- The UTC 2020 had a total of 414 registrations and more than 94,000 typing tests 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 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.
For more highlights and information about the Ultimate Typing Championship, follow the Das Keyboard blog and the Ultimate Typing Championship YouTube Channel.