2025 Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz Day 1: Aronian Leads With Perfect Score

GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, So, Gukesh, GM Nodirbek Abdosattorov, Caruana, and Aronian are the six tour players participating. Invited wildcards are GMs Leinier Dominguez, Liem Le, Sam Shankland, and Grigoriy Oparin. You can see the tour standings below; the top four players, after five tournaments, will qualify for the tour Finals in Sao Paulo, Brazil in September—the first Finals held since 2019.

GMs Alireza Firouzja and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu are the two players in the top four who are not participating in this one.

On top of tour points, players also compete for a piece of the $175,000 prize pool. You can see the breakdown of that below:

The tournament will run from Monday through Friday. There are two parts, the rapid tournament (first three days) followed by the blitz (last two)—with one winner by combined score. Wins in the rapid games are more valuable, worth two points, while wins the blitz segment that starts on Thursday will be worth just one point.

The players, some of whom are used to the usual run of show for the past decade, compete for the first time in a new tournament hall. The event takes place at the Vue 17, University Club Tower in St. Louis. No less than 12 out of 15 games were decisive on this first day.

Aronian quipped that starting with 3/3 is better than starting 0/3—of course he’s feeling good. He scored a win in round one against the world champion, then got the better of Vachier-Lagrave in an endgame, and then turned a losing endgame into a winning one against Abdusattorov to end the day.

Aronian’s win against Gukesh was the nicest, and it came from the white side of the Caro-Kann Exchange Variation. In a topical line, we saw a sharp, opposite-sides castling game and Aronian exhibited his great understanding of the position by finding the best variation 16.N2f3! (allowing) g4 17.Ng5! with an advantage. The white attack was much faster.

Gukesh quickly realized his mistake and said, “I should have just played …g4. I just got careless in that one moment and then it was hard to play.” Though Gukesh had some chances in the endgame (37…Ne7! was the last chance) when time got low, Aronian powered through. GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the Game of the Day below. 

The Armenian-American then took the sole lead after round two, this time after winning against Vachier-Lagrave. He overpowered the French number-two in what started in as a quiet French Rubenstein, outplaying him twice in the endgame.

Finally, a wild time scramble against Abdusattorov saw Aronian pick up his third win of the day. It’s an incredible showing by the 43-year-old who won $200,000 at Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Las Vegas before also qualifying for the Esports World Cup 2025 where he won $85,000.

Caruana, in second, won two games and made one draw. The first game, against Vachier-Lagrave, could have been a short win. The French number-two momentarily lost his concentration, allowed the thematic sacrifice 9…Bb7? Bxe6!, and was dead lost in the opening. But one inaccurate move in the middlegame by the American, 20.Be3? Re5! instead of the winning 20.Kb1, caused the entire (winning) advantage to slip. Svidler called it an “uncharacteristic miss from Fabi.”

Still, with two wins to follow, Caruana can’t complain about the hot start; he pointed out that in Croatia he had a slow one. He said, “The way I look at it, I was a bit lucky. First against Nodirbek, too, I was in huge danger at one moment but then also he should have made a draw,” but the ambitious Uzbek grandmaster over-pressed and lost.

The last game, Caruana won in 17 moves against Dominguez and revealed that this opening line was preparation from the 2022 FIDE Candidates Tournament. 9.Qb3!? is a move the engines hate at first, but over time (and at higher depths), they come around to admitting it’s playable.

While Caruana came back from a draw that should have been a win, Gukesh came back from a loss. The world champion was in good spirits by the end of the day. He surmised, “It was overall good. The first game was bad… but I was happy with how I came back after that.”

I was happy with how I came back after that.

—Gukesh Dommaraju 

His round-two game against Oparin was a classic case of “Spanish Torture.” Even if the opening started as a Sicilian, the pawn structure after 7…e5 resembled a Chigorin Ruy Lopez. Oparin allowed the push 10.d5, and Gukesh was merciless with the space advantage. 14.Re2! won a piece by force (a move his opponent missed, Gukesh believed), and he ended the game by sacrificing his queen for a pretty checkmate.

All four wildcards find themselves in the bottom half of the scoreboard after day one, but no one’s had it rougher than Shankland so far—on 0/3. There are still four days of chess to be played, and wildcards can prove to be just as good as anyone else. Earlier this year, wildcard GM Vladimir Fedoseev won the 2025 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland with three rounds to spare.

Highlighting one win from the bottom group, we take a look at Dominguez vs. Shankland from round one, where the Cuban-American showed that checkmate is always a factor in chess—even deep in the endgame. Though Dominguez ended up winning with the good knight vs. bad bishop imbalance, Shankland had a surprising and stunning tactical shot earlier in the game to prevent that from happening. Check out the beautiful line starting with 23…fxg3 and culminating with the desperado 24…Bd2!!—one was discovered by Svidler in the commentary but not in the game.

There are still six rounds of rapid chess to be played. The leader Aronian will take on Dominguez with the black pieces, while second-place Caruana will also have Black against an undefeated So. Gukesh will have Black against Shankland.