GM Fabiano Caruana scored a crushing win over GM Grigoriy Oparin in round one of the 2025 U.S. Chess Championships as he began his campaign to become the first player since GM Bobby Fischer to claim four titles in a row. GM Levon Aronian grabbed the day’s other win, taking FIDE Grand Swiss revenge on 15-year-old GM Andy Woodward, while the draw in GM Wesley So vs. GM Hans Niemann featured the unusual sight of Chief Arbiter Chris Bird holding an umbrella to shield the players from the sun.
The 2025 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship got off to a dramatic start as both rating favorites lost. WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan overcame top-seed and defending champion IM Carissa Yip, while eight-time champion GM Irina Krush scored a powerful win over IM Alice Lee. IM Anna Sargsyan defeated FM Rose Atwell in her first appearance since switching federation, while IM Anna Zatonskih missed a win near the end of a 100-move draw against WGM Jennifer Yu.
The second round of the U.S. Championships starts on October 13 at 1:30 p.m. ET/19:30 CEST/11 p.m. IST.
The Opening Ceremony of the 2025 US Chess Championships took place on Saturday in Busch Stadium, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals MLB team.
Then it was straight down to action in the newly-opened expanded Saint Louis Chess Club.
Round 1 Standings: Championship
Round 1 Standings: Women’s Championship
U.S. Chess Championship Round 1: Caruana, Aronian Strike
There were two decisive games in the Open section.
Round 1 Results: Open
The 2025 edition of the U.S. Championships see two players aiming to continue their dominance: Yip and, in particular, Caruana.
Last 10 U.S. Chess Championships Winners
| Year | Open | Women |
| 2015 | Hikaru Nakamura | Irina Krush |
| 2016 | Fabiano Caruana | Nazi Paikidze |
| 2017 | Wesley So | Sabina-Francesca Foisor |
| 2018 | Samuel Shankland | Nazi Paikidze |
| 2019 | Hikaru Nakamura | Jennifer Yu |
| 2020 | Wesley So | Irina Krush |
| 2021 | Wesley So | Carissa Yip |
| 2022 | Fabiano Caruana | Jennifer Yu |
| 2023 | Fabiano Caruana | Carissa Yip |
| 2024 | Fabiano Caruana | Carissa Yip |
If world number-three Caruana can make it four victories in a row he’ll have matched a feat achieved only by GM Samuel Reshevsky (1936-42) and Fischer (1957-61 and 1962-67). He got off to the perfect start, with a 27-move win, though the opponent, his long-term second Oparin, wasn’t ideal. Caruana commented, “It’s always annoying to play a friend and someone you work with, but what to do?”
The trickiest part of playing your second is the opening, but Caruana managed to spring a very early surprise with 6.bxc3!?.
Fabiano Caruana’s 6.bxc3!? is a very rare choice against his second Grigoriy Oparin (6.Qxc3 is about 80 times more popular)! https://t.co/bh22hu743t pic.twitter.com/Xgr5vgxuJY
— chess24 (@chess24com) October 12, 2025
“I just saw it yesterday in the afternoon, even before I knew the pairing,” said Caruana, who revealed his opponent already “went a little bit wrong” playing 6…c6?!. The defending champion went on to strike on the kingside by pushing his g-pawn and later got to sacrifice for a crushing win.
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Dejan Bojkov analyzes below.
The day’s other win in the Open section was for Aronian, who got revenge for losing to 15-year-old Woodward almost exactly a month ago in the FIDE Grand Swiss. Aronian, who is still hunting his first U.S. title, commented: “I think maybe the reason why I won today is because I lost to Andy in such a terrible way a month ago that he probably thought this guy is totally senile and I can do whatever I want!”
He probably thought this guy is totally senile and I can do whatever I want!
—Levon Aronian on Andy Woodward
“I sort of thought to myself, why can’t I play some opening that I used to play before Andy was born?” Aronian added, while he identified the crucial mistake as the “unfortunate” 22.Bd1?!. By that stage Woodward was already almost an hour behind on the clock, and when he made essentially the last mistake 12 moves later, he had a second on his clock.
The remaining games were drawn, though only the clash of the Sams, GM Sam Sevian vs. GM Sam Shankland passed almost without incident. In chess terms, you could say the same of So vs. Niemann, with the latter summing up: “It was very smooth, good preparation, and he went into a blitz game he had played against Alireza in Norway Chess blitz, which I don’t think he remembered, so it just liquidated quite easily.”
The game wasn’t uneventful, however, with sunlight from a skylight in the newly-renovated chess club catching the players in their eyes—at least until Chief Arbiter Chris Bird stepped in!
Hans Niemann: “Honestly it made me feel like I was the president of a small country!” https://t.co/nOko9Sh1by
— chess24 (@chess24com) October 12, 2025
13th World Champion Garry Kasparov noted a historical parallel:
Hans knows the classics! 😂☀️ “The first rule is when a game is played on a clear and sunny day, make sure the sun is in the enemy’s face so that it blinds him.” – Ruy López de Segura, “Libro de la invencion liberal y arte del juego del axedrez”, 1561 https://t.co/QM4aahkgHc
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) October 12, 2025
“I don’t know any other arbiter who would do such a thing!” said So, while Niemann also called it “very admirable” and continued: “Honestly it made me feel like I was the president of a small country, because usually you have your security team which makes sure than anywhere you go not a drop of rain gets on you!”
The skylight was closed off, so that Bird is unlikely to need to wield his umbrella in future rounds!
Elsewhere GM Dariusz Swiercz got an extra pawn but few real winning chances against GM Ray Robson in a 71-move draw that ended in bare kings, while a new member of the 2700 club, GM Awonder Liang, had a big edge against GM Abhimanyu Mishra. Mishra continued where he’d left off at the Grand Swiss, however, putting up fantastic resistance and confidently holding a draw—his 68th classical game unbeaten, since the penultimate round of the 2024 U.S. Championship! “It’s just some number—If it goes away I think it doesn’t matter!” said Mishra of the streak.
U.S. Women’s Chess Championship Round 1: Favorites toppled
We had an even more combative day in the Women’s section.
Round 1 Results: Women
Krush was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall Of Fame on the eve of the tournament and the eight-time U.S. Women’s Champion showed why with a crushing win over 16-year-old Lee who was, at least on paper, the favorite.
19.e4!!, sacrificing the knight on h5, was absolutely mic-drop move.
“I feel good about the move e4 and I don’t know how I would feel about myself if I hadn’t played that move!” said Krush, who gave two justifications for playing it. Firstly, “If I retreat with the knight and she goes f5, I might not really have any attack,” and secondly, “I reminded myself of the rules of chess, that if you don’t have development you don’t have a good position!”
Lee had 20 minutes more on the clock, but was given no chances in the remainder of the game.
Lee is the second highest-rated player in the Women’s event, while the highest is Yip, with the 22-year-old gunning for a fourth win in five years. In 2024 she started with eight wins in a row, which in 2025 would be worth $8,000, while back then only a perfect 11/11 counted.
This year, however, Yip fell to defeat in the very first round, in what was a great day for Pourkashiyan and her husband, GM Hikaru Nakamura, whose “road to the Candidates” has taken him to the Maritime Chess Festival in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Today I drew an IM, beat an IM, won my qualifier for the @perplexity_ai @comet chess tournament and best of all, @AtousaChess aka, my wife, beat the reigning US Women’s Chess Champion!! Oh, and here’s the recap of my great day: https://t.co/HxCfTeLuSv
— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) October 12, 2025
Pourkashiyan, who is playing while pregnant, said, “It feels great and I’m happy that I could win the first game, but it was a very complicated game.” She identified 36…f4! as the moment at which she knew she was better, though there was a still a tense fight ahead.
The day’s other win in the Women’s section came for a debutant, Sargsyan, who grew up in Armenia but is now studying at Webster University. She confessed, “My goal with coming to the USA was to retire from chess!” but she found she couldn’t resist registering for chess tournaments and decided to switch to the U.S. Chess Federation.
16-year-old Atwell misplayed a good position with an eye to some tactics and Sargsyan was later able to crash through with a winning attack.
The remaining three games could all have been decisive. Two-time champion IM Nazi Paikidze let an edge slip against FM Thalia Cervantes Landeiro, 12-year-old FM Megan Althea Paragua put up brilliant resistance to escape against IM Tatev Abrahamyan, and another two-time champion, WGM Jennifer Yu balanced on the brink of the precipice before escaping in 100 moves against four-time Champion IM Anna Zatonskih. The last miss was on move 92.
Lee vs. Yu, Abrahamyan vs. Yip, Pourkashiyan vs. Paikidze, and Sargsyan vs. Krush are the big round-two clashes in the Women’s section, while in the Open we have some big rating gaps in Caruana vs. Woodward, Oparin vs. Niemann, and Robson vs. So.
How to watch?
The 2025 U.S. Chess Championship and 2025 U.S. Women’s Chess Championship are 12-player single round-robins that run October 12-24 in St. Louis and determine the chess champions of the United States. The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, plus 30 minutes to the end of the game, with a 30-second increment from move 1. The Open event has a $250,000 prize fund and $55,000 for first place, while the Women’s is $152,000, with $35,000 for first.
