GM Alexander Fishbein clinched the U.S. Seniors Championship title by winning a playoff on Friday with GM Vladimir Akopian and GM Alexander Shabalov after all three had finished in a tie for first. Fishbein earned $23,167. GM Andy Woodward was the strongest in the U.S. Junior Championship, earning $23,000, while WGM Zoey Tang took clear in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, good for $15,000.
Traditionally, the U.S. Championships for seniors, juniors, and girls are held alongside each other during the summer time. All three events are 10-player round-robins with a classical time control and belong to the many yearly events organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club. The tournaments took place on July 15-25 on Brentwood Boulevard, Richmond Heights, St. Louis.
Fishbein Wins U.S. Seniors Championship
In a touching interview after Friday’s rapid playoff, tournament winner Fishbein pointed out that he was the only player in the field who played, but never won a U.S. Junior Championship (he came second twice). Becoming a grandmaster at 24, he worked most of his life in finance. However, he recently retired, probably temporarily, and got to spend a lot of time on chess. He worked hard for the tournament and was particularly happy that the hard work had paid off.
“I thought, if I really focus,” he said. “Sometimes results don’t happen immediately but I knew that this tournament was coming, and I really felt that I could win it.”
Of the three events, the Seniors was the only tournament that needed a playoff to force a winner. Akopian (53), Fishbein (57) and Shabalov (57), three of the four participants still in their fifties, had finished in a tie for first after nine rounds. Pre-tournament favorite Akopian, the 1991 World Junior Champion, a two-time Armenian Champion and three-time Olympic gold winner for Armenia who has represented the United States since 2021, had remained undefeated, but his two wins were accompanied with seven draws.
Shabalov had qualified for the playoff with a final round win against two-time World Open winner GM Alexander Goldin (61), who missed a chance to draw a textbook rook endgame, which would have qualified him instead! The whole thing was quite instructive as these endgames appear fairly regularly in tournament play:
The playoff would almost have been among four players, as three-time U.S. Champion (and three-time U.S. Junior Champion!) GM Larry Christiansen (69) almost made it to tiebreaks too. He was close to holding a pawn-down queen endgame but one wrong king move spoiled it all and GM Maxim Dlugy (59) found the win not too long before the 50-move rule would have set in. After 154 moves, Christiansen threw in the towel.
Fishbein played three-time U.S. Champion GM Joel Benjamin (61) in the final round, a game where the winner would reach the playoffs. It was a beautiful, positional game where White’s bishop was much stronger than Black’s knight. Thanks to the engine, we know that this was not the whole story: shortly before the end, both players missed a key idea that would have saved half a point for Benjamin.
The playoff consisted of a single round-robin of rapid games with a 15+10 time control. First, Shabalov and Akopian drew, after which Fishbein defeated Shabalov and then held Akopian to a draw. Here’s the game that decided it all:
The three GMs shared the top three prizes combined, getting $18,167 each, while Fishbein received the $5,000 winner’s bonus on top of that.
U.S. Seniors 2025 | Round-robin Final Standings
Andy Woodward Wins U.S. Juniors Championship
The Juniors was won by Woodward, arguably America’s biggest talents these days. He became a grandmaster in January 2024, aged 13. He is the second-youngest grandmaster in U.S. history, behind GM Abhimanyu Mishra. In January of this year, Woodward dethroned GM Ray Robson to win the 2025 Chess.com Puzzles Championship.
Woodward was the only player to win in the first round, and never let go of his lead. He won the next two games as well, and would eventually finish with four wins and five draws. Only after rounds six and seven he had to allow GM Kirk Ghazarian next to him in the standings, but in the end, GMs Mishra and Brewington Hardaway tied for second place.
After a series of four draws, Woodward won an important game as Black in the penultimate round. IM Evan Park‘s 9.g4 in the 6.f4 Najdorf, earlier played by GMs Erwin l’Ami, Amin Tabatabaei and Nikolas Theodorou, seems to have caught him by surprise, but after getting a good position, Park didn’t follow up correctly.
U.S. Juniors 2025 | Final Standings
Zoey Tang Wins U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship
Tang’s path through the championship was different than Woodward’s. Her start wasn’t too convincing as she drew her first three games, but then the engine started rolling. She won three games in a row and shared the lead with FM Megan Paragua with three rounds to go. The two drew their mutual game in round seven, after which Tan added two more wins to her collection.
Paragua (12) had dropped half a point along the way, but her win in the final round kept the pressure on Tang (17), who needed to win as well to avoid playoffs. She did it with strong endgame play:
U.S. Girls 2025 | Final Standings
The U.S. Senior Championship, U.S. Junior Championship, and the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship took place in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15-25. Each group was a 10-player round-robin. The time control was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move. Draw offers were not allowed.
