Caruana Grabs Sole Lead; Women's U.S. Champs Wide Open As Zatonskih Beats Lee

With two rounds to go at the 2025 U.S. Chess Championship in St. Louis, GM Fabiano Caruana is the sole leader thanks to a win against GM Sam Shankland on Wednesday. In the only other decisive game, GM Hans Niemann recovered from back-to-back losses by beating GM Awonder Liang.

Anything can happen at the 2025 U.S. Women's Chess Championship after IM Anna Zatonskih's victory over leader IM Alice Lee. They are now tied for first place together with IM Carissa Yip, who beat FM Rose Atwell.

The tenth round of the U.S. Championships starts on Thursday, October 23, at 1:30 p.m. ET/19:30 CEST/11 p.m. IST.

• Open: Caruana Half A Point Ahead 
• Women: Three-way Tie

Standings After Round 9: Open

Caruana is now half a point ahead of GM Wesley So, with GM Levon Aronian half a point behind him.

Standings After Round 9: Women

Scoring 4.5 points out of the last five rounds, defending champion Yip is now in a tie for first.

Open: Caruana Half A Point Ahead

Like the day before, round nine had two decisive games and four draws.

Round 9 Results: Open

After failing to take the chance to do so a few days ago, Caruana finally managed to get away from the pack. Choosing the Taimanov Sicilian showed that the four-time U.S. champion was ready for a fight, and that's what he got.

Initially, Shankland was doing quite OK. As the author of several Chessable courses, he is known to be on top of opening theory and also here, it seemed that he knew what he was doing.

He kept an edge for a while, then Caruana was slightly better, and on move 39 the endgame was equal. That was the moment when Shankland made a big mistake, despite having 15 minutes on the clock vs. three and a half for Caruana. After a minute and a half, Shankland chose a very unfortunate square for his bishop and soon he was completely lost.

Caruana said about this moment:

I think he makes the mistake sometimes of rushing with a lot of time. He always keeps a lot of time on the clock but then he rushes some critical decisions, like 39.Bb7 was rushed. Against Hans, for example, there were a few rushed decisions. I'm guilty of the same thing very often, I'm not super critical, but if I had to point to like one weakness, then it would probably be that one.

Before Caruana, Niemann had already won his game fairly quickly as Liang failed to defend properly in a Berlin Endgame where the players played their first 15 or so moves very quickly, as it was all theory.

After the players were on their own, Liang got outplayed but got a chance to get back into the game when Niemann moved his knight backward. Soon after, though, Liang made an even bigger mistake. 

Round 9 Pairings: Open

Women: Three-way Tie

Risking to sound like a broken record, the women's tournament again had only two draws and four decisive games.

Round 9 Results: Women

"I just finished my game and I need a couple of minutes to be happy and enjoy the moment!" Still undefeated after so many rounds, Zatonskih needed a bit of time to calm down after her win against Lee, who had been leading by a full point before the round.

I just finished my game and I need a couple of minutes to be happy and enjoy the moment!
—Anna Zatonskih

Perhaps Zatonskih also needed to calm down a bit after seeing the tactic that could have saved Lee. The players no doubt noticed it afterward, with the help of the engine. What seemed to have been a very smooth victory was a slightly different story.

As it turned out, Zatonskih first squandered quite a big opening advantage, only to get the upper hand after all when Lee failed to find an only move on move 20, based on a double attack. After that, Zatonskih was definitely in control as her rook on the eighth rank dominated the whole position.

GM Rafael Leitao provides his analysis of the Game of the Day below.

By then, it was already clear that there was now a three-way tie for first place as Yip had been the first of the day to win her game. She beat Atwell from a French opening, where Black's early push of the b-pawn didn't look good. She did manage to "destroy" White's center but White's initiative turned out to be more important.

"I'm pretty happy with my game, I thought it was smooth throughout," said Yip. "I kind of surprised her early early on in the opening and I think she couldn't quite handle it well. Once I got the bishop pair and the open a-file, the weak pawn on a7, I was quite sure that it is very good for me."

Behind the three leaders, GM Irina Krush is among three players trailing by half a point. The eight-time U.S. women's champion defeated WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan in an old line of the Sicilian Scheveningen where a typical, positional pawn sacrifice gave Krush a promising middlegame position. Later in the game, however, Pourkashiyan missed chances to hold.

"I think I messed it up somewhere," said Krush. "Definitely there was somewhere around move 30 where I messed it up and I was forced to trade queens which I really didn't want to do. But there was still some pressure in the endgame."

Round 10 Pairings: Women

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. 

Previous Coverage

• Round 8: Caruana, So Still Atop U.S. Championship Leaderboard; Lee Increases Lead To Full Point
• Round 7: Caruana Bulldozes Niemann To Lead With So; Lee Becomes Sole Leader
• Round 6: Caruana Misses Forced Checkmate vs So; Zatonskih Catches Lee
• Round 5: Niemann, Caruana Catch So; Christmas Comes Early For Carissa Yip
• Round 4: Niemann Joins Battle For U.S. Title; Sargsyan Extends Lead
• Round 3: Wesley So Takes Sole U.S. Championship Lead; Paikidze Catches Sargsyan
• Round 2: So, Shankland Join Lead As Caruana Escapes; Sargsyan On Perfect Score
• Round 1: Caruana, Aronian Strike As U.S. Championships Begin In St. Louis