Clutch Chess and U.S. Championships: SLCC's Grand Re-Opening

Clutch Chess: The Legends

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Garry Kasparov, Maurice Ashley, Viswanathan Anand, Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield, and Rex Sinquefield celebrate the Saint Louis Chess Club's grand re-opening (All photos courtesy Lennart Ootes/SLCC)

The 2025 U.S. Chess Championship and U.S. Women’s Chess Championship begin Sunday, October 12 at the newly renovated Saint Louis Chess Club (SLCC). As a grand re-opening, the lead-up to GM Fabiano Caruana and IM Carissa Yip’s quests for their fourth and third consecutive titles, respectively, featured quite an opening act.

It just feels wrong calling a match between GMs Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand an appetizer or opening act, but this year’s prequel to the U.S. Chess Championship was indeed a 12-game exhibition Chess960 match between the two legends.

The three-day match — appropriately titled Clutch Chess: The Legends — featured six rapid games and six blitz games (two each across three distinct Chess960 positions), with Kasparov clinching the match with two games to go, winning 13–11 (the match format and scoring is explained here).

Kasparov earned $70,000 for winning the match, plus an $8,000 in bonus prizes. Anand earned $50,000 plus $16,000 in bonuses. The bonus prizes were awarded for winning particular games, with the ‘bounty’ per win increasing with each day from $1,000 per win on day one to $2,000 by day two and $3,000 by the final day. Additionally, wins were worth more on each day than the day before, with the scoring system going from the “traditional” 1/½/0 on the first day up to 3/1½/0 by the final day.

While Kasparov actually clinched the match with two games to go, Anand’s victories in the final two blitz games gave him both 6 match points and $6,000 in bonus money, making both the final score and final prize split appear a bit closer.

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U.S. Chess Championship Preview

Who knows what the most gripping storyline will be a few rounds into the tournament. But, as of now, it’s the four C’s: There’s Caruana, there’s Carissa, and there’s a bunch of Competitors playing Catch-up.

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Fabiano Caruana and Carissa Yip after the 2024 U.S. Championships (Photo courtesy Lennart Ootes/SLCC)

GM Fabiano Caruana has won the U.S. Championship for the past three years, and IM Carissa Yip won the U.S. Women’s Championship in both 2023 and 2024. Coverage of 2023 is available here and 2024 can be found here. Both players have to be considered the odds-on favorites this year, with dreams of a four-peat and a three-peat, respectively.

Joining Caruana in the top half of the Championship are GM Levon Aronian, three-time U.S. Champion Wesley So, GM Hans Niemann, GM Ray Robson, and the newest member of the 2700-club, GM Awonder Liang.

To understand the tournament’s depth 2018 U.S. Champion GM Sam Shankland enters as the eighth-seed by rating, flanked by GMs Sam Sevian and Grigoriy Oparin. The final three spots went to two juniors who had fantastic results at last month’s FIDE Grand Swiss — GMs Abhimanyu Mishra and Andy Woodward — and the reigning U.S. Open Champion GM Dariusz Swiercz.

The top-half of the Women’s Championship features Yip, IM Alice Lee, eight-time U.S. Women’s Champion GM Irina Krush, newcomer IM Anna Sargasyan, newly minted IM Tatev Abrahamyan, and four-time U.S. Women’s Champion IM Anna Zatonskih.

Two more former champs are in the bottom-half of the field by rating, with 2016 and 2018 Women’s Champion IM Nazi Paikidze seeded seventh and 2019 and 2022 Women’s Champion WGM Jennifer Yu seeded tenth. WGMs Atousa Pourkashiyan and Thalia Cervantes enter as the eighth and ninth seeds, respectively, and prodigious FMs Rose Atwell and Megan Paragua round out the field.

Another storyline to follow this year is the revamped Fischer Prize. Previously, the prize was a $64,000 bonus to any player who went 11/11 in either event. Nobody has replicated Fischer’s feat — although Yip came darn close last year — and now they won’t have to in order to earn bonus prizes on top of the event’s $402,000 prize fund.

This year, players who kick off the event with wins will have a chance at $1,000 for a 5/5 start, with that number doubling to $2,000 for 6/6 and doubling again each round all the way up to $64,000 for 11/11. There is also a new “finish strong” $5,000 prize for the player in each tournament with the best score from Rounds 6 through 11.

Follow Live

The opening ceremony is always a delightful opportunity to see the competitors socialize, and this year’s celebration of SLCC’s renovations is sure to be no exception. Keep an eye on SLCC’s Flickr page for photos.

Coverage of each round begins at 12:20 p.m. CDT, with commentary from GM Yasser Seirawan, GM Maurice Ashley, and WGM Katerina Nemcova broadcast on SLCC’s YouTube and Twitch channels.

The 11-round event is played at the pace of one game a day, with the exception of rest days on October 16 and October 21. Full regulations are available here.

Follow Chess Life Online for daily reporting, recaps, and annotations from a rotating cast of commentators including GM Brewington Hardaway, WGM Katerina Nemcova, GM Alex Fishbein, FM Davis Zong, IM Robert Shlyakhtenko, and WGM Zoey Tang.

After the event, SLCC will wrap up its re-opening month with Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown. Like its Legends iteration, the event will feature an innovative format where, each day, games are worth more points than the day before. But, unlike The Legends, we will be treated to “normal” chess rather than Chess 960, with Caruana joined by GMs Hikaru Nakamura, Magnus Carlsen, and current World Chess Champion Gukesh Dommaraju. The three-day event begins on Monday, October 27, and games begin at 12:00 p.m. each day. Full regulations can be found here.

In case you missed it, ChessBase India has the scoop on the new look of SLCC: