Nakamura, Caruana Miss Wins Vs. Mishra, Robson
All four games in The American Cup 2025 Open ended in draws, but the top two seeds, GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana, missed critical chances in their games against, respectively, GMs Abhimanyu Mishra and Ray Robson.
In stark contrast, three of the four games in the Women's American Cup were decisive. Now leading their matches are GM Irina Krush, IM Carissa Yip, and IM Alice Lee. Yip should count her lucky stars, as she went on to win only after her opponent, WGM Thalia Cervantes, missed a forced checkmate.
Day two of the American Cup, featuring game two and playoffs in the Champions Quarterfinals, will be on Sunday, March 16, starting at 12:00 p.m. CDT / 17:00 CET / 09:30 p.m. IST.
Champions Quarterfinals:
Open: Robson, Mishra Survive
GM Wesley So vs. Leinier Dominguez was the first game to end, and GM Levon Aronian vs. Sam Sevian didn't present real chances for either side to win either.
Open Day 1 Results
With even scores across the board, no one is in a must-win situation in their second classical game on Sunday. We will likely see blitz tiebreaks in at least one match.
Open Standings After Day 1
The American Cup, which began in 2022, is back for its fourth edition. Six of the eight players have played in all three previous years: Aronian, Robson, Sevian, Caruana, So, and Dominguez. Top seed Nakamura played just once in 2023, and he won the tournament that year. The newcomer Mishra participates for the first time, and making a draw with the world number-two isn't a bad way to start.
Aronian won the tournament last year, while So has finished as runner-up for the last two years.
The format in both sections is the same. Players advance by winning two-game classical matches against their adversaries (with blitz and armageddon tiebreaks, if needed). Once a player loses one match, they enter the Elimination Bracket, which features only rapid games. Getting eliminated from there means the end of the event—two strikes and you're out.
We start with the two games that came extremely close to being decisive.
Robson's troubles against Caruana started in the opening. Caruana repeated 1.Nf3, the move he'd played against Robson 10 days ago in the Champions Showdown: The Kings 2025 in a game Caruana won, though the opening quickly went in a different direction. The novel 7.Nc3 caused Robson to tank, and he took about 50 minutes to play his response. He explained, "I didn't remember what I'd analyzed or if I'd analyzed this move Nc3."
By the time Caruana took his first think, on move 15, Robson already had about 10 minutes left. For a long time, he found only move after only move—while playing on the increment—until, out of desperation, he made a losing move. He said, "I decided to sacrifice the exchange on b3, which I didn't want to do, but I just kind of didn't know what to do. So I just made a move."
Though Caruana was objectively—and only briefly—winning, the former puzzles world champion found enough counterplay with his connected passed pawns and ultimately escaped to safety with perpetual check. GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the Game of the Day, which would have been the greatest escape if not for a few others.
For the longest time, the Catalan in Nakamura vs. Mishra didn't look like anything special. The broadcast actually hardly cut to it until the rook endgame when, with about a minute, the GM from New Jersey started to make mistakes. Rook endgames are notoriously difficult, and Nakamura missed two flat-out wins.
The first one was on move 70, when Nakamura could have won the h-pawn immediately. He saw this, but he wasn't sure if the resulting endgame would be winning. After that, the "inexplicable" (his word) 81.e4? was the bigger miss, as Mishra got a theoretical draw by cutting off the opponent's king from the fourth rank. Nakamura said, "I'm not really sure what I saw here in terms of why I didn't play this move [the winning 81.d5]."
In his video recap, Nakamura expressed his disappointment with the game:
If I had only missed the Rb8-Rh8 opportunity to win, I'd still be unhappy, but the fact that I had a second window... means that I'm really, really upset with the game.... When you get winning positions like this [after four hours of work] and you don't convert, it's a very big disappointment.
Nakamura, with his latest title, has brought back the specter of his retirement. And he compared this miss with his missed wins against GM Javokhir Sindarov in the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Weissenhaus. You can watch it below.
Aronian came with a novelty in the English Opening, the "crazy knight sac" (as Sevian called it) 8.Nxe5!? where he regains the piece quickly. Sevian explained, "It seemed to be okay for Black, but the more variations I was looking at, the more difficult it looked." Still, he managed to find a way to liquidate into an endgame where he thought he might be ever so slightly worse but still able to hold. In reality, he was never in trouble.
So vs. Dominguez was the first game to end and had the least intrigue. They reached a new position on just move 25, after following a previous So game from 2019 (which he won against GM Vidit Gujrathi), and by that point it was a simplified endgame. White temporarily won a pawn, but Black regained it and they agreed to a draw in the rook endgame.
Everybody will switch colors and have their last chances to win in the classical portion in the next game. Otherwise, we will see blitz tiebreaks, and four players will enter the Elimination Bracket one way or another.
Women's: Yip Dodges Checkmate, Wins Game
It was nearly a whitewash, except for the draw in IM Anna Zatonskih vs. WGM Tatev Abrahamyan. Even there, Abrahamyan had a winning position with the black pieces, but transitioning into a queen-plus-knight endgame up a pawn wasn't enough.
Women's Day 1 Results
Cervantes, IM Nazi Paikidze, and WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan are now in a must-win situation to avoid the Elimination Bracket. Fortunately, all three will have White on Sunday.
Women's Standings After Day 1
Half of the field—Krush, Lee, Abrahamyan, Zatonskih— has played in every previous edition. First-timers are Yip, who has announced that she will move to St. Louis as she trains to earn the $100,000 Cairns Chess Queens Award, and Cervantes. Pourkashiyan has played just once before, in 2023, while Paikidze has played in every edition starting from that year.
Krush won the first two; Lee, who had been runner-up both of those years, won the title in 2024.
The most dramatic game of the day, and the greatest escape, was Yip's against Cervantes. The three-time U.S. champion, who started with the provocative 1.Nc3, succeeded in getting an original position, but she was outplayed in the middlegame when low on time. After she grabbed a pawn on d5 and then retreated her rook, Cervantes had a winning attack—one she came close to finishing off.
It was on move 35, with a minute and a half left, that Cervantes had to find a forced checkmate sequence. Instead, she lost the exchange and went on to lose the game. Yip told her side of the story: "I was like, it's over. It's time for me to start prepping for tiebreaks, but then she played ...Bd5 and I was like, don't play with me now, and I locked in."
I was like, don't play with me now, and I locked in.
—Carissa Yip
Krush's win was very convincing. She explained that her opening move order may have tricked her opponent, as by transposition they reached a Queen's Gambit—an opening Pourkashiyan doesn't really play with either color! Krush played 12.Ne5, knowing that 12...Bd7 is the best move, but she wasn't surprised that her opponent didn't find it.
12...Nbd5?, played, left Krush with the task of figuring out why this move isn't normally played. She discovered it: 13.Rd3! with a kingside attack was exactly the answer, and the attack ultimately transformed into a pawn-up rook endgame that she won.
Last year's champion, Lee, won an exchange as early as move 18. It was a disaster in the Catalan Opening for Paikidze, who should have played 14...c5 to equalize when her opponent allowed it—and had a second, more difficult, chance with 15...c5. Lee said, "I feel good that I was able to win this game. I'm not very happy about how the game went, but I am glad that I was able to pull through in the end."
Of course, Lee said that her goal is to win the tournament again. But in some ways, she feels less pressure: "Because I already won it last year, it does take off some pressure, but I'm just trying to play my best each game."
We should expect a bloodbath in the Women's on Sunday, as most boards feature must-win games. Will the leaders hold on, or will we see comebacks?
How to review?
You can watch the event on the Saint Louis Chess Club YouTube or Twitch channels. You can watch coverage of Nakamura's games on his Kick and YouTube channels. You can also check out the games on our dedicated events page.
GMs Yasser Seirawan, Ioan-Cristian Chirila, and WGM Katerina Nemcova hosted the broadcast.
The 2025 American Cup, taking place from March 15-24, is an over-the-board tournament featuring some of the strongest players in the United States. The time control is 90 minutes for the entire game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one; rapid games are played at the 15+10 time control. The prize fund is $250,000.
