Caruana New Leader At Champions Showdown: The Kings

A single win in their rapid game on Wednesday was enough for GM Fabiano Caruana to take the lead from GM Wesley So at the Champions Showdown: The Kings in St. Louis. In this event, where money prizes are connected to single-game results, Caruana has so far earned $33,250, while So has collected $31,000. 

The final day starts on Thursday, March 6, at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CET / 11:30 p.m. IST.

Champions Showdown: The Kings Standings After Day 2

Here's a reminder of the prize distribution at the event:

Also on the second day, the players started with blitz games, which all ended in a draw this time. Per regulations, the top two players in the standings were paired against each other, which meant that leader So had to face runner-up Caruana. By coin flip, So was given the white pieces for the blitz and rapid games.

So went for a King's Indian Attack but Caruana got a rather comfortable version. There was an interesting tactical phase where White sacrificed his queen, which seemed to give good practical chances but as so often, the engine has its own ideas.

For their rapid game, the key game of the day, So switched from 1.e4 to 1.d4. What we got was a Nimzo-Indian with a Carlsbad structure where the main difference with a Queen's Gambit Declined is White's dark-squared bishop being inside the pawn chain. That wasn't much of an improvement as Caruana easily gained space with strong control over e4.

In this rather complicated game, So managed to equalize later on, but on move 56 he blundered a piece, ironically with 1:12 on the clock vs. only 20 seconds for Caruana. The 10-second increment was very useful for the latter to convert this game.

"I know that basically if I get a good position against Wesley, it doesn't necessarily mean so much because he's defended, I mean, from my own experience, so many bad positions," Caruana noted afterward. "In general, one of his biggest strengths is that he defends extremely tenaciously. Even in the second game, I think he was putting up enormous resistance, and I just got very lucky that I had this 55...Na4 which I hadn't even seen in advance, and then I played it and just accidentally it's winning."

GM Hikaru Nakamura, third in the standings, defeated fourth-placed GM Ray Robson in a difficult, queenless middlegame. On move 15, Nakamura went for a tactical sequence that indeed seemed good for White, but the engine finds a cunning refutation! Robson didn't and needed too much time in the remainder. He went from 2:09 to 0:39 on move 24 and was lost when he missed a tactic that could have saved him.

GM Levon Aronian needed a day to warm up and did much better on Wednesday. After holding his two black games in the blitz and rapid, he defeated GM Leinier Dominguez in the semi-classical game, part of this minimatch between the two oldest participants (Aronian is 42, Dominguez is 41).

The opening, a Symmetrical English, was very interesting and is recommended to be played through as well, but we'll take the game from the moment where Dominguez lost the plot:

Aronian said: "I share something in common with GM Mikhail Tal, and that is playing terribly on the first day. I've lost so many first days around that I've tried so many things, but I just don't get in shape somehow. It's very strange. So, I'm used to it and I never go into a panic mode when I'm playing badly on the first day because things go as they were expected. So, I try just to play better. I just accept it's the reality, it's the fate, and I move on!"

I share something in common with GM Mikhail Tal, and that is playing terribly on the first day.
—Levon Aronian

Overall I'm pretty happy," said Caruana at the end of day two. "You know, Wesley and Hikaru, the first two opponents I got, they are in my view two of the toughest players in the world to play in a match, especially in this format, so overall, winning both matches, I'm very happy for sure."

How to watch?

The Champions Showdown: The Kings is a three-day exhibition event held March 4-6, 2025, in St. Louis. Six American grandmasters play rapid, blitz, and semi-classical chess for a $250,000 total prize pool. The participants play three games a day in different time controls: blitz at 3+2, rapid at 15+10, and semi-classical at 60+15. 

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