Chess digest, Oct. 7–10: Saint Louis opens, Esipenko 1½ clear, Duda one game short of 11/11
Three wins on the opening day in Saint Louis, Esipenko 1½ points clear in Rostov-on-Don as Bodnaruk takes the women's lead, Duda a rook slip short of a perfect online tournament, and a 14-year-old leading at Fagernes.
Coverage window: after 10:45 Sofia time on October 7 through 10:45 on October 10, 2026.
The U.S. and U.S. Women's Championships opened in Saint Louis, both Russian championships entered their closing rounds with one clear leader apiece, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda came within a rook slip of a perfect online tournament. A 14-year-old still leads a grandmaster Swiss in Norway, and a 49-year-old club player has agreed to play 100 bullet games against a grandmaster.
Saint Louis opens with three wins in the open event
The 2026 U.S. Championship and U.S. Women's Championship are two 12-player round robins at the Saint Louis Chess Club, played over 11 classical rounds from October 9, with rest days on October 13 and 18 and a playoff on October 22 if a title is shared. Each player gets 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and 30 minutes for the rest of the game, with 30 seconds added from the first move, and rounds begin at 12 p.m. Central. 1
Round one, on October 9, decided three of the six open games and four of the six in the women's event.
- Open: Wesley So beat Sam Shankland, Jeffery Xiong beat Sam Sevian and Awonder Liang beat Hans Niemann, while Levon Aronian drew with Fabiano Caruana, Grigoriy Oparin with Andy Woodward and Abhimanyu Mishra with Ray Robson. 2
- Women: Thalia Cervantes beat Tatev Abrahamyan, Anna Zatonskih beat Rose Atwell, Megan Paragua beat Anna Sargsyan and Rachael Li beat Irina Krush, while Carissa Yip drew with Alice Lee and Jennifer Yu drew with Nazi Paikidze. 2
Caruana's title defence began with a 17-move draw: he and Aronian repeated moves and split the point after Black's 12...Qh3. 3
Caruana has five U.S. titles, four of them consecutive from 2022 to 2025. A fifth in a row would equal Samuel Reshevsky's run from 1936 to 1942, and a sixth title overall would draw Caruana level with Walter Browne; only Bobby Fischer and Reshevsky, with eight each, have won the championship more often. He won his first title in 2016, ten months after FIDE approved his return to the U.S. federation from Italy, where he had won the Italian championship in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011. 4
Carissa Yip, a four-time U.S. women's champion, leads the women's field, and Krush, an eight-time champion, lost her opening game to Li. 5
Esipenko 1½ clear in Rostov-on-Don as Bodnaruk takes the lead
The 79th Russian Championship and the 76th Russian women's championship are two 12-player round robins at the Grand Rostov Hyatt Regency in Rostov-on-Don, running 11 rounds from October 1 to 12. Rounds seven and eight were played on October 8 and 9. 6
Andrey Esipenko, the highest-rated player in the open field at 2680, won in round seven by beating Vadim Zvjaginsev, who resigned on move 34 after his speculative sacrifice failed. 6 Esipenko drew with Aleksey Grebnev in round eight, and the day's only win was Ernesto Inarkiev's first of the tournament, with the black pieces against Ivan Popov. 7
| Pos | Player | Rating | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrey Esipenko | 2680 | 6 |
| 2–3 | Evgeniy Najer | 2580 | 4½ |
| 2–3 | David Paravyan | 2587 | 4½ |
| 4–9 | Aleksey Grebnev | 2614 | 4 |
| 4–9 | Savva Vetokhin | 2555 | 4 |
| 4–9 | Aleksey Goganov | 2507 | 4 |
| 4–9 | Arseniy Nesterov | 2590 | 4 |
| 4–9 | Dmitry Kokarev | 2510 | 4 |
| 4–9 | Pavel Ponkratov | 2540 | 4 |
| 10 | Ivan Popov | 2595 | 3½ |
| 11 | Ernesto Inarkiev | 2637 | 3 |
| 12 | Vadim Zvjaginsev | 2522 | 2½ |
In the women's event, Leya Garifullina led alone on 6/7 after beating Margarita Potapova, then lost to Anastasia Bodnaruk with the black pieces in round eight, which put Bodnaruk half a point ahead. Ekaterina Goltseva beat Potapova in a 102-move game, the longest of the round, and Daria Charochkina beat Galina Mikheeva with black. 7
| Pos | Player | Rating | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anastasia Bodnaruk | 2354 | 6½ |
| 2 | Leya Garifullina | 2418 | 6 |
| 3 | Ekaterina Goltseva | 2337 | 5½ |
| 4–5 | Ekaterina Kovalevskaya | 2293 | 5 |
| 4–5 | Anna Shukhman | 2434 | 5 |
| 6 | Olga Girya | 2380 | 4 |
| 7 | Marina Korneva | 2265 | 3½ |
| 8–9 | Maria Pershina | 2303 | 3 |
| 8–9 | Daria Charochkina | 2308 | 3 |
| 10 | Margarita Potapova | 2225 | 2½ |
| 11–12 | Galina Mikheeva | 2177 | 2 |
| 11–12 | Valentina Gunina | 2332 | 2 |
Both events are all-play-all, so each pair of players meets once, and a tie for first goes to a playoff. The prize fund is 11 million rubles, 7 million of it for the open event and 4 million for the women's, and each champion also receives a LADA car; the top five in the open event qualify for the 2027 FIDE World Cup and the top three women for the 2027 Women's World Cup. Rounds nine to eleven run from October 10 to 12, with the last round starting at 1 p.m. Moscow time. 6
Duda misses 11/11 by a rook slip
3 0 Thursday on October 8 was three 11-round Swiss tournaments at 3+0 for titled players, with a combined prize fund of $3,000. 8
Jan-Krzysztof Duda won the first tournament with 10/11 from a field of 215, after winning his first eight games, four of them against grandmasters. He lost to Sina Movahed in round nine when a rook mouse slip under time pressure cost him the game, then won his last two to finish a point clear of the chase. Movahed took second on nine points, ahead of Denis Lazavik on tiebreak, and Polina Shuvalova was the best woman on 6½, half a point more than Tan Zhongyi, which ended Tan's run of three straight women's prizes. 8
Oleksandr Bortnyk won the second tournament. IM Aleksandr Usov, 16, led by half a point going into the last round and lost to Bortnyk, who found 19.Ne6!! in a Scandinavian Defence to win a pawn; Usov had beaten Benjamin Bok, Alexander Rustemov, Shant Sargsyan and Parham Maghsoodloo on the way. Movahed finished third ahead of Maksim Chigaev on tiebreak, and WIM Melika Mohammadi was the best woman. 8
Tuan Minh Le won the third tournament with 8½/9, a full point clear, after beating Renato Terry in round seven with a discovered check that won nine points of material. Le lost to Bortnyk in round ten and still finished a point ahead. Mahdavi ended second, with Yoseph Taher, Terry and Bortnyk behind him separated only by tiebreak, and Tan Zhongyi finished 19th on 6/11 to reclaim the best women's prize. 8
A 14-year-old holds the lead at Fagernes
Christian Gloeckler, a 14-year-old German IM, leads the GM Swiss at the Fagernes International Autumn in Norway with 6/7 after beating Austria's Lukas Dotzer in round seven. 9
Gloeckler has held at least a share of the lead since the opening rounds. On the tournament's single double-round day he drew with Rinat Jumabayev in 84 moves and beat Frode Olav Olsen Urkedal, then drew with the top seed Elham Amar in round six. Jumabayev is second on 5½ after beating Amar in round seven, and the two leaders have already drawn with each other. 9
The tournament runs from October 3 to 11 at the Scandic Valdres hotel, 187 kilometres north of Oslo, and spreads ten rounds over nine days partly so players can chase title norms. Gloeckler is chasing another grandmaster norm after scoring 8/9 with a 2688 performance at the Biel Chess Festival earlier this year, and Sarbartho Mani of India, aged 10, has 4/7. 9
Also this window
- A 100-game bullet match with a one-sided payout. Josh Smith, a 49-year-old Arizona businessman with a US Chess rating in the 1800s, will play GM Daniil Dubov 100 games of one-minute bullet on November 7. Dubov is guaranteed $10,000 and collects another $10,000 only by winning all 100 games, so a single draw or win for Smith halves the total; Smith set a bullet rating peak of 2579 on Chess.com on October 6. Dubov called Smith "a massive favorite" not to lose every game, and said of a whitewash: "It takes a lot of talent to lose 100 games in a row." 10
- FIDE's new president met Kazakhstan's president. Timur Turlov, elected FIDE president on September 26 and also president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, was received by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on October 8. Their talks covered chess in education, coach and arbiter training, youth development and hosting major events; Tokayev said more than 278,000 people in Kazakhstan play chess, and cited the women's team's silver medal at the Samarkand Olympiad. 11
- The Bundesliga starts its season. The 2026/27 Chess Bundesliga opens this weekend, with last season's champions SC Viernheim and OSG Baden-Baden the favourites and SV Erkenschwick 1923 making their debut in the top division. 12
- Kennemer Combinatie took the Dutch league's top match. In the second round of the Dutch League, Kennemer Combinatie beat LSG 7–3, and Zsoka Gaal won her first game in the league against the Dutch national coach Jan Smeets. 13
What to watch next
| Date (Europe/Sofia) | Event and location | Checkpoint |
|---|---|---|
| October 10–12 | Russian Championship Superfinals, Rostov-on-Don | Rounds 9–11 settle both titles on October 12, when the last round starts at 1 p.m. Moscow time; a tie for first goes to a playoff, and the LADA cars and the 2027 World Cup places go with the titles. 6 |
| October 10–21 | U.S. and U.S. Women's Championships, Saint Louis Chess Club | Rounds 2–11, with rest days on October 13 and 18 and a playoff on October 22 if a title is shared; more than $400,000 is on offer across the two events. 1 |
| October 11 | Fagernes International Autumn, Fagernes, Norway | The tenth and final round decides the GM Swiss, with 14-year-old Christian Gloeckler leading on 6/7. 9 |
| October 11 | 75th Greek Championship and 48th women's championship, Psara | Both events finish after nine rounds on the Aegean island. 14 |
| October 16–24 | European Club Cup, Budva, Montenegro | The 41st open and 30th women's club cups, seven-round Swiss events with a €40,000 prize fund. 15 |
| November 7 | The 100-0 Project: Daniil Dubov vs Josh Smith, online | 100 games of one-minute bullet; Dubov is guaranteed $10,000 and needs all 100 wins to double it. 10 |
| November 10–20 | Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot, Budapest | A 24-player field led by Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, in four groups of six, with Fast Classic games and a blitz Swiss setting the tiebreaks for the knockouts. 16 |
| November 22–December 13 | Salesforce FIDE World Championship match, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cologny, Geneva | Gukesh Dommaraju defends the title against Javokhir Sindarov over a maximum of 14 games, with the opening ceremony on November 22 and the first game on November 24. 17 |
References
- 1ChessBase: US Championships – Live!
en.chessbase.com
- 2Saint Louis Chess Club: 2026 U.S. Chess Championships
saintlouischessclub.org
- 3
- 4ChessBase: Fabiano Caruana targets fifth consecutive US title
en.chessbase.com
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13ChessBase: Game of the Week #743: Gaal vs Smeets
en.chessbase.com
- 14The Week in Chess 1665\
theweekinchess.com
- 15
- 16
- 17ChessBase: Salesforce FIDE World Championship Match 2026\
en.chessbase.com
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