St. Louis, which has a strong claim to being the world’s premier chess club, recently reopened after a renovation with a remarkable string of celebrations. The club is the brainchild of billionaire Rex Sinquefield and his wife Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield.
The first was the 30th anniversary rerun of the world title match between Garry Kasparov and Vishy Anand, played in 1995 on the top floor of the World Trade Center in New York. Kasparov, still a powerhouse at 62, repeated his victory on the exact anniversary, October 10, of the day he had won the leadership 30 years earlier.
There were two differences. The rematch was played under the rules of Fischer Random/Freestyle chess, in which the arrangement of the pieces on the first rank is random; and prizes were awarded under the Clutch system, where late-game wins yield more points and money.
The effect was dramatic. Anand was outplayed for almost the entire match and failed to win any matches until the last two blitz games, but he won both, taking US$8,000 (R$43,700) for each of them and finishing the match on a high note.
Kasparov was still calm about the result: “His score against me is historically bad, and probably the ghosts of the past visited him during the games.”
Next up in St. Louis is the $400,000 2025 US Championship, featuring an intriguing clash of generations. Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Levon Aronian, who have dominated the event over the past decade but are now in their 30s and 40s, will be challenged by the new generation of 20-somethings and teenagers, who put in an impressive performance last month at the Fide Grand Swiss, a qualifying tournament for the 2026 world title.
The candidates are: Hans Niemann, Awonder Liang, Sam Sevian, Abhimanyu Mishra and Andy Woodward. It should be an exciting event and can be watched daily on YouTube, starting at 3:30 pm (Brasília time).
Caruana and Aronian were the only winners of last night’s opening round. The defending champion won in style, in a victory that exuded sophisticated preparation for the opener.
The climax of the St Louis celebrations will be a truly rare event, a super-elite four-grandmaster four-square tournament featuring world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, world No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura, world No. 3 Caruana and reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju.
There has been only one comparable event in the entire history of chess. It was St. Petersburg, 1895-96, with Emanuel Lasker, Harry Pillsbury, Mikhail Chigorin and Wilhelm Steinitz. Steinitz, the aging former champion, was the scapegoat at the time and, judging by his current bad form, Gukesh will be the main target of the others now. However, the Indian is still a teenager and will have every incentive to attempt a surprise.
