So Holds Caruana to a Draw and Keeps His Full-Point Lead

Wesley So held onto his full-point lead in round nine of the 2026 U.S. Chess Championship by getting through defending champion Fabiano Caruana. It was a critical box ticked on the way to a possible fourth national title.

Five of the six Open games were drawn. The only decisive one saw Grigoriy Oparin beat Sam Shankland, which lifts Oparin into shared second place alongside Caruana. The rest of the standings did not move.

A must-win that wasn’t

Caruana needed a win, and the early signs favored him. The game was a Dubov Gambit in the Italian Opening, and So sank into a 20-minute think on move six.

Then came a surprise from the other side. “After he played b4, I literally wanted to resign, because I didn’t expect this move at all!” said So. He says he worked everything out over the board on his own.

The star move was 11…a6, a novelty. Caruana thought it would be hard for a human to find.

For a player chasing a record, that is a costly result. Caruana was already trailing, and his pursuit of a fifth straight title now depends on catching So. A draw in a game he had to win leaves the gap where it was with two rounds to play.

So, for his part, only needs to keep steady. His earlier pawn-ending win over Woodward built the cushion, and this game protected it.

Women’s: Li pulls clear

The Women’s event had the opposite character: all six games were decisive. Rookie WIM Rachael Li now leads by a full point after receiving a gift win against IM Nazi Paikidze, who blundered in a late endgame.

Li is on seven points. GM Irina Krush and IM Alice Lee are both on six, though they met in round nine, and Krush won.

The other winners were IM Tatev Abrahamyan over IM Rose Atwell, IM Carissa Yip over IM Anna Sargsyan, FM Megan Paragua over IM Anna Zatonskih, and WGM Jennifer Yu over WGM Thalia Cervantes.

A full point with two rounds left is a real cushion in a field this volatile, where every game in the round produced a winner. It is also a cushion built partly on an opponent’s mistake, which is how leads often grow in the closing stretch of a long round robin.

What’s next

Round 10, the penultimate round, is on Tuesday, October 20, starting at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CEST / 10:30 p.m. IST. Li will want to keep Krush and Lee at arm’s length, while So and Caruana both have only two games left to change the order.