2026 Saint Louis Masters: Caruana, Lodici, Durarbayli Lead Saint Louis Masters After 4 Rounds

GMs Fabiano Caruana, Lorenzo Lodici, and Vasif Durarbayli lead the 2026 Saint Louis Masters with 3.5 points apiece after four rounds. It’s nearly the halfway point of the nine-round tournament, and there are no fewer than nine players in the chasing pack who are half a point behind.

Round five is on Friday, February 27, starting at 11:15 a.m. ET / 17:15 CET / 9:45 p.m. IST.

There are three leaders on Thursday night, but the tournament is wide open with over a dozen players still in contention. Caruana, the top seed, has done well to stay at the top of the standings. 

Standings | Top 20 After 4 Rounds

The Saint Louis Masters has returned for its second edition in the recently renovated St. Louis Chess Club. A week before the American Cup 2026, which takes place next week starting on March 3, the club opens its doors to an impressively high-level Swiss.

Seventy players have been invited to play in the nine-round Swiss, with two games per day from February 25 to March 1 except for just one on the last day. The average rating is 2476, with an average age of 25. Over half the players, 37 out of 70, are grandmasters. 

There’s a $20,000 first prize, and a $100,000 prize fund. There are IM and GM norms on the line, and on top of that the event counts as part of the 2026-27 FIDE Circuit, which after two years will determine one player who will earn a seat in the 2028 FIDE Candidates Tournament. It’s still early days, but you can see that GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov currently leads thanks to his big win at the 2026 Tata Steel Chess Masters, just ahead of his fellow Uzbek GM Javokhir Sindarov who came in second in the same tournament.

2026-27 FIDE Circuit Top 10

See full Circuit standings.

The 2028 FIDE Candidates Tournament is surely the last thing on the mind of top-seed Caruana, who will be playing in this year’s Candidates starting on March 29. It will be his sixth time playing in one, and he shared in his latest podcast episode that he’s finished his second Candidates training camp. He has two classical tournaments scheduled before it’s showtime: the Saint Louis Masters followed by the American Cup, which can go until March 12.

It’s a solid start for the world number-three, who shared victory with GM Alexander Donchenko in the inaugural 2024 Saint Louis Masters. There, he started with the same number of points in four rounds. This year Caruana dropped just one draw against GM Mikhail Antipov while scoring three wins in the opening rounds. Since round one, he has had only grandmaster opponents.

That being said, Caruana is an easy favorite to win the event. He is the only 2700 (nearly 2800) in the field and is over 100 points higher-rated than second-seed GM Grigoriy Oparin. You can see the top 10 by rating before the start of the event:

Top 10 Starting Ranks

In round four he played against New York’s GM Brewington Hardaway, who was the only player to finish the first three rounds with all wins. Hardaway beat IM Eric Rosen, FM Apaar Saxena, and GM Bharath Subramaniyam before running into the super-grandmaster in the day’s last round.

On the black side of a Rossolimo Sicilian, Caruana played the novelty 8…h5, which worked terrifically in the game even if the computer shows the way to a white advantage. Pouncing on the first serious mistake by his opponent, Caruana found 19…Rh6!, the beginning of a decisive re-shuffling of his pieces on the kingside and the delivery of an unstoppable attack. 

Durarbayli, who makes his debut at this year’s event, has started with the same score as Caruana. He defeated IM Carissa Yip, drew GM Viktor Gazik, and beat GM Dimitrios Alexakis before scoring his toughest win against GM Francesco Sonis in round four. 11.Nb3! in the opening was a cool way of neutralizing Black’s quick, but perhaps premature, counterplay on the queenside. White then took over with a one-sided counterblow on the kingside.

Lodoci, who at the 2025 FIDE World Cup upset the likes of GMs Hans Niemann and Michael Adams, is the third player on 3.5 points. He drew IM Anthony Atanasov but then went on to beat IM Atilla Kuru, GM Robby Kevlishvili, and WGM Jennifer Yu. 

His win against Kuru in round two came close to a draw, but 46.f4? gave White the one tempo he needed to win with the passed a-pawn. 

Alongside the seasoned grandmasters are some of the rising stars in American chess, still climbing the ranks. Seventeen-year-old FM Rose Atwell—who has been posting daily updates about her rounds on X—started well on the first day, beating GM Harsha Bharathakoti in round one and drawing GM Varuzhan Akobian in round two, but she lost rounds three and four against GMs Sonis and Viktor Matviishen.

Underdogs to watch out for, who are on 2.5 points, are IM Hasan Huseyin Celik, who went undefeated only after losing to Caruana in the first round, Atanasov, who’s undefeated with three draws and a win, IM Tani Adewumi, and Yu.

He’s hardly an underdog, but 15-year-old GM Andy Woodward is the youngest of all the players, and he’s just a half-point short of the leaders.

There are five rounds left. We will have two rounds per day on Friday and Saturday, with the final round nine alone on Sunday. We will cover rounds five-nine in our next report.

Let us know in the comments: who will win the tournament this year? Will it be Caruana again, or not?

How To Review

The Saint Louis Masters, running from February 25 to March 1 at the St. Louis Chess Club, is a premier event featuring top international talent battling in a nine-round Swiss with a classical time control of 90 minutes plus a 30-second increment for the entire game. The event is part of the 2026-2027 FIDE Circuit and will help decide one of the participants of the 2028 Candidates Tournament.