GMs Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So advance to the Champions Final of The American Cup 2026. After making draws in the classical portion, they overcame GMs Awonder Liang and Sam Sevian in blitz tiebreaks 1.5-0.5 each, respectively. In the Elimination Bracket, GM Leinier Dominguez will play Liang, while GM Levon Aronian will take on Sevian.
The Women’s American Cup 2026 Champions Final will pit two friends against each other, IMs Carissa Yip and Alice Lee. Although they’ve played a number of tournament games, they have never played a one-on-one match before. Yip drew IM Tatev Abrahamyan in one of the day’s most tactical brawls, while Lee barely staved off disaster to draw WGM Zoey Tang—a draw being enough for both players to advance. In the Elimination Bracket, we will see IM Anna Sargsyan vs. Tang and Abrahamyan vs. WIM Rachael Li.
Day five of The American Cup is on Saturday, March 7, starting at 1:10 p.m. ET / 19:10 CET / 11:40 p.m. IST.
Champions Semifinals:
The day started with a surprise birthday celebration (and cake!) for the legendary commentator GM Maurice Ashley, who just turned 60.
🎂 Maurice Ashley gets a surprise on his 60th birthday! pic.twitter.com/KVvWSFqLqY
— chess24 (@chess24com) March 6, 2026
While the Champions Bracket moved forward, the players in the Elimination Bracket had a rest day. There were just four matches on Friday.
Open: Favorites AdvanceÂ
The top two seeds, Caruana and So, advanced to the Final after convincing performances in the blitz playoffs.
Sevian 0.5-1.5 So In Blitz Playoffs
“The thing with matches is, as long as you don’t lose a game, you’re still in the tournament,” explained So about the super-solid nature of the classical games. “You want to win, but at the same time you don’t want to risk too much.” He added that there are two exceptions: “Of course, if your name is Magnus Carlsen or Fabiano Caruana, then you can just win the classical easily, but for others it’s not so easy.”
You want to win, but at the same time you don’t want to risk too much.
—Wesley So
The classical game was a draw, but not a boring one. Having expected 1.e4, So wasn’t exactly prepared for the aggressive 4.f3 Nimzo-Indian, and he regretted his decision to improvise with 12…Re8—”I should have stuck to my analysis and played …a6 first.” That being said, he was only in theoretical trouble for about a move, and he defended perfectly after that moment came and went.
So praised his opponent before the playoffs, saying, “I’m actually surprised he’s below 2700… the problem with Sam is that he’s a bit inconsistent.” As for his odds in blitz, he said they were 50-50.
Like Caruana in his match, So won the first blitz game and drew the second. In game one, Sevian missed the opportunity to break in the center with 20…d5, and subsequently So got a free hand with a space advantage. First it led to the win of a pawn and then the fork of a piece.
In a must-win game, Sevian over-pressed and lost, but both players missed an incredible winning resource that came out of nowhere for just one move. Had Sevian found 24.f5!!, we would likely have seen another set of blitz playoffs.
So got to the Champions Final once before, against GM Hikaru Nakamura in 2023, but lost. He’s rooting for his compatriots in the 2026 FIDE Candidates, saying, “I’m hoping to see an American world champion this year.” But, ideally, he said, Caruana will get all of his bad games out of his system in their match tomorrow!
Liang 0.5-1.5 Caruana In Blitz Playoffs
The classical draw in this match was not exciting, and it seemed that all four players were content to rest their hopes in the blitz games. Liang didn’t expect Caruana’s Caro-Kann Defense and went for the Exchange Variation, pretty much bailing out. He said, “I like playing when I know things and my opponent doesn’t know things,” and didn’t feel like battling with Caruana in a position where they were both unfamiliar.
In his previous match, Liang defeated Aronian by staying solid in the classical portion and counting on the blitz. It just didn’t work this time against Caruana. The 2026 world championship candidate won with the black pieces after taking advantage of his opponent’s weak first rank, winning a knight.
That meant Caruana had to draw with the white pieces to secure the match. Game two was out of control, but the world number-three was always on the better side of the complications. In a winning position, he found a repetition of moves, since a draw was enough.
This will be Caruana’s third time playing in the Champions Final. In 2022, he won the inaugural event, but in 2025 he lost to Nakamura. About his opponent, he said he wasn’t surprised to play the second seed: “It’s not unexpected. Wesley is super strong. It’s not like he’s a clear favorite to go through all his matches, but it’s definitely not a surprise to see him in the Final.”
Women’s: Friends Advance
Having won the previous game, Yip and Lee needed to draw in game two. Both of them got the job done, though Lee wound up in greater peril.
Abrahamyan ½-½ Yip
There’s a school of thought that says the best way to play for a draw is to play for the win. Yip, who sacrificed a pawn on the black side of the Polerio Variation in the Italian, embodied this philosophy.
The four-time U.S. champion played this line for the first time in a published classical game, and said, “Out of the opening, I felt my position was so, I don’t know, it was kind of baller!” She got an advantage, the position devolved into chaos, and she got out by forcing a perpetual check.Â
 I felt my position was so, I don’t know, it was kind of baller!
—Carissa Yip
That’s a second Game of the Day in a row for Yip and Abrahamyan, who played two fascinating games in their match. GM Rafael Leitao analyzes it below.
It hasn’t been a year since the 2025 Cairns Cup, which featured a consequential final round between Yip and Lee. A grandmaster norm was on the line, and it went to Yip, who managed to draw the game. It was Yip’s second norm, and it could have been Lee’s first. There’s a $100,000 award for the next American woman to become a grandmaster.
Although there isn’t a norm offered in this match, it’s a matchup of two friends. Yip said, “I can’t say I love playing my friends… [but] it’s fine, I think we’re both used to it at this point.” Strangely enough, it is also the first time they’ve ever played a full match, rather than a single game at a time.
Tang ½-½ Lee
Tang found herself in the same situation that she was in against GM Irina Krush on Thursday. Having lost the first game, she had to win on demand with the white pieces in game two. And she came close.
After entering a sharp line of the Vienna, Tang got her big chance in the endgame after Black’s mistake 30…Ba2?. Tang found the punishing 32.Nd1!—”gorgeousimo,” Ashley called it, while recalling GM Anatoly Karpov’s immortal 47.Ng2!! from the 1984 world championship against GM Garry Kasparov.Â
Tang really was one move from winning, 35.Rb5, but she had four minutes. Lee went on to save the game.
“It’s quite difficult to always play in time pressure, so I don’t blame her for missing it,” said Lee, “but she did play quite well before that.”Â
About the Final matchup, she said, “I don’t know if I’m completely used to it now because this is actually our first match. It will really be different from the U.S. Championships that we’ve played in.”
You won’t want to miss that. In addition, the Elimination Bracket resumes with two players to be eliminated on Saturday. Who will it be next?
Open Elimination Bracket
Women’s Elimination Bracket
How To Review
The American Cup 2026, which takes place from March 3 to 12 in St. Louis, brings together the United States’ strongest players to battle in a high-stakes double-elimination knockout bracket across classical and rapid time controls. There is an open tournament and a women’s tournament, with the two time controls of 90+30 and 25+10 (with 3+2 blitz and potential armageddon as tiebreakers). The prize fund is $250,000 in the open and $150,000 in the women’s.
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