ST. LOUIS — A 14-year-old chess prodigy defeated a top U.S. competitor in an elite tournament Thursday in St. Louis, becoming one of the youngest players in history to win a major chess title.
Alice Lee won a marathon, five-round championship in the women’s portion of the American Cup, a showdown of 16 of the top chess players in the U.S. hosted by the St. Louis Chess Club.
Lee, of Minneapolis, is one of three women players in chess history to earn the title of international master before turning 14, and on Thursday she upset 40-year-old Irina Krush, an eight-time U.S. Women’s Chess champion widely considered the best active women’s chess player in the U.S.
The win, in a fifth-round tiebreaker, came down to “luck and nerves at the last minute,” Lee said.
Thursday’s historic finale was another checkmate for the St. Louis Chess Club, which has worked over the past decade to make St. Louis the chess capital of the U.S. — a title bestowed by the U.S. Senate in 2014 — if not the world.
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The club, a nonprofit founded by Missouri billionaire Rex Sinquefield in 2008, has drawn top competitors and tournaments to the state-of-the-art location in St. Louis’ Central West End, now also home to the World Chess Hall of Fame and U.S. Chess Federation, the top governing entity for the game.
The club has recruited top players from around the world to the U.S. Federation, bankrolled the creation of top-ranked chess teams at St. Louis University and the University of Missouri, and established its own St. Louis-based elite competitions, including the American Cup, as well as coaching and school-based programs introducing youths to the game.
Sinquefeld said Thursday that Lee should serve as “a real inspiration and example for all young players.”
Tony Rich, executive director of St. Louis Chess Club, noted that Lee is the same age that some other U.S. greats, including Bobby Fischer and Krush herself, were when they won their first U.S. Championships.
“It’s that sense of a kind of changing of the guard,” Rich said. “To bring it full circle and see her take over the helm of top American chess is really beautiful.”
The American Cup, launched in 2022, is an invitational tournament that selects eight men and eight women to compete in a rare, double-elimination format.
The winners receive $400,000 in prize money — $250,000 to the winner of the men’s bracket and $150,000 to the winner of the women’s bracket.
In the men’s cup, Levon Aronian, a St. Louis resident and two-time Chess World Cup winner, defeated Wesley So, a three-time U.S. Chess Champion, on Wednesday.
The win is Aronian’s first major title as a U.S. player. He moved to St. Louis from Armenia in 2021 for chess.
“There is no other city like this in the world for chess,” Aronian said Thursday. “You walk on the streets, and the best chess players in the world are around you.”
At 41, he was the oldest competitor in this year’s American Cup.
Krush, a New York City resident, is one of only 41 women to earn the highest title of chess grandmaster, and she is the only one to earn the title while playing for the U.S.
Krush and Lee met in the previous two American Cup championships, and Krush won both matchups.
This year marked the first time Lee had taken a lead on Krush.
Lee, who was introduced to chess by her brother at age 7, said she was already happy heading into the fifth round with how much better she had played compared with the past two years.
“I was going to be happy with the results, even if I lost, because I already improved from last year,” she said. “So I thought, ‘I’ll just play my best and see how it goes.’”