In the autumn of 2014, a 22-year-old from Brooklyn sat down at a chess board in St. Louis and proceeded to do something that the Elo rating system, which has been calculating chess ability since 1960, had essentially no vocabulary to describe.
Getting there, though, started in a synagogue after-school program in Park Slope.
The Early Years
At the age of five, Fabiano Caruana's chess talent was discovered in an after-school chess program at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Within six months of that first after-school program, he'd played in his first tournament. His first coach, from age six to eight, was National Master Bruce Pandolfini, the same man who had coached Josh Waitzkin, the subject of Searching for Bobby Fischer.
By the time Caruana was twelve, his family had made a decision that tells you everything about how seriously they were taking his gift.
They relocated to Madrid so he could train under International Master Boris Zlotnik. Then Budapest, where he worked with Grandmaster Alexander Chernin. Then Lugano.. and eventually St. Louis.
His entire adolescence was a chess itinerary, each city chosen because it offered the next level of instruction his ability demanded.
He earned his grandmaster title at 14 years, 11 months, and 20 days in 2007, making him the youngest grandmaster in the history of both Italy and the United States at the time.
He was representing Italy by then, having transferred federation affiliation from the US in 2005, and he won the Italian Chess Championship four times before returning to the United States in 2015.
Then came the Sinquefield Cup in September 2014.
The 2014 Sinquefield Cup
The tournament brought together six of the world's top 10 grandmasters in St. Louis. Caruana won his first game. Then he won his second. Then his third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. Along the way, he defeated players ranked first, second, sixth, seventh, and ninth in the world. He did it without losing a single game.
After seven straight wins, he drew his final three rounds. Even so, he finished three points ahead of Carlsen.
His performance rating reached 3,098, the highest ever recorded in an elite tournament. That number is difficult to grasp. A performance rating of 2,900 is already considered extraordinary. A 3,000 performance is almost unheard of in modern chess. Yet Caruana posted a 3,098 rating over 10 rounds against the world's strongest players.
Nakamura summed it up with a single word: "Fantastico!"
Veselin Topalov was one of the few players who had competed in both the famous 1994 Linares tournament and this event. Even he chose his words carefully. In the end, he called it "one of the greatest performances in history."
World Title Shot
Four years later, in November 2018 in London, Caruana had his chance at the world title. He faced Magnus Carlsen in a twelve-game classical match. The 12-game match ended 6-6, all draws, the first world championship in history without a single decisive game in the classical portion.
When asked about the twelve draws afterward, Caruana gave the kind of answer you'd expect: "If the powers that be want to change it, then we'll work with something else."
Caruana has since become a five-time US Chess Champion, winning the title in 2016 and consecutively from 2022 through 2025.
