Levon Aronian of Armenia, alongside Fabiano Caruana of United States, Le Quang Leim of Vietnam and Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia emerged as co-leaders on the opening day of St. Louis Rapid and Blitz chess tournament, a part of the Grand Chess Tour.

Each of the four grandmasters played three rounds and earned four points.

Following them are Garry Kasparov, Sergey Karjakin (both Russia), Hikaru Nakamura (USA) and Lenier Dominguez (Cuba) with 3 points each, while Viiswanathan Anand (India), David Navara (Czech Republic) lag behind with 1 point each.

A win in rapid is worth two points here while a draw fetches half a point. In the blitz, however, a standard one point will be awarded for a win and half for a draw.

The second day will see three more rounds.