Carissa Yip

A child prodigy, Yip defeated her first Grandmaster at the age of 10 and became a National Master at 11. She reached 2400 FIDE at the age of 15 but then hit a plateau that stretched nearly six years from the fall of 2019 to the summer of 2025 during which her FIDE rating never went over the low 2430s. A highlight during this period was her performance at the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Budapest, where she won the individual gold medal and the team bronze medal playing on board 2 for the United States.

Since then, Yip has been on a roll. She won the 2024 U.S. Women’s Championship and repeated this feat in 2025. Sandwiched between these victories was a great triumph in the 2025 Cairns Cup against some of the best female chess players in the world. Most recently Yip had another exceptional performance this past January, scoring 7 from 13 in the Challengers section of Tata Steel. She did this despite being the fourth lowest rated player going into the competition. Yip followed this up with a tie for third in the 2026 Cairns Cup.

Yip has two norms for the Grandmaster title and only needs one more (and to raise her rating to 2500) for the title. In so doing she would become only the second American female to earn this title while representing the United States.

Carissa Yip is currently the 17th highest rated woman in the world.

Like Fabiano Caruana she has a streak going having won the 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025 U.S. Women’s Championships (she did not play in 2022). Will she do it again in 2026?