Fabiano Caruana of the United States eliminated defending champion Jan-Krzysztof Duda and joined the big guns going into the Final Eight of the FIDE World Cup Sunday in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The 31-year-old Caruana, seeded No. 3, beat the 2021 World Cup titlist Duda of Poland with a masterful handling of the black side of the Nimzovitch defense and skipped the extra day of Round 5 knockout tiebreaks using faster time controls.

The Italian-American Caruana will face Cuban-American Leinier Dominguez in the bottom half of the pairings. Dominguez ousted giant-killer Alexey Sarana of Serbia with a draw after winning the opening round, to close out, 1.5-0.5.

It was Sarana who ousted Filipino-American Wesley So in the previous round.

Fourth seed Ian Nepomniatchi of Russia/FIDE and Santosh Gujrati Vidit of India were fighting for the last ticket into the Elite 8 while everyone has taken a one-day rest and were recharging heading into Round 6.

The winner of the Nepomniatchi-Vidit eliminator will face local hero Nijat Abasov, who outgunned A.R. Saleh Salem with the black side of Zukertort opening, to close out his match, 2-0.

Five-time classical chess world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who has not won the World Cup, blanked veteran Vasyl Ivanchuk of Ukraine, 2-0.

In the last 2021 FIDE World Cup in Sochi, Carlsen placed third and was eliminated by Duda in the semis.

Dommaraju Gukesh, India's No. 1 player, avoided complicated lines and drew his second game with Chinese Wang Hao, to qualify outright, 1.5-0.5. The new world No. 7 Gukesh, only 17, will be paired with Carlsen in one of the final four board matches.

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, another teenaged player from India's vast human resource factory, beat Ferenc Berkes of Hungary in the second game, to win and qualify, 1.5-0.5.

Praggnanandhaa faces Arjun Erigaisi, another Indian teenager, in the bottom half of the draw vice the
Caruana-Dominguez match.