12/7/2023 – Earlier this year, the Qualifications Commission (QC) initiated a review of the FIDE rating regulations, inviting federations, officials and the public to contribute their thoughts and suggestions. A dedicated group of contributors worked together with mathematician Jeff Sonas on reforming the existing ratings’ system.

5/1/2023 – The following survey lists all chess players who have reached a top five or top ten status at least once in their career, ranked by their highest position, then in chronological order. Of course, the start of the FIDE Elo list and the current date are arbitrary, but the chess world has now had an established rating and ranking publication for more than fifty consecutive years. How many different TOP FIVE players would you expect? Well, there are only 55 luminaries in the last 55 years or so! Check it out. | Photo: Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov | Photo: Grand Chess Tour

2/9/2023 – One of the most common things that chess players obsessed with Elo ratings (which is almost all of them) do when selecting tournaments to play is to look at the nationality of the players already entered, to see if they come from countries that are considered to have "deflated" ratings or "inflated" ratings, which might add to the attraction of playing. Javier Perea analyses the phenomenon.

6/1/2022 – The claim to be the best ever in chess, in any category, is usually backed up by either hard numbers (Karpov's number of grandmaster tournament wins is not open to debate), or strong opinions such as the best absolute player. But the debate on the greatest prodigy seems to lie somewhere in between, depending on your criteria. Read this article and see if you agree. (photo: Capablanca at age four)

10/7/2021 – In a recent article Walter Wolf took a close look at the current development of the Elo ratings. IM Dirk Sebastian and IM Martin Voigt, who are both from Hamburg, have also examined the trends in the recent developments of the Elo ratings and try to answer the question whether there currently is an inflation or a deflation of Elo?

10/1/2021 – Ratings are full of mysteries and by no means coherent. Sometimes, you suspect an inflation of ratings, sometimes a deflation. In some countries ratings are distorted by too many young players - or not enough adult players. And how did the lack of tournaments in the Covid era affect the Elo ratings? Walter Wolf has gathered a lot of statistics and tries to draw conclusions.

5/4/2021 – On 1 May the FIDE published the new World Ranking List. Magnus Carlsen (2847) continues to be the world's number one, followed by Fabiano Caruna (2820) on two. The second half of the Candidates Tournament helped Ding Liren (number 3, 2799) to eight additional rating points while Ian Nepomniachtchi (number 4, 2792) gained three rating points and Anish Giri (number 6, 2780) four. But it was the Iranian Parham Maghsoodloo who made the biggest jump ahead: after convincingly winning the Iranian Championship he now has a rating of 2698 and is the world's number 41.

9/1/2020 – FIDE’s world ranking has mostly stagnated since the beginning of the corona crisis and the cessation of over-the-board tournaments, especially at the top level. The best in the world have been playing, but only unrated online rapid tournaments. Nevertheless, a few “real” tournaments have taken place lately. | Pictured: Luis Engel, winner of the German Individual Championship | Photo: Frank Hoppe

8/2/2020 – The virus is not gone, but here and there chess players have ventured out of domestic isolation and played a few games “over the board”. The International Chess Festival in Biel/Bienne only ended a few days ago. The changes in the world ratings list published by FIDE on August 1st compared to the one published on April 1st are nevertheless still minimal - but they do exist! Pentala Harikrishna [pictured] gained 13 points, while Alexander Donchenko is now the higest-rated German player. | Photo: Simon Bohnenblust

5/16/2020 – Online chess has become very popular in the last couple of years and more and more people participate and try to win games and achieve a higher rating. Rating matters so much that it can turn into an obsession. Ratings appear to represent the value of the person. We take a closer look at how the ego can become the curse of the rating system and how we feel about it.

5/1/2020 – The lockdowns prompted by the coronavirus outbreak have created a sense of timelessness for those staying at home day in and day out. Time does go on, however, and FIDE continues to update the ratings lists every first day of the month. We will keep sharing the lists as they are published.

4/19/2020 – Want to know an expert statistical opinion about which FIDE-strength players you should avoid facing? The Elo system is supposed to be fair toward players of all strengths, but Jeff Sonas sees major problems with the current state of the FIDE Elo rating pool, and it's getting worse each year. It will take multiple articles to walk you through the analysis, but here is chapter one of the story.

3/2/2019 – Chess fans tend to focus on the FIDE ratings of the top players in the world which are updated monthly. But the Elo system wants to reflect the strength of the chess players of all strengths all over the world. Since its introduction in 1970 it has become immensely popular and important for the chess world. However, it is not without problems. Why, for example, are junior players from Russia or India continuously underrated and how does this affect other players? To answer this and other questions, WALTER WOLF took a close look at the development of some ratings over time. | Photo: Junior players from India, courtesy ChessBase India

2/27/2019 – Which are the commonest words in the English language, which are the most common girls' and boys' names? Today it is possible to calculate these things fairly easily, but it becomes really useful if you are able to present the results in a comprehensible way. Like with dynamic graphs and bubbling. This was done very nicely for historical chess strength in 2016 by Abacaba, a site that makes videos about data and math. Now a YouTube channel called TheRanker has published a 10-minute video visualisation tracking official FIDE ratings from 2000 to the present. It is informative, interesting and even relaxing to watch.

6/14/2018 – At the end of the FIFA Council last Sunday in Moscow, the World Football Association announced that it would reform its world ranking for the national football teams. There was much criticism of the previous ranking system and the new formula is based on the chess Elo.

4/15/2018 – ChessBase recently reported on the new artificial intelligence program “AlphaZero” and its astoundingly steep learning curve for chess skill. Given just the rules of chess, in 24 hours of playing games only against itself, it improved to a superhuman level. Along the way, AlphaZero discovered and ultimately abandoned standard openings such as the French and Caro-Kann Defences. | Pictured: The learning curve projection for World Champion Magnus Carlsen overlayed on the actual rating trend.

11/23/2017 – Readers may have noticed a recent, and significant, change in Playchess, notably the playing room: the new ratings. It is designed to get you a quick game with no delay against a random opponent with a similar rating. These "pools" include ratings calculated on games played at the same time control, as compared to the previous system which lumped multiple game times together as "blitz" up to 5 minutes with 4 seconds of increment. We now have 1-minute bullet, and 3-minute and 5-minute blitz, with no added time. The ratings for previous modes, and individual challenges, are now called "Classic" but continue to be maintained independently. Read on for a more detailed explanation.

4/27/2017 – How do you rate players from different periods? An AI researcher has undertaken to do it based not on the results of the games, but on the quality of the moves played. Jean-Marc Alliot used a strong chess engine running on a 640 processor cluster to analyse over two million positions that occurred in 26,000 games of World Champions since Steinitz. From this he produced a table of probable results between players of different eras. Example: Carlsen would have beaten Smyslov 57:43.

12/1/2016 – On December 1, one day after the end of the World Championship match, the Fide published its new ranking list. Magnus Carlsen lost 13 points in New York but with 2840 is still the world's number one, 17 points ahead of Fabiano Caruana. Hou Yifan and Ju Wenjun lead the women's ranking list, Richard Rapport and Wei Yi are the best juniors, Lei Tingjie leads the girls' ranking list. The lists...

7/2/2016 – FIDE published the rating list from July 2016. Carlsen remains number one, Kramnik follows on two, very narrowly ahead of Caruana. Two Chinese - Hou Yifan and Ju Wenjun - lead the women's ranking list, best junior is Richard Rapport who is 56 points ahead of Wei Yi. Aleksandra Goryachkina and Lei Tingjie, who both have 2482, lead the girls' ranking. Tables...

2/6/2011 – Certain facts regarding the rating system are misunderstood or unfamiliar to top-rank players, as well as organizers and administrators of major chess events. The recent articles that appeared on the subject, as well as the contest organized by a statistician, point to the fact that certain basic concepts have not been fully understood. Elmer Dumlao Sangalang endeavors to rectify the situation.

8/18/2010 – The Elo rating system has done good service for half a century. But can we devise a more accurate method for measuring chess strength and predicting results. Kaggle, an organisation that provides a platform for data-prediction competitions, is giving statisticians 65,000 games which they must use to predict the results 7,800 other games. There are prizes for the best new systems.

12/16/2007 – Ask chess players about their rating you will get an immediate response, ask them where the term "Elo" comes from and you get a puzzled look. Most think it is some kind of abbreviation or acronym. In Reality it comes from a Hungarian-born chess player and physicist, Árpád Imre Élö, who gained immortailty with his rating system. It is comprehensively described in this article by Daniel Ross.

8/30/2003 – Many people think that the letters ELO are some kind of acronym, like FIDE or NASA. But they come from Arpad Emre Elo, born on August 25, 1903. Prof. Elo was a strong chess player (two draws against Rueben Fine!) and a physicist. He achieved fame by devising a new rating system that has gained universal acceptance. Here's a commemorative portrait.