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.