Hot Topics: elo ratings - page 1

September FIDE ratings

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
Live Tournaments
Round 9: finished
Saint Louis Blitz 2020
Carlsen 2863, Nepomniachtchi 2784, Grischuk 2777, Aronian 2773, So 2770, Dominguez Perez 2758, Nakamura 2736, Harikrishna 2732, Firouzja 2728, Xiong 2709
Round 9: finished
Saint Louis Rapid 2020
Round 4: finished
BL Meisterschaftsturnier 2020
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August FIDE ratings

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

Does your rating even matter?

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.

May FIDE ratings

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.

What's Wrong With the Elo System?

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.

Are Elo ratings going down?

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

History of top chess players over time

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.

FIFA introduces an Elo system

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.

The Learning Curve for Chess Skill

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.

New ratings on Playchess

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.
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Ranking chess players according to the quality of their moves

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.

The new Fide ranking: Carlsen is number one, Caruana second

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...

The new ratings: July 2016

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...