4/3/2019 – April ratings came out like clockwork on Sunday night. Our own internal PlayerBase update — not so much. Apologies for the delay in our monthly tour through the Elo lists. Of special interest on the April list: 28 players from the Top 100 exhibited rating swings of +/- 10 Elo points or more — a rare occurrence. Pictured: Ju Wenjun, David Anton Guijarro, Jan Krejci, winners at the Prague Challengers. | Photo: Macauley Peterson
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Artemiev on the move
There were few changes in the Top 10, but the tear that Vladislav Artemiev has been on continued in March, as he jumped 18 Elo points to #13 in the world. After winning the European Championship, he is now the #3 from Russia, surpassing the recently retired Vladimir Kramnik (who'll remain on the Elo list for eight more months).
The new Spanish #2, David Anton Guijarro somehow managed to play 29 rated games in the month of March — an almost unheard of level of activity — and catapulted back into the Top 100 where he's been absent since August of last year. With an Elo rating of 2669 to start the new month, Anton is up to number 75 in the world, tied with Iranians Parham Maghsoodloo and Alireza Firouzja, who each played 18 games (Firouzja's nine games from the Sharjah Masters are not yet counted).
Artemiev with with EICC winner's trophy | Photo: eicc2019.mk
Thirty-eight of the top 100 players are now rated over 2700. To enter the Top 100 you need an Elo rating of 2653. That figure has remained surprisingly stable in recent years — in March of 2017 it was 2659.
By the way, you can click on any name to reach that player's ChessBase PlayerBase page, complete with rating graphs and all his or her latest games!
Top climbers and descenders
There were many games played and many big rating changes in the past month, but the largest move of all is actually from English GM Luke McShane, who jumped 25 points up the list thanks largely to his performance at the World Team Championship in the Kazakhstan-capital-formerly-known-as-Astana.
In the opposite direction, by the same margin, went "the other Vladislav" — Kovalev, from Belarus, who has dropped back below his pre-Wijk-aan-Zee rating, and out of the top 50.
Comparison of the players old and new world rank after rating changes >/= 10 Elo points
Top 100 Women
Hou Yifan's Varsity Match game was unrated, but she remains on the active list until at least next December, despite declining to play in the World Championship candidates tournament among women.
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Draw! Very creditable result for Matthew Wadsworth (2386) of Cambridge against the might of Hou Yifan (2662) of Oxford in the Varsity #Chess Match pic.twitter.com/h6CobGnj1Z
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Fabiano Caruana and a few others were active in Blitz on the sidelines of the German League's central round in Berlin. He won the 2nd Emanuel Lasker Blitz tournament with an impressive 14.0/16.
The Petroff (or Russian) Defence which is characterised by the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 has been popular at the highest levels for many years and enjoys the reputation of being an extremely solid defence.
The organisers recorded Caruana's win over Falko Bindrich, proving Fabiano's expertise in the Petroff Defence — from the white side!
After Wei Yi in the top spot, Jeffrey Xiong, Firouzja and Maghsoodloo are neck and neck. In fact, on the live ratings, as of the day after the U.S. Championship, Xiong and Firouzja stand dead level at 2675.1!
Xiong leads the USA Juniors roster | Photo: Lennart Ootes
After a month at #2, Zhansaya Abdumalik has retaken the top spot on the girls' list. But the biggest move by far was from 13-year-old Divya Deshmukh from India, who has gained 305 Elo points just in the past two months! She re-entered the top 100 girls in March at #37 (2266) but made her first appearance on this one year ago, when she was featured in our April 2018 write-up. Now, at 2432, not only is she #5 over all but she has surpassed veteran Indian women like Soumya Swaminathan (2402) and Tania Sachdev (2397). The only two players ahead of her are international stars Humpy Koneru and Harika Dronavalli.
Divya scored an IM norm in a closed WGM round-robin tournament | Photo: Niklesh Jain
Macauley PetersonMacauley served as the Editor in Chief of ChessBase News from July 2017 to March 2020. He is the producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast, and was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.
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