With many chess fans around the world currently focused on the world championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, it's easy to forget just how busy other top players were in November. The world's best competed in events such as the European Team Championship, Tal Memorial, FIDE Grand Swiss, and Tata Steel Kolkata Rapid & Blitz.
Firouzja was born June 18th 2003 in Babol, Iran and started playing chess at eight years old. He moved to Paris in 2019 and became a French citizen in 2021. The 18 year old became a Grandmaster four years ago, and his rating gains since have been nearly vertical.
Chess Ranking Algorithm
But perhaps the most unexpected result came from the 21-year-old Dutch Grandmaster Jorden Van Foreest, who wowed Dutch fans by securing first place after an exciting play off against fellow Dutchman Anish Giri. He went from number 158 in the rankings to number 120 and garnered 16 rating points in the process. Anish Giri picked up five rating points and moved to number 15 in the world.
There were no changes in the overall rankings for the top female players, due primarily to a lack of events. Watch for the Women's World Cup, which is scheduled to begin July 10th in Sochi, Russia, and the Saint Louis Chess Club hopes to organize the 3rd Cairns Cup later in 2021.
The Grand Chess Tour kicks off with the Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest, Romania this June. You can find more information at www.grandchesstour.org. The ratings for March 2021 have been published and can be accessed as always at www.universalrating.com/ratings.php.
This April list is likely to remain fairly stable for the next few months as most over the board tournaments have unfortunately been cancelled for the foreseeable future. It is our sincere hope that the global crisis will pass as soon as possible and that tournament chess around the world will resume again as soon as it is safe for this to happen. The ratings for April are published and can be found as usual at
GM Tan Zhongyi won the ladies section in Gibraltar and improved her global rank by 36 places to find herself ranked 9th on the ladies list. The Cairns Cup in St Louis was the other major event for the elite woman and was won by Indian GM Humpy Koneru. Humpy has been in good form recently and this latest victory in a distinguished career has seen her further consolidate her place amongst the top 5 on the ladies ranking list.
GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda from Poland has also benefited from a strong showing in Hamburg and he has risen to a career high ranking of 20th as he continues to emerge as one of the leaders of the younger generation. GM Hikaru Nakamura also showed his resilience in India and recorded a strong performance which placed him 2nd behind world Champion Magnus Carlsen for the second time in a GCT rapid and blitz event this year. Hikaru has consequently swopped places with GM Fabiano Caruana after Caruana had a relatively poor outing in Bucharest at the start of November.
August was a very busy month and saw the results from the GCT events in Paris (Blitz), St Louis (Rapid & Blitz) and the Sinquefield Cup all taken into account. This has caused a number of noteworthy movements at amongst the elite players with GM Ding Liren assuming the number 2 ranking position after his 2nd place finish in the St Louis Rapid & Blitz as well as his breakthrough victory at the 2019 Sinquefield Cup.
Two wildcards entrants in the Paris R&B event have also benefited from their strong performances and both GM Alexander Grischuk and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda have seen their rankings advance as a result of their strong showings. GM Anish Giri on the other hand has fallen back slightly and now lies in 15th place overall.
A little further down the list, the young Iranian GM Alireza Firouzja continues to make impressive strides. He had another excellent month and has seen his URS ranking rise from outside of the top 300 to number 54 in less than 18 months!
A number of top juniors also recorded remarkable performances in the two key events in St Petersburg and have been rewarded for these efforts. GM Danil Dubov (Gold in the World Rapid) and GM Jan-Krystof Duda (Silver in the World Blitz) were unquestionably the standouts. Both have seen their rankings rise to career highs of 22 and 26 respectively. 15 year old GM Alireza Firouzja (IRA) broke into the top 100 after two excellent performances and 14 year old Indian GM Nihal Sarin looks certain to break into the top 300 in the near future after he recorded an excellent 11th place finish in the World Blitz Championship.
The sensation of the ladies tournament was unquestionably the Iranian IM Sarasadat Khademalsharieh who earned silver medals in both the Rapid and Blitz tournament. This was enough to also see her collect the prize for best combined score between the two events. Her excellent play has seen her jump up the ladies ratings and she is poised to enter the top 10 with a current ranking of number 11 following her two excellent results.
Lower down the list GM Teimor Radjabov continued his steady improvement and he now finds himself ranked at a career high of number 17. GM Radoslow Wojtaszek of Poland also rose to world number 24 after a fine Olympiad performance and an even more impressive victory at the Isle of Man tournament. October also recorded the welcome return of GM Humpy Koneru following her participation in the Olympiad as part of the India ladies team for the first time in 12 years. Humpy has re-entered the ladies ranking list just outside of the top 10 but will no doubt remain a force in the ladies game if she starts to play more regularly again.
The most impressive gain sees GM Sam Shankland climb from world number 111 to world number 84 after his incredible victory with a +6 score in the 2018 US Championships. GM Fabiano Caruana who placed second with a +5 score has also benefitted from this result and has climbed back into the top 5 from his previous ranking of 9th in April.
December promises to be a more significant month however as many of the top ten are scheduled to participate in the 2017 London Chess Classic. The results of this event could have a major impact on their final year-end URS rankings and hence on their selection for the 2018 Grand Chess Tour.
GM Wei Yi remains the top ranked U/20 player with a global ranking of 20. GM Vladislav Artemiev (31) and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda (51) are the only other U/20 players who are ranked inside the top 100 in the world.
Magnus saw his URS rating rise to 2859 after he dominated the GCT Rapid Event in Leuven and won it by a comfortable 3 point margin. His nearest rival Wesley So, can also be more satisfied with his performance in Leuven and he has also improved his ranking as a result to return to the top 5.
In the revised algorithm, the typical playing strength is now assumed to be progressively lower for younger players. For example, a typical 7-year-old is now assumed to be about 500 points weaker than a typical 13-year-old, who in turn is assumed to be about 200 points weaker than a typical 19-year-old. The relationship with age flattens out for players older than about 30 years. These updated assumptions were numerically determined from past games played among players of various ages and they do not have much effect upon the ratings of senior players or well-connected junior players. The improvements have a significant impact, however, upon the ratings of many junior players and these ratings are now determined more accurately than before. Most junior players have significantly lower ratings due to the changes that have been adopted.
On the surface, it might seem like a bad idea to mix together a large number of rapid and blitz results with a relatively small number of classical results, when the ultimate goal is to calculate a rating that accurately measures classical chess skill. Indeed, the greater unpredictability of faster chess does mean there is less information to be learned from one rapid or blitz result than from one classical result.
We expect some people to challenge the notion that games played at slow time controls can be mixed together with faster games within a single rating system. One commonly-held (though admittedly subjective) belief is that classical chess is categorically different from rapid chess and even more different from blitz chess and the three types of chess ought to be kept separate.
With the Glicko rating system, if a player plays a stronger playerand wins, their ranking goes up significantly. If they play a weakplayer and win, the ranking goes up only a little! With theranking system, one is encouraged to play stronger players to improveone's ranking the most.
The Chess Ranking Assistant is fully menu driven. One first uses theoption "Create Workbook". This creates a new workbook with threesheets: a player list sheet, a match sheet and a form to use to recordmatches when played at your club. One uses the Add/Edit Playersto add players. After adding players, one uses Add Matches to addmatches. Once this is done, one just runs Update All. Anumber of sheets are created: a wins & losses sheet, aranking by rank sheet, a ranking by player sheet, matches played, andindividual player sheets showing who they have played.
The new rating system will be piloted throughout 2017 with further optimizations likely at the end of this period. It is ultimately expected to have applications beyond chess and will hopefully find applications in a variety of other sports and games in the near future.
The usual chess rating system for evaluating the playing strength of chess players conceived by Prof. Arpad Elo is now increasingly used in other sports, sometimes in a slightly modified version adapted to the particular sport. For example, the Elo system also forms the basis for calculating the rankings in some table tennis associations.
Even in football, the formula developed by Elo is used as the basis for rankings. The ranking of women's national teams was determined by FIFA from the beginning, which was in 2003, officially based on the Elo formula. For this list, all women's matches since April 17th 1971 were considered. On this day, the first women's international match recognized by FIFA was played between France and the Netherlands. When calculating the Elo numbers for the women's national football teams, the importance of the game is taken into account, which is not a concept known in chess. The scored underlying the result is also included in the calculation. 2ff7e9595c
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