FIDE publishes March 1 ratings, Linares not counted

Just a few days ago Veselin Topalov won the Linares tournament and narrowed the gap with Magnus Carlsen on the live rating list to just one point. On the March 1st FIDE rating list the Norwegian leads with a personal record of 2813 and is still 8 points ahead of Topalov. Read more

Carlsen officially world’s number 1 at 2810

Last month he turned 19, and today Magnus Carlsen officialy became the official world’s number one player. On the January 1st FIDE rating list the Norwegian as a rating of 2810, 5 points more than Veselin Topalov, who had occupied the number 1 spot since October 2008. Read more

Carlsen officially world’s number 2 at 2801

Magnus Carlsen officialy broke the 2800 barrier today. On the November 1st FIDE rating list the Norwegian is the new world’s number 2, only 9 points behind Veselin Topalov (2810). Radjabov and Ivanchuk left the top 10 for Gashimov and Svidler. Read more

Olimpbase, now also for historical ratings

What was Fischer’s rating on July 1972? Was Judit Polgar ever a top 10 player? Was Ivanchuk already a top 5 player in 1989? Olimpbase is a website dedicated to the collection of results and other data of team chess. Recently a new tool was added that answers questions like these. Read more

Ivanchuk re-enters top 10 on new FIDE rating list

Following its new policy of publishing six instead of four rating lists a year, FIDE already made available the September rating list today. The top 10 didn’t change much; Jakovenko is out but after a great summer Vassily Ivanchuk is back in; the Ukrainian climbed from spot 30th all the way up to 8th place.
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Topalov still 25 points ahead of Anand on July rating list

Veselin Topalov tops the July FIDE rating list with a rating of 2813. The Bulgarian is 25 points ahead of World Champion Viswanathan Anand. After dropping 33 rating points on the previous list, Vassily Ivanchuk lost 43 more points, to dive to 30th place.
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Candidates Matches regulations published, but who will qualify?

Today FIDE published the rules & regulations for the 2010 Candidates Matches, which should decide the challenger to the winner of the Anand-Topalov world championship match. For these Candidates Matches two players will qualify based on the July 2009 and January 2010 rating lists, but as Hans Arild Runde notes, so far M-Tel Masters and Poikovsky have not been submitted for the July 2009 list, which could become a problem. Read more

Poikovsky: Shirov starts with 0/3

Gashimov, Naiditsch and Motylev lead with 2.5 out of 3 at the 10th Karpov tournament in Poikovsky, but bigger news is the bad start of Alexei Shirov. The winner of the 2009 M-Tel Masters is in last place, having lost his first three games. Read more

On the increase of the K-factor – Part II

The hot debate around the K-factor that was going on last week attracted many interesting responses. Well-known rating experts such as Jeff Sonas, Ken Thompson and Hans Arild Runde all contributed with insightful points. The discussion ended with what Chessbase called Dr. John Nunn’s ‘final installment’ but this is unfortunate because the discussion is just getting interesting! Read more

On the increase of the K-factor (UPDATE)

Since FIDE announced her own concerns about the planned increase of the K-factor, there is suddenly a hot debate around the subject. It seems as if supporters like GM Bartlomiej Macieja and opponents like GM John Nunn both have strong arguments. This might be confusing for anyone who never really put any thought into the subject, but even if you did, it is not surprising. In a guest post, statistician Daan Zult sheds some light on the discussion. Updated with another Macieja piece. Read more

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