Competitive Play

Chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition since the London 1851 international tournament. Nowadays, they are organized according to the FIDE handbook, which covers all the information needed for conducting such an event. Furthermore, FIDE awards titles to the best players according to some norms (rating and different requirements for competitions). These include the title of GM, IM, FM and CM.

Garry Kasparov

GM Garry Kasparov is considered the best player in history. He is the 13th world champion and held his title for almost 20 years. His highest rating was 2856 in 2000, a record that held up until the current world champion. He became the youngest world champion (at that time) at the age of 22 by defeating Anatoly Karpov in 1985. After officially retiring in 2005, he remained active. He trained some of the best chess players alive (Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura) and released chess books that are considered among the best.

Magnus Carlsen

GM Magnus Carlsen is the current world champion (for all three versions played in tournaments – standard, rapid and blitz). He became the youngest in player in the history of chess to surpass 2800 rating and beat Kasparov’s record by reaching 2889, which is currently the highest rating ever. He got the title at the age of 22 (a bit later than Kasparov) in 2013 after defeating Viswanathan Anand and has been dominating ever since.

Bobby Fischer

GM Bobby Fischer was the 11th official world champion and perhaps the most famous one. He is the only American world champion and achieved a record of 20 consecutive wins against the best players, which will most likely never be surpassed. At the age of 15, he became the youngest GM (up to that time) and at age 29, in 1972, he won “The Match of the Century” against Boris Spassky. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2008, aged 64, due to kidney failure.

Current Top 50 Players in the World (May 2021)

Number	Name	Federation	Rating
1	Carlsen, Magnus	NOR	2847
2	Caruana, Fabiano	USA	2820
3	Ding, Liren	CHN	2799
4	Nepomniachtchi, Ian	RUS	2792
5	Aronian, Levon	ARM	2781
6	Giri, Anish	NED	2780
7	Grischuk, Alexander	RUS	2776
8	Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	AZE	2770
9	So, Wesley	USA	2770
10	Radjabov, Teimour	AZE	2765
11	Rapport, Richard	HUN	2763
12	Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime	FRA	2760
13	Firouzja, Alireza	FID	2759
14	Dominguez Perez, Leinier	USA	2758
15	Karjakin, Sergey	RUS	2757
16	Anand, Viswanathan	IND	2753
17	Wang, Hao	CHN	2744
18	Nakamura, Hikaru	USA	2736
19	Topalov, Veselin	BUL	2735
20	Wei, Yi	CHN	2732
21	Harikrishna, Pentala	IND	2730
22	Duda, Jan-Krzysztof	POL	2729
23	Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi	IND	2726
24	Andreikin, Dmitry	RUS	2725
25	Adams, Michael	ENG	2716
26	Vitiugov, Nikita	RUS	2715
27	Svidler, Peter	RUS	2714
28	Dubov, Daniil	RUS	2710
29	Vallejo Pons, Francisco	ESP	2710
30	Artemiev, Vladislav	RUS	2709
31	Le, Quang Liem	VIE	2709
32	Xiong, Jeffery	USA	2709
33	Yu, Yangyi	CHN	2709
34	Tomashevsky, Evgeny	RUS	2706
35	Bu, Xiangzhi	CHN	2705
36	Amin, Bassem	EGY	2701
37	Esipenko, Andrey	RUS	2701
38	Van Foreest, Jorden	NED	2701
39	Alekseenko, Kirill	RUS	2699
40	Kryvoruchko, Yuriy	UKR	2699
41	Maghsoodloo, Parham	IRI	2698
42	Navara, David	CZE	2697
43	Sadler, Matthew D	ENG	2694
44	Wojtaszek, Radoslaw	POL	2694
45	Shankland, Sam	USA	2691
46	Predke, Alexandr	RUS	2690
47	Matlakov, Maxim	RUS	2688
48	Almasi, Zoltan	HUN	2687
49	Areshchenko, Alexander	UKR	2687
50	Fedoseev, Vladimir	RUS	2687