Chess ratings allow players to compare themselves with other players.
THE chess world is as obsessed with four-digit numbers as Asians from this part of the globe.
You know why Asians are so obsessed with four-digit numbers. It’s part of the gambling culture that some of us are immersed in. But the chess world? What’s the reason for its obsession?
Ratings! Chess players are so very obsessed with their ratings. These four-digit number allow them to compare themselves with other players. When a player doesn’t have a rating, he craves for one.
And when he already has rating, he only wants to see his rating points go up, up and up. He despairs when his rating points go down, down and down.
On the international stage, chess ratings are handled by the World Chess Federation (Fide). Every three months, Fide will issue a new list of their international ratings and that is the time when chess players from around the world start downloading the rating list from the Fide website.
All these are static numbers which are usable for a three-month period until the next list comes out.
Of course, if a player hasn’t played in a while, his rating will not change and in fact, he stands the risk of being transferred to the dormant list.
Lately, active players at the top of the heap – those super-grandmasters in the rarified 2700+ rating points zone – have become equally obsessed with another set of four-digit numbers: their unofficial live rankings.
These are provisional world chess rankings maintained by Fide and also a chap named Hans Arild Runde. Runde updates and publishes the ranking list as games and tournaments are being played, typically with daily updates during tournaments featuring the top players.
So there is a ranking list almost every day. Interest in this live list has never been higher than recently, especially during the super-GM tournament in Bilbao, Spain, which has just ended.
This tournament featured six of the world’s current top-ranked players €“ Viswanathan Anand, boy wonder Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Teimour Radjabov, Veselin Topalov and Vassily Ivanchuk.
Anand is the present world chess champion and currently, he also tops the official July 2008 Fide rating list. However, his closest rivals on the Fide list have been breathing down his neck.
He knew that he had to turn in a good performance at Bilbao to keep his place at the top of the world rankings but his performance there was deeply disappointing. Uncharacteristically, he finished last among the six players.
What was worse was that his rivals in Bilbao had picked up rating points at his expense. According to the live ranking statistics, Topalov has now overtaken Anand at the top. In this one tournament, Topalov had gained 13.6 points while Anand lost 14.8 points.
Coupled with the fact that the rating of world number two player Alex Morozevich had dropped by only one point in this quarter, and both Carlsen and Ivanchuk had picked up 11.1 and 4.6 points respectively, Anand has dropped to fifth in the world. In all probability, this change in standings will be reflected when the October 2008 Fide rating list comes out in a few days.
Interestingly, we’ll find China’s top player, Wang Yue, climbing spectacularly to 10th place in the next Fide list. He’ll be the first player from China to break into the world’s top ranks.