Anand has highest ever rating!

Apart from Viswanathan Anand edging Magnus Carlsen for the number one spot since the new rating list came out at the beginning of this month, two other players have made good progress in the top ten, Vassily Ivanchuk (back to fifth!) and Hikaru Nakamura (now at eighth). Other rising players from the young generation are Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, David Navara and Nikita Vitiugov.

It's not a bad performance for a player in their forties to be at their career peak, but this is the case for World Champion and No.1 Viswanathan Anand.

Only seven of the 38 players in the 2700+ category have at present their highest ever rating and, of these, five are in the top ten!

Here are all the details:

Ranking	Previous Ranking	Name	Country	Age	rating 1/3/11	Rating 1/1/11	Rating 1/11/10	Rating 1/9/10	Rating 1/7/10	Rating 1/5/10	One year ago	Career Highest
1	2	Viswanathan Anand	IND	41	2817	2810	2804	2800	2800	2789	2787	2817
2	1	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	20	2815	2814	2802	2826	2826	2813	2813	2826
3	3	Levon Aronian	ARM	28	2808	2805	2801	2783	2783	2783	2782	2808
4	4	Vladimir Kramnik	RUS	35	2785	2784	2791	2780	2790	2790	2790	2811
5	9	Vassily Ivanchuk	UKR	41	2779	2764	2764	2754	2739	2741	2748	2787
6	5	Sergey Karjakin	RUS	21	2776	2776	2760	2747	2747	2739	2725	2776
7	6	Veselin Topalov	BUL	35	2775	2775	2786	2803	2803	2812	2805	2813
8	10	Hikaru Nakamura	USA	23	2774	2751	2741	2733	2729	2733	2735	2774
9	8	Shakhriyar Mamedyarov	AZE	25	2772	2772	2763	2756	2761	2763	2760	2772
10	7	Alexander Grischuk	RUS	27	2747	2773	2771	2760	2760	2760	2756	2773
11	13	Vugar Gashimov	AZE	24	2746	2736	2733	2719	2719	2734	2740	2759
12	12	Teimour Radjabov	AZE	23	2744	2744	2744	2748	2748	2740	2740	2761
13	11	Ruslan Ponomariov	UKR	27	2743	2744	2744	2749	2734	2733	2737	2749
14	14	Wang Yue	CHN	23	2734	2734	2756	2732	2716	2752	2749	2756
15	19	Gata Kamsky	USA	36	2733	2730	2726	2705	2713	2702	2702	2745
16	16	Boris Gelfand	ISR	42	2733	2733	2741	2751	2739	2741	2750	2761
17	18	Peter Svidler	RUS	34	2730	2730	2722	2731	2734	2735	2750	2765
18	15	Ian Nepomniachtchi	RUS	20	2729	2733	2720	2706	2706	2695	2656	2733
19	31	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	FRA	20	2728	2715	2703	2721	2723	2710	2727	2730
20	17	Wang Hao	CHN	21	2728	2731	2727	2724	2724	2722	2715	2731
21	21	Pavel Eljanov	UKR	27	2724	2724	2742	2761	2755	2751	2736	2761
22	34	David Navara	CZE	25	2722	2708	2708	2722	2731	2718	2708	2731
23	33	Nikita Vitiugov	RUS	24	2720	2709	2709	2709	2722	2707	2710	2722
24	27	Zoltan Almasi	HUN	34	2719	2719	2721	2707	2717	2725	2720	2725
25	22	Etienne Bacrot	FRA	28	2718	2723	2715	2716	2720	2710	2714	2731
26	28	Dmitry Jakovenko	RUS	27	2718	2718	2726	2726	2726	2725	2725	2760
27	29	Peter Leko	HUN	31	2717	2717	2717	2724	2734	2735	2735	2763
28	25	Fabiano Caruana	ITA	18	2716	2721	2709	2700	2697	2675	2680	2721
29	26	Sergei Movsesian	SVK	32	2716	2721	2721	2723	2723	2717	2709	2751
30	23	Michael Adams	ENG	39	2716	2723	2723	2728	2706	2697	2704	2755
31	30	Leinier Dominguez Perez	CUB	27	2716	2716	2716	2716	2716	2713	2713	2721
32	32	Vladimir Malakhov	RUS	30	2714	2714	2712	2725	2732	2722	2721	2732
33	20	Radoslaw Wojtaszek	POL	24	2711	2726	2726	2711	2663	2663	2660	2726
34	38	Zahar Efimenko	UKR	25	2708	2701	2701	2683	2689	2677	2640	2708
35	40	Francisco Vallejo Pons	ESP	28	2707	2698	2698	2697	2697	2703	2708	2711
36	41	Evgeny Tomashevsky	RUS	23	2707	2695	2699	2701	2708	2708	2701	2708
37	36	Baadur Jobava	GEO	27	2707	2707	2707	2710	2710	2715	2695	2715
38	24	Alexei Shirov	ESP	38	2701	2722	2737	2749	2749	2742	2737	2755

There are two 're-entries' into the elite 2700+ category, Francisco Vallejo Pons and Evgeny Tomashevsky. On the other hand, three players have dropped off the chart, Laurent Fressinet of France and two Russians Evgeny Alekseev and Alexander Morozevich.

As for nationalities, Russia still has nine players in the top 38, Ukraine four, Azerbaijan three and USA, China, France, Hungary and Spain all have two. Curiously enough, the top three in the world are their countries unique represntatives in this category.

A good source of further information is the International Chess Federation site FIDE