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


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