The Top Thirty for Women

Kateryna Lahno: World No.5

The new rating list gives a good picture of who has been in form recently. Amongst the leading group, there have been mixed fortunes on the chessboard recently, a fact which is reflected in our tables. Note in particular a marked progression of some youthful players who are challenging the more established names, Kateryna Lahno being at the forefront of this trend.

Here is the September list for female players:

g=Grandmaster m=International Master and wg=Women's Grandmaster

A detailed look at rating changes amongst the leading women follows below.

Judit Polgar is back above the 2700-mark, the first time for some years.

The most noticeable change has been a significant rise of the new generation, Kateryna Lahno, Anna Muzychuk and Wenjun Ju, all of whom are in their very early twenties and at the peak of their careers.

Rank	Prev Rank	Name	Country	Age	Rating 1/9/11	Rating 1/7/11	Rating 1/5/11	Rating 1/3/11	One year ago	Career Highest
1	1	Judit Polgar	HUN	35	2701	2699	2699	2686	2682	2735
2	2	Humpy Koneru	IND	24	2600	2614	2614	2607	2593	2623
3	3	Hou Yifan	CHN	17	2578	2575	2612	2602	2578	2612
4	4	Nadezhda Kosintseva (IM)	RUS	26	2560	2560	2567	2567	2565	2576
5	8	Kateryna Lahno	UKR	21	2554	2536	2530	2531	2539	2554
6	6	Anna Muzychuk (IM)	SLO	21	2545	2538	2537	2528	2535	2545
7	5	Tatiana Kosintseva	RUS	25	2536	2557	2559	2559	2573	2581
8	13	Wenjun Ju (WGM)	CHN	20	2536	2515	2511	2519	2516	2536
9	10	Antoaneta Stefanova	BUL	32	2528	2524	2506	2523	2551	2560
10	7	Nana Dzagnidze	GEO	24	2525	2537	2557	2567	2534	2567
11	9	Viktorija Cmilyte	LTU	28	2525	2528	2504	2526	2513	2528
12	12	Elina Danielian	ARM	33	2517	2521	2506	2475	2431	2521
13	15	Marie Sebag	FRA	24	2512	2510	2504	2489	2499	2533
14	11	Anna Zatonskih (IM)	USA	33	2508	2522	2537	2499	2480	2537
15	14	Dronavalli Harika (IM)	IND	20	2505	2513	2520	2524	2515	2525
16	16	Maia Chiburdanidze	GEO	50	2500	2500	2500	2502	2500	2560

In the following table, those players who are just below the 2500-mark are featured.

There were no new 2500+ players this time, but there are several candidates knocking on the door. Both Valentina Gunina and Bela Khotenashvili are on the rise, and have achieved their career best again, whereas the more experienced Alisa Galliamova and Zhao Xue have both been well above 2500 in the past.

Rank	Prev Rank	Name	Country	Age	Rating 1/9/11	Rating 1/7/11	Rating 1/5/11	Rating 1/3/11	One Year ago	Career Highest
17	22	Valentina Gunina (IM)	RUS	22	2499	2487	2487	2472	2462	2499
18	18	Alisa Galliamova (IM)	RUS	39	2498	2492	2492	2497	2482	2560
19	29	Zhao Xue	CHN	26	2497	2470	2475	2495	2469	2544
20	21	Bela Khotenashvili (IM)	GEO	23	2497	2487	2470	2465	2423	2497
21	19	Monika Socko	POL	33	2490	2490	2487	2495	2477	2505
22	23	Zhu Chen	QAT	35	2490	2485	2485	2506	2476	2548
23	26	Pia Cramling	SWE	48	2489	2472	2468	2484	2509	2550
24	44	Ekaterina Atalik (IM)	TUR	28	2481	2436	2436	2444	2447	2481
25	24	Ruan Lufei (WGM)	CHN	23	2477	2479	2479	2480	2480	2499

The most dramatic rise this time was that of Ekaterina Atalik who has gone well beyond her best ever Elo with her new rating.

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