(February 2004) Every form of individual competition has some kind of ranking to determine the best in the world, the second best, and so on.
Some sports -- tennis comes to mind -- use recent match performances to rank the top players.
Other sports -- golf is a good example -- use prize money as a guide.
Since 1970, chess has used the Elo rating system to rank world class players.
Thanks in large part to our position as About Chess Guide, we received permission from Chess Informant and from the World Chess Federation (FIDE) to release copies of FIDE rating lists for the years 1975 to 2000.
If you're also interested in FIDE historical ratings, these files are available offsite (see the link box in the upper right corner of this article) for download.
Since the FIDE site (link box again) has rating archives for the years 2001 through 2004, we were able to construct a database of all FIDE ratings covering the 30-year period 1975 to 2004.
We'll be doing a series of articles using our database to present some new statistics about the players covered by the files.
In this article we start with the world's best players : the Top-10 players on each annual list.
How many players have been ranked in the Top-10 and how often were they ranked there?
We counted a total of 50 different names, presented in the following table.
An explanation of the columns follows the table.
Name |
Ct |
FirstYr |
LastYr |
MaxElo |
Best |
Adams |
5 |
1999 |
2003 |
2746 |
4 |
Anand |
13 |
1992 |
2004 |
2790 |
2 |
Andersson |
6 |
1982 |
1991 |
2640 |
4 |
Balashov |
1 |
1979 |
1979 |
2600 |
10 |
Bareev |
6 |
1991 |
2003 |
2729 |
5 |
Beliavsky |
9 |
1981 |
1998 |
2690 |
4 |
Ehlvest |
1 |
1991 |
1991 |
2650 |
5 |
Epishin |
1 |
1994 |
1994 |
2675 |
10 |
Fischer |
1 |
1975 |
1975 |
2780 |
1 |
Gelfand |
7 |
1991 |
1997 |
2700 |
3 |
Geller |
2 |
1976 |
1981 |
2620 |
8 |
Georgiev |
1 |
1993 |
1993 |
2660 |
9 |
Gheorghiu |
1 |
1980 |
1980 |
2605 |
10 |
Gurevich,M |
3 |
1988 |
1991 |
2650 |
5 |
Hort |
4 |
1977 |
1984 |
2620 |
6 |
Huebner |
7 |
1975 |
1987 |
2635 |
4 |
Ivanchuk |
14 |
1989 |
2002 |
2740 |
3 |
Kamsky |
11 |
1991 |
2003 |
2735 |
4 |
Karpov |
25 |
1975 |
1999 |
2770 |
1 |
Kasparov |
23 |
1981 |
2004 |
2851 |
1 |
Khalifman |
1 |
1991 |
1991 |
2640 |
10 |
Korchnoi |
14 |
1975 |
1990 |
2695 |
2 |
Kramnik |
12 |
1993 |
2004 |
2809 |
1 |
Larsen |
6 |
1975 |
1982 |
2625 |
6 |
Leko |
5 |
2000 |
2004 |
2745 |
5 |
Ljubojevic |
7 |
1975 |
1990 |
2645 |
3 |
Mecking |
6 |
1976 |
1982 |
2635 |
3 |
Miles |
1 |
1986 |
1986 |
2610 |
9 |
Morozevich |
5 |
1999 |
2004 |
2748 |
4 |
Nikolic |
1 |
1988 |
1988 |
2630 |
6 |
Nunn |
2 |
1985 |
1989 |
2620 |
9 |
Petrosian,T |
8 |
1975 |
1983 |
2645 |
2 |
Polgar,J |
2 |
1996 |
2004 |
2728 |
8 |
Polugaevsky |
10 |
1975 |
1985 |
2645 |
3 |
Ponomariov |
3 |
2002 |
2004 |
2734 |
6 |
Portisch |
13 |
1975 |
1987 |
2655 |
2 |
Ribli |
3 |
1980 |
1989 |
2625 |
8 |
Salov |
7 |
1989 |
1995 |
2715 |
3 |
Shirov |
13 |
1992 |
2004 |
2751 |
2 |
Short |
6 |
1987 |
1997 |
2690 |
3 |
Sokolov,A |
1 |
1987 |
1987 |
2645 |
3 |
Spassky |
11 |
1975 |
1987 |
2640 |
3 |
Speelman |
2 |
1988 |
1989 |
2640 |
4 |
Svidler |
3 |
1998 |
2004 |
2747 |
4 |
Tal |
10 |
1975 |
1988 |
2705 |
2 |
Timman |
8 |
1979 |
1990 |
2680 |
2 |
Topalov |
7 |
1996 |
2004 |
2743 |
4 |
Vaganian |
4 |
1984 |
1988 |
2645 |
3 |
Yudasin |
1 |
1991 |
1991 |
2645 |
8 |
Yusupov |
3 |
1986 |
1992 |
2655 |
3 |
- Ct : The number of times a player appeared in the Top-10.
- FirstYr : The first appearance in the Top-10.
- LastYr : The last appearance in the Top-10. Players with '2004' are in the current Top-10.
- MaxElo : The highest Elo achieved by a player on a Top-10 list.
- Best : The highest position on a Top-10 list; '1' means world no.1. Where players had equal ratings, the 'Best' is the rank as a group. For example, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik tied for no.1 & no.2 in 1996 with identical 2775 ratings. Both are counted as No. 1 for the year.
Since our calculations are based on the January rating list for each year, it's entirely possible that we missed a few players who only appeared on Top-10 lists for the intermediate periods.
Our investigations also uncovered a whole slew of issues which we'll cover in a future article!
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