This list of top-ranked
chess
Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...
grandmasters is ordered by their peak
Elo rating
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor.
The Elo system wa ...
. The cut-off value is 2700 for men (players with a rating at or above this value are colloquially known as super grandmasters) and 2500 for women.
Only six players achieved their over-2700 peak before the year 2000 and twenty-one players achieved their respective peak between the years 2000 and 2009 (inclusive).
Classical
Highest-rated female players
Highest ratings by decade
This section lists the top 20 active players by peak FIDE rating achieved in every decade since 1971, when FIDE started officially publishing rating lists.
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
List of rating peaks throughout history
See also
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Comparison of top chess players throughout history
Several methods have been suggested for comparing the greatest chess players in history. There is agreement on a statistical system to rate the strengths of current players, called the Elo system, but disagreement about methods used to compare pla ...
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FIDE world rankings
The International Chess Federation (FIDE) governs international chess competition. Each month, FIDE publishes the lists "Top 100 Players", "Top 100 Women", "Top 100 Juniors" and "Top 100 Girls" and rankings of countries according to the average r ...
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List of FIDE chess world number ones
A total of seven chess players have been the chess world number one on the official FIDE rating list since it was first published in July 1971.
The first world number one, in July 1971, was Bobby Fischer. In January 1976 Anatoly Karpov became the ...
Notes
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References
External links
A list of chess players by peak FIDE ratingon 2700chess.com
Lists of chess players
Chess rating systems