Live Top List
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 2:16PM
Dennis Monokroussos

For several months the site wasn't updated, but now that it has been - and there have been some major events worthy of note - it's time to have another look.

Anand and Carlsen are still #s 1 and 2; they've been idle and the only player who could have caught them, Aronian, lost a few points in the Candidates. Ivanchuk and Kramnik are tied for 4th-5th (Ivanchuk "wins" on tiebreaks - the player with the most games in the most recent period is listed first) while Nakamura has moved up to #6. Gelfand is the biggest gainer in the top 30, thanks to his performance in the Candidates, but that still leaves him "only" #13 in the world. (Poor him!)

Some age stats: There are 40 players over 2700 at the moment, of whom 5 are over 40, 9 are in their 30s, 25 are in their 20s and just one - Caruana - is a teenager. (I'm making the simplifying assumption, which may well be incorrect, that those born in 19x1 have already had their birthday this year.) This might seem to indicate that the ideal age for a chess player in his 20s, but that doesn't automatically follow; for one thing, the number of FIDE-rated players has increased rapidly in the last 20 years, so one would expect an increasing number of 2700s in any case. It may also be that environmental factors (e.g. tools like ChessBase, internet play, access to trainers) have made it easier for young players to reach their full potential (or something close enough to it).

So before we draw any strong conclusions, let's see how this list compares to whatever shows up in ten years. My guess is that there will still be around 25 2700s in their 30s (maybe more), while the number of then-20-somethings who are 2700 and up and be much greater...and so on in another 10 years. And if I'm wrong, well, who's going to remember this post 10 years from now??

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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