April FIDE Ratings: Karjakin Back In Top 10, Topalov Tumbles

Sergey Karjakin is back to where he belongs: among the world's top 10 rated players. He didn't get a BMW, but the 19 Elo points at the Candidates' Tournament are definitely his. Veselin Topalov lost 26 points.

The top two players in the world didn't play rated games, and are the top two also this month: Magnus Carlsen (still on the old Kasparov record rating of 2851) and Vladimir Kramnik (who was sadly missed at the Candidates'). In fact the top seven didn't change, with most players losing just a few points. 

The big winner was of course Sergey Karjakin, whose new rating is 2779, good for the 8th spot. 

Sergey Karjakin shortly after winning the Candidates'. | Photo Lennart Ootes.

The big loser was Veselin Topalov with a 26-point minus. Vishy Anand, who during Gibraltar was briefly in danger of losing the top Indian spot to Pentala Harikrishna, won 8 points and is just one spot away from getting back into the top 10.

Other big winners this month were Wang Hao (+15 points at the HDBank Open), Evgeny Najer (+18 points at the Aeroflot Open), Vladimir Fedoseev (+16 points at the Aeroflot Open and the Grenke Chess Open). Maxim Rodshtein had a terrible month and lost 30 points in the Israeli and German leagues.

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This month it's worth looking at the bitz ratings as well. Below you'll find the world's top 20 at FIDE's fastest time control, with one remarkable name at number three: Ding Liren. We'll, not remarkable for his playing strength — he's the number 9 in classical chess after all — but for the fact that the Chinese player won no less than 140 points in one month!

Ding played 48 rated blitz games in total, at the blitz event of the Aeroflot Open and the IMSA Elite Mind Games. He is now the world's #3 player, just ahead of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and behind Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.

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It is worth noting that World Blitz Champion Alexander Grischuk, who will face Levon Aronian in two days in Chess.com's first GM Blitz Battle, is just out of this list as the world #21!

Hou Yifan, now back to being the world champion, tops the women's list of course. She dropped 4 points though. In her match with Mariya Muzychuk she won 2,4 points, but in the qualifier for Norway Chess she lost 6,4 points. 

Muzychuk dropped below another ex-world champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk, who gained 4 points in league games in Belgium and Germany. It is worth mentioning that Kosteniuk also completed her first marathon this Sunday!

I did!!!! :) my time is 4:08 and I think I became the first chess world champion to complete a… https://t.co/9g0iSC9HG7

— Alexandra Kosteniuk (@chessqueen) April 3, 2016

All data courtesy of FIDE.

Chess.com Blitz and Bullet

Now let's look at how things are on our own site. Last time we discussed, GM Hikaru (Hikaru Nakamura) had just broken the 2900 barrier in blitz, and his lead over #2 GM LyonBeast (Maxime Vachier-Lagrave) was significant: 122 points. But things are much different now!

Nakamura himself is back to a 2875 rating. More importantly, he has a new main rival: GM gmwesley_so! At the time of writing Wesley So is just 33 points behind. 

The highest rated non-GM is still IM QuestToGM (Akshat Chandra), now in 10th place (8th back in January). The two non-titled players in this table aren't doing so bad either!

Also in the bullet list Nakamura lost a bit of rating compared to January (he went from 3150 to 3122) and his lead is not as huge as last time (245 points), but still impressive: 177 points. The runner-up last time was IM wonderfultime (Minh Le). There's a new “best of the rest” though: FM GulamaliRises (Kazim Gulamali, USA). Both must be serious bullet specialist!