January FIDE Ratings: Caruana On The Heels Of Carlsen

In January 2017, Magnus Carlsen tops the FIDE rating list, like he has done since July 2011. His lead over #2, Fabiano Caruana, however is only 13 points. 

A new year is here, and so is a new FIDE rating list. Carlsen's lead in classical chess is no surprise, but his dominance has shrunk even further. Caruana gained four points with games in the Bundesliga and the London Chess Classic and is now only 13 points behind the Norwegian.

Carlsen's lead hasn't been this small since September 2011.

Wesley So won the London Chess Classic, and with it the Grand Chess Tour. He gained 14 points and became a member of the 2800 club for the first time. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave used to be part of that club, but he dropped out in this list.

Wesley So, a member of the 2800 club now.

Besides this, the top 100 doesn't see too many big changes. Ernesto Inarkiev re-entered the top 30 after a 14-point gain in the German and Chinese leagues. Richard Rapport lost 15 points and dropped from #30 to #40 with games played in different events in China.

January 2017 FIDE Ratings (Top 30)

(See full list here.)

With the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Qatar just behind us, obviously we should have a close look at these lists as well. Starting with the rapid, we see a new number two. Vassily Ivanchuk won the championship and gained 56 rapid Elo points, jumping from #11 to #2. Carlsen is still #1, but he did drop below 2900.

Vassily Ivanchuk, the new #2 in rapid chess.

Sergey Karjakin was the world #4 in rapid but dropped out of the top 10. Hikaru Nakamura was the old #2, but due to Qatar, he dropped to #10. Alexander Grischuk jumped from #14 to #4.

January 2017 FIDE Rapid Ratings (Top 30)

(See full list here.)

You might remember that Ding Liren was the surprising leader of the blitz rating list, but that is no more. The two participants of the 2016 classical world championship now also have the highest Elo in blitz.

Carlsen leads with 2914. Not winning any gold in Doha was disappointing for Carlsen, but at least he's now leading all three Elo lists.

Carlsen is the #1 in all three FIDE rating lists.

Karjakin, the fresh world blitz champion, follows at 2883. He was on spot #12 in the previous list.

Three more blitz specialists, who are also regular participants of Chess.com's Titled Tuesday, can be found right behind Ding Liren: Nakamura, MVL and Dmitry Andreikin. Let's leave it at that; the story of Iuri Shkuro has been dealt with earlier.

January 2017 FIDE Blitz Ratings (Top 30)

(See full list here.)

The classical women's rating list has hardly changed, but with 36 ladies playing in Doha it makes sense to check out the rapid and blitz lists as well. Anna Muzychuk not only won both tournaments in Qatar, but with them, she took over the #1 position from Hou Yifan in both lists!

Here's the rapid top 10, where Muzychuk earned her #1 spot because she had played more rated games.

January 2017 FIDE Rapid Ratings (Women, Top 10)

(See full list here.)

Anna Muzychuk tops both the rapid and blitz rating list.

In the blitz, Muzychuk now has a four-point lead over Hou. There's one more player above 2600: Kateryna Lagno. Two players are ranked clearly higher than in classical chess: Tan Zhongyi and Anastasia Bodnaruk.

January 2017 FIDE Blitz Ratings (Women, Top 10)

All lists courtesy of FIDE.

Chess.com Blitz and Bullet

As always, we'll also look at how things are on our own site. Let's check out the new blitz and bullet ratings on Chess.com—two more lists topped by Carlsen. 

Also on our site, the Norwegian is the highest-rated player in both blitz and bullet. He reached his blitz rating of 2965 in the GM Blitz Battle Championship.

The big news here is that Nakamura is not second anymore, and he's not third either. GMHikaru has dropped to fourth place, behind Jahongir Vakhidov of Uzbekistan and a strong Chinese player who remains anonymous on our site.

(See full list here.)

The bullet list sees an interesting situation. Carlsen hasn't returned to play bullet on our site, but his 3207 rating from the GM Blitz Battle has now been exactly leveled by Nakamura! On the FIDE list, the American player would be first as he is more active. Our site lists them alphabetically, but we're considering to follow FIDE here in the future.

Behind Andreikin, a less familiar name is Oleksandr Bortnyk, in fourth place. He had decent results at the World Rapid and Blitz, and in the latter one score stood out: He beat the reigning champ, Alexander Grischuk.