Mamedyarov World #5 In June FIDE Ratings

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov reached the number-five position in the world in the June FIDE rating list. The Azerbaijani is the 13th player in history to break 2800.

The live ratings revealed it quickly after the end of the Moscow Grand Prix and now it's official: Mamedyarov is the new number-five, after a fantastic period during which he won nine Elo points in the Gashimov Memorial, 13.9 in the Russian league and 5.1 in the Grand Prix.

Mamedyarov, who jumped from 12th to fifth place, updated his status on Facebook when the new list was out. A day and a half later it has more than 1,100 likes and 110 comments.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov is doing great lately.

Besides Mamedyarov, no other top-10 player had reason to be happy this time. In fact half of the top 10 went down on the list: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (dropping from fifth to sixth), Levon Aronian (from sixth to seventh), Hikaru Nakamura (from seventh to ninth), Anish Giri (from ninth to 12th) and Sergey Karjakin (from 10th to 11th).

(Update 4 June 2017, 22:15 PST: shortly after publishing the list, FIDE came with an update. The small changes are being discussed here.)

Ding Liren, the winner of the Moscow Grand Prix, won 10 Elo points. It's quite a lot in the highest echelons of chess, but still he only moved up one spot: from 11th to 10th in the world. Hou Yifan, who won 14.1 points in Moscow, is obviously still the highest-rated female player (see below) but now she's also back in the overall top 100, at spot 85.

For the organizers of the Altibox Norway Chess tournament (which starts in a couple of days) the current top 10 is not as perfect as it once was. When they announced the field back in February, the 10 participants were the top 10 in the world, but meanwhile Giri and Karjakin have dropped out.

It was a good month for Emil Sutovsky, Anton Korobov and Evgeniy Najer, who won 29, 23 and 24 points respectively. Bad news for Ian Nepomniachtchi, who lost 18.9 points, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov, who lost 23.

June 2017 FIDE Ratings (Top 20)

(See full list here.)

The top 10 among the women didn't change, although some players changed places. That's mostly because of Nana Dzagnidze losing 11.6 points in the Chinese league after which she dropped from sixth to 10th place. With Ju Wenjun losing 11 points (also in the Chinese league, which seems to be full of underrated girls!), the gap below Hou Yifan is now 83 points.

June 2017 FIDE Ratings (Women, Top 20)

(See full list here.)

Chess.com Blitz and Bullet

We'll also look at how things are on our own site. Let's check out the current blitz and bullet ratings on Chess.com.

Last time we discussed this, back in January, Magnus Carlsen was topping both lists based on the ratings he achieved by winning the 2016 GM Blitz Battle. In blitz he had 2992, and still does. Five months ago Hikaru Nakamura had actually dropped to fourth place, but now he's back and in fact the new number-one with a rating of 3001.

We also have a new number-three, since earlier this week! Sergey Karjakin, who made his debut on our site in his match with Georg Meier, entered the list with 2906.

The highest-ranked player who is not a grandmaster is not even a titled player. Member notproatchess remains anonymous (as the name connected to the account, "Anoni Mouse," suggests!) but is clearly a very strong blitz player. Our editorial team suspects that it might have been a top GM warming up for a recent Speed Chess match...

(See full list here.)

Carlsen's 3207 rating in bullet is still good enough for first place. Right now Nakamura is behind him, but not that much: 50 points. It's these two players who are in a class of their own when it comes to the fastest type of chess.

The number-three on the list is more than 100 points behind, and not even a GM. Minh Le of Vietnam only holds the IM title but is a huge specialist. Also here Karjakin is high on the list: in fourth place, with 3038. In fact, exactly 10 players are 3000+ on the list.

Correction: An earlier version version of this article wrongly stated that Mamedyarov reached his career-best ranking as the number-five in the world. In fact he was ranked ranked fourth in January 2007.