September 2024 FIDE Ratings: Niemann Storms To 16th In The World

From accused to accomplished: GM Hans Niemann has stormed into the top-20 chess players in the world. On the September 2024 FIDE rating list, the 21-year-old American player has left seasoned grandmasters such as Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave behind and now occupies the 16th place.

Niemann gained 22 rating points in a single month when he played in three matches: first against Giri in Utrecht, then GM Nikita Vitiugov in London, and then GM Etienne Bacrot in Paris. In the classical portion of these matches, Niemann lost just one game and scored 11.5/18.

The chess community eagerly awaits his Speed Chess match on Friday, September 6, with world number-one GM Magnus Carlsen. The Norwegian star has continuously been at the top of the list since July 2011 and kept his 30-point lead over number-two GM Hikaru Nakamura as both didn't play classical chess in August.

GM Fabiano Caruana got a bit closer to Nakamura thanks to a four-point gain at the Sinquefield Cup. Tournament winner GM Alireza Firouzja earned 16 points to get back to fifth place, while GM Ian Nepomniachtchi dropped four places. Besides Niemann, another new name in the top 20 is GM Vincent Keymer, who won 11 points at the Rubinstein Memorial which could have been even more.

The biggest loss at the top is for Giri, who gave up 22 points and dropped out of the world's top 20 for the first time in more than a decade. Russian GM Alexander Grischuk, aged 17, who entered the top 30 in January 2001, was the world number-three in the summer of 2014 and a top-10 player until February 2022. He dropped out of the top 20 in February of this year and is now out of the top 30 as well after a 19-point loss at the Russian Championship Superfinal.

The latest live ratings reveal a new record low again since 2011. At present, only 31 chess players are part of the 2700 club. This occurred after Grischuk's loss to Esipenko in Round 8 of the Russian Superfinal.https://t.co/pCGl6XvSDa pic.twitter.com/akgsPBpGwP

— 2700chess (@2700chess) August 25, 2024

During the last week of August, there were briefly just 31 2700+ players. On the published September list, there are 32.

FIDE Standard Ratings | September 1, 2024

In the women's list, GM Tan Zhongyi switched third and fourth places with her compatriot GM Lei Tingjie after a good performance in the Belt and Road Open tournament held late July-early August in Yuecheng, Shaoxing, China.

There were also good gains for GM Alina Kashalinskaya (16 points as the winner of the Tbilisi Women's Grand Prix), IM Bibisara Assaubayeva (12 points in Tbilisi), IM Divya Desmukh (11 points at the Abu Dhabi Masters), IM Stavroula Tsolakidou (15 points at the Kavala Open and Tbilisi), and IM Olga Badelka (21 points, also in the Belt and Road Open).

The biggest gain among the top-100 women is for WIM Zsoka Gaal. The 17-year-old Hungarian, who won the 2021 online World Youth Championship for girls under 14, gained 44 points (helped by a K-factor of 20) in a GM-norm tournament in Budapest. Spain's IM Sara Khadem, on the other hand, didn't have a great month as she dropped 21 points in a single tournament, the Tbilisi Women's Grand Prix.

FIDE Standard Ratings (Women) | September 1, 2024

All data courtesy FIDE.