Computer chess includes both hardware and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysis, entertainment and training. Computer chess applications that play at the level of a chess grandmaster or higher are available on hardware from supercomputers to smart phones. Standalone chess-playing machines are also available. Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero, GNU Chess, Fruit, and other free open source applications are available for various platforms.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially recognised World Chess Champion in history. In his prime, Lasker was one of the most dominant champions, and he is still generally regarded as one of the strongest players in history.
In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest.
James Mason was a British-American chess player, journalist and writer who became one of the world's best half-dozen players in the 1880s. Mason was ranked the number 1 player in the world by Chessmetrics during 11 separate months between August 1877 and June 1878.
Several methods have been suggested for comparing the greatest chess players in history. There is agreement on a statistical system to rate the strengths of current players, called the Elo system, but disagreement about methods used to compare players from different generations who never competed against each other.
The FIFA men's ranking system 1999–2006 is a calculation technique previously used by FIFA for ranking men's national teams in football (soccer). The ranking system was introduced by FIFA in 1999, as an update to an earlier system, and was replaced after the 2006 World Cup with a simplified system.
The ECF grading system was the rating system formerly used by the English Chess Federation. A rating produced by the system was known as an ECF grading.
Francis Joseph Lee was an English chess master.
George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip was an American-English chess master and writer. He competed in chess tournaments between 1870 and 1895, playing against most of the world's leading players, but with only modest success. The writer G. H. Diggle calls him "the King of Wooden Spoonists" because he usually finished last in strong tournaments.
Jeff Sonas is a statistical chess analyst who invented the Chessmetrics system for rating chess players, which is intended as an improvement on the Elo rating system. He is the founder and proprietor of the Chessmetrics.com website, which gives Sonas' calculations of the ratings of current players and historical ratings going back as far as January 1843. Sonas has written dozens of articles since 1999 for ChessBase.com and other chess websites. He was a participant in the FIDE ratings committee meeting in Athens, Greece in June 2010.
Marc Santo-Roman is a French chess grandmaster, born in Toulouse.
A chess rating system is a system used in chess to estimate the strength of a player, based on their performance versus other players. They are used by organizations such as FIDE, the US Chess Federation, International Correspondence Chess Federation, and the English Chess Federation. Most of the systems are used to recalculate ratings after a tournament or match but some are used to recalculate ratings after individual games. Popular online chess sites such as chess.com, Lichess, and Internet Chess Club also implement rating systems. In almost all systems, a higher number indicates a stronger player. In general, players' ratings go up if they perform better than expected and down if they perform worse than expected. The magnitude of the change depends on the rating of their opponents. The Elo rating system is currently the most widely used. The Elo-like ratings systems have been adopted in many other contexts, such as other games like Go, in online competitive gaming, and in dating apps.
Vidmantas Mališauskas is a Lithuanian chess Grandmaster (1993).
Normunds Miezis is a Latvian chess Grandmaster (1997).
Mihhail Rõtšagov is an Estonian chess Grandmaster.
Šarūnas Šulskis is a Lithuanian chess Grandmaster (1996).
The Universal Rating System (URS) is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas, Mark Glickman, J. Isaac Miller and Maxime Rischard. It was introduced to determine seedings and qualification for the 2017 Grand Chess Tour.
The FIFA men's ranking system 2006–2018 was a calculation technique previously used by FIFA for ranking men's national teams in football. The ranking system was introduced by FIFA after the 2006 FIFA World Cup, as an update to an earlier system, and was replaced after the 2018 World Cup with a revised Elo-based system.
The World Football Elo Ratings are a ranking system for men's national association football teams that is published by the website eloratings.net. It is based on the Elo rating system but includes modifications to take various football-specific variables into account, like the margin of victory, importance of a match, and home field advantage. Other implementations of the Elo rating system are possible and there is no single nor any official Elo ranking for football teams.