Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded to chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain. Once achieved, the title is held for life, though exceptionally the title can be revoked for cheating.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
The United States Chess Federation is the governing body for chess competition in the United States and represents the U.S. in The World Chess Federation (FIDE). USCF administers the official national rating system, awards national titles, sanctions over twenty national championships annually, and publishes two magazines: Chess Life and Chess Life Kids. The USCF was founded and incorporated in Illinois in 1939, from the merger of two older chess organizations. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its membership as of 2020 as COVID hit was 97,000; as of 2024 the membership was 112,000.
Michael Adams is an English chess grandmaster and is an eight-time British Chess Champion. His highest ranking is world No. 4, achieved several times from October 2000 to October 2002. His peak Elo rating is 2761, the highest achieved by an English chess player.
Koneru Humpy is an Indian chess player best known for winning the FIDE Women's rapid chess championship in 2019. In 2002, she became the youngest woman ever to achieve the title of Grandmaster (GM) at the age of 15 years, 1 month, 27 days, beating Judit Polgár's previous record by three months. Humpy is the first Indian female grandmaster.
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.
China is a major chess power, with the women's team winning silver medals at the Olympiad in 2010, 2012, and 2014; the men's team winning gold at the 2014 Olympiad, and the average rating for the country's top ten players third in the FIDE rankings as of April 2023.
The FIDE Grand Prix 2008–2010 was a series of six chess tournaments that formed part of the qualification for the World Chess Championship 2012. It was administered by FIDE, the World Chess Federation. The event was won by Levon Aronian, with Teimour Radjabov second and Alexander Grischuk third.
A chess title is a title regulated by a chess governing body and bestowed upon players based on their performance and rank. Such titles are usually granted for life. The international chess governing body FIDE grants several titles, the most prestigious of which is Grandmaster; many national chess federations also grant titles such as "National Master". More broadly, the term "master" can refer to any highly skilled chess player.
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.
FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and norms. Once awarded, titles are held for life except in cases of fraud or cheating. Open titles may be earned by all players, while women's titles are restricted to female players. Many strong female players hold both open and women's titles. FIDE also awards titles for arbiters, organizers and trainers. Titles for correspondence chess, chess problem composition and chess problem solving are no longer administered by FIDE.
Chess has risen in popularity in India in the last few decades primarily due to chess Grandmaster and former 5-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand.
Carissa Shiwen Yip is an American chess player and the winner of the 2021 and 2023 U.S. Women's Chess Championship. In September 2019, she was the top rated female player in the United States and the youngest female chess player to defeat a grandmaster, which she did at age ten. In October 2019, she became the youngest American woman in history to qualify for the title of International Master until surpassed by Alice Lee in June 2023.
Women represent a small minority of chess players at all ages and levels. Female chess players today generally compete in a mix of open tournaments and women's tournaments, the latter of which are most prominent at or near the top level of women's chess and at youth levels. Modern top-level women's tournaments help provide a means for some participants to be full-time professional chess players. The majority of these tournaments are organized by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and revolve around the World Championship cycle, which culminates in a match to decide the Women's World Chess Champion. Beyond those events, among the most prominent women's tournaments are women's and girls' national and continental championships.
Hans Moke Niemann is an American chess grandmaster and Twitch streamer. He first entered the top 100 junior players list on March 1, 2019, and became a FIDE grandmaster on January 22, 2021. In July 2021, he won the World Open chess tournament in Philadelphia. He had a peak global ranking of No. 16 in September 2024.
The 45th Chess Olympiad is an international team chess event organised by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in Budapest, Hungary from 10 to 23 September 2024. It is the first Chess Olympiad that takes place in Hungary since Budapest hosted the 2nd unofficial Chess Olympiad in 1926.
The 2023 FIDE Circuit was a system comprising the top chess tournaments in 2023, which serves as a qualification path for the Candidates Tournament 2024. Players receive points based on their performance and the strength of the tournament. A player's final Circuit score is the sum of their five best results of the year. The winner of the Circuit qualifies for the Candidates Tournament 2024 in Toronto, Canada, the winner of which qualifies for the World Chess Championship 2024.
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Azerbaijan 
Magnus Carlsen 
Quang Liem Le 
