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Thursday, July 21, 2016

Live Chess Ratings - 2700 Chess

     I just discovered this site. The ratings of top players are updated daily, you can view the highest FIDE ratings of every player over 2700+, the top-20 players in any month starting from June 1967 as well as the greatest historical players, various rating charts, games, receive daily e-mails that advise you of changes in live ratings, world rankings and games links for your favorite players, plus more. 
     For example, the site has available for download 2,072 games by Magnus Carlsen dating back to 2002. Want to know how many games he won as white against the Najdorf Sicilian? It's 325. 
     Who are the top inactive players? (1) Kasparov 2812 (2) Polgar J 2675 (3) Zoltan Gyimesi. He is a 39-year old GM from Hungary. (4) Lautier 2658 and (5) Vladimir Afromeev, a 62-year old Russian FM rated 2646.   It's something of a surprise though that the database does not have any of his games. 
     Afromeev is a businessman who was born in the city of Tula which is located about 75 miles from Moscow. He is, in addition to a player, an International Arbiter. Afromeev gained spectacular, apparently miraculous, improvements in his FIDE rating which made him the only player in the top 100 FIDE list without the GM title. 
     Some players, like GM Alexander Baburin, feel that Afromeev's rise to the world's elite in middle age is a little too spectacular. They consider his rating achievement as a fraud and called Afromeev's rise to the top an abuse of FIDE's rating system. 
     Writing in Chess Today, Baburin said that it is completely unheard of and almost ludicrous to think that someone could suddenly reach the top 100 list in middle age.  He points out that Afromeev organized many of the tournaments he also play in, which in itself is not all that unusual, but apparently it makes some people suspicious.
     Afromeev successfully sued IM Igor Yagupov, also from Tula, in 2001 for defamation and won his case by presenting the scoresheets, game reports, hotel receipts etc. According to Baburin, Afromeev's previously unrated driver gained an Elo rating of over 2440. According to Baburin, Afromeev once stated that if he wanted, his cat would have a similar rating. See Susan Polgar's article and a New York Times article  It was also discussed on the English Chess Forum here.

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