Carlsen back on top of the World!

World No.1 again
Magnus Carlsen has slipped passed Viswanathan Anand into first place in the latest World rankings. Other notable risers are Ruslan Ponomariov, who is now seventh, and Sergey Karjakin who has overtaken Vladimir Kramnik into fourth place.

There have been some significant movements this time with four new entries. All of Alexander Moiseenko, Le Quang Liem, Emil Sutovsky and Anish Giri may be familiar names to most regular readers, but none of them had achieved 2700 status before.

The two players who have dropped out are Pavel Eljanov (who was 2755 a year ago) and the erratic Radoslaw Wojtaszek.

Judith Polgar is the highest-ranked player not mentioned, she still has 2699.

Into the top twenty are Zoltan Almasi and Fransisco Vallejo Pons, both of them obtaining career highest ratings.

As many as nineteen players were on the rise, and twelve have their career highest rating at present. One player who fits into both categories is Alexey Dreev, one of the four players in their forties who feature below.

Sergey Karjakin has not just moved past Vassily Ivanchuk on the present Elo-list, he has also replaced him as the highest-rated player never to have achieved 2800. Surely it won't take him long to become the seventh-ever 2800-player?

Here are all the details:

As for nationalities, Russia now has ten players in the top 40 (six in the top twenty), Ukraine still four (one in, and one out) and Azerbaijan three.

Some tournaments still underway, and those that have just finished haven't yet been counted. So, on the next list in September, look out for a big rise by Fabiano Caruana, a re-entry by Alexander Morozevich and a big drop by Dmitry Jakovenko.

A good source of further information is the International Chess Federation site FIDE


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