India Leads With More Players In FIDE List

India Leads With More Players In FIDE List
By Arvind Aaron

Since topping the list in late 2013, Indians are building on the lead in the number of players in the FIDE Rating List. The players in this list are those rated and unrated. It shows the general activity of a nation or region. India leads with 54645 and is followed by Russia 52936, France 43175, Spain 37925, Germany 31290 etc.

World champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway tops the Elo Rating list as on March 1, 2016. He is followed by Vladimir Kramnik of Russia. In the women’s list, Hou Yifan of China tops with 2667 and Koneru Humpy is second with 2575.

There are five Indians in the World Top 100. Viswanathan Anand who had a low performance in the Gibraltar Open has slipped to twelfth place with 2762. Four points lower at 2758 is P Harikrishna on World No.14.

The March 1, 2016 rating list includes 41 Indians as Grand Masters. The last two inclusions are S.L. Narayanan and Swapnil Dhopade. Shardul Gagare’s name when added by FIDE will make it India’s GM count  42.

Who could become our future GMs? It could be from: Diptayan Ghosh (Elo 2552), K Priyadharshan (2482), K Ratnakaran (2470), Swayams Mishra (2470), N Srinath (2469), Prasanna Rao (2466), P Karthikeyan (2462), Abhimanyu Puranik (2452) etc.

The players making progress in the women’s list are R Vaishali of Chennai and Tejaswini Sagar of Aurangabad (Mah). Both are in the Indian top 10 and are showing great promise.

The Indian Top 10:
V Anand 2762
P Harikrishna 2758
P Negi 2664
B Adhiban 2663
SP Sethuraman 2658
Vidit Gujrathi 2648
Surya S Ganguly 2646
K Sasikiran 2637
Abhijeet Gupta 2634
Sandipan Chanda 2577.

Indian women top 10:
Koneru Humpy 2575
D Harika 2515
Padmini Rout 2439
Eesha Karavade 2395
Soumya Swaminathan 2384
S Vijayalakshmi 2384
Tania Sachdev 2370
R Vaishali 2337
Mary Ann Gomes 2312
Tejaswini Sagar 2310.