Praggnanandhaa Gains 660 Points As FIDE Adjusts Rapid, Blitz Ratings

Some players have made considerable Elo gains as the International Chess Federation has corrected rapid and blitz ratings with the publication of the October 2022 rating lists. GM Praggnanandhaa R. gains a staggering 660 points for his rapid rating. Meanwhile, GM Gukesh D. has entered the top 20 of the standard (classical) list for the first time, and GM Viswanathan Anand is back in the top 10.

The FIDE General Assembly in August in Chennai, India made an important decision by approving the proposal of Sabrina de San Vicente, chair of the Qualification Commission. A one-time change has been made in the October 2022 rapid and blitz ratings lists:

• If a player is unrated in rapid or blitz, then they remain unrated in rapid or blitz.
• If a standard rating is more than 100 points higher than one of the other ratings, then the other rating has been increased to the standard rating minus 100 points.
• If a standard rating is 100 or fewer points higher than one of the ratings, then the player retains the other rating with no change.

In the case of Praggnanandhaa, this means the following: By playing very few rapid tournaments that count for the FIDE ratings, he had a rapid rating of just 1927. Because his October 1 standard rating climbed to 2687, he clearly falls into the second category; therefore, his new rapid rating is 2687-100=2587, a rise of 660 points.

Another oddity is what happened to GM Garry Kasparov‘s blitz rating. The 13th world champion played his first FIDE-rated blitz tournament in August 2017 in St. Louis, where he started with a rating that was set at 2812, his last published standard rating from 2005. Kasparov lost 11 points back then, and so he had a blitz rating of 2801 until July 2021, when he lost 157 points at the Croatia Rapid and Blitz (note that his K-factor was 20, see below). For the last year, Kasparov’s blitz rating was 2644 which now has been adjusted to 2712, 100 points under the 2812 standard rating from 2005.

Another change in the rapid and blitz regulations is that the “K-factor” (development coefficient) is no longer 20 for all players. Starting from October 1, the K-factor will vary between 10 and 40, following these rules:

• K = 40 for a player new to the rating list until they have completed events with at least 30 games.
• K = 20 as long as a player’s rating remains under 2400.
• K = 10 once a player’s published rating has reached 2400 and remains at that level subsequently, even if the rating later drops below 2400.
• K = 40 for all players until the end of the year of their 18th birthday, as long as their rating remains under 2300.

The changes make sense but aren’t an ideal solution. Apart from the fact that not everybody will be happy to see players getting rating increases for free, it also remains to be seen if this “one-time” change might need an update in the future. Unless there is a significant increase in FIDE-rated rapid and blitz tournaments, more prodigies will rise to the top in the coming years with their rapid and blitz ratings falling behind compared to their standard rating. With a K-factor of 10 for players above 2400, it will be even harder to catch up in some cases.

Looking at the new standard rating list, the biggest changes at the top involve Indian players. For example, Anand, who will turn 53 in December, has re-entered the world’s top-10 for the first time since October 2019 without playing as he profited from the loss of rating points by both GMs Levon Aronian and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup.

The 16-year-old Gukesh is the second player born in the 21st century to make it to the top 20 of the world. (GM Alireza Firouzja, the current number four, was born in 2003). Born on May 29, 2006, Gukesh climbed five spots compared to September thanks to winning six rating points at the Spanish team championship.

It should be noted that GM Arjun Erigaisi is keeping pace with Gukesh; the 19-year-old GM gained 4.1 points in the Slovenian League, but those three games were not included in the October list. This means that in the live ratings, Erigaisi is actually 0.1 points ahead of Gukesh.

In the standard top-100, two players gained 11 points in one month: Praggnanandhaa (at the Dubai Open) and the much-discussed GM Hans Niemann, who got his points at the Sinquefield Cup. He is one point shy of 2700, a rating GM Vincent Keymer reached for the first time after winning seven points in the Polish League. The biggest loss is by 2020-2021 Candidate GM Kirill Alekseenko, who lost 16 points in the Spanish League.

FIDE Standard Ratings | Oct. 1, 2022 

Below we also present the top 50 of the new blitz ratings list, where we see that the 68 points Kasparov has received helped him to jump 37 places. Meanwhile, GM Hikaru Nakamura is back to the number-one spot, and Firouzja has made a 108-gain (all by himself) from the blitz in St. Louis.

FIDE Blitz Ratings | Oct. 1, 2022