After 12 losses and 18 draws in their previous match ups, Hikaru Nakamura finally won against Magnus Carlsen in a classical format game. That happened in the very first round of the Bilbao Masters Final 2016.
The rest of the games were drawn, thus leaving Nakamura on the lead at the start of this tournament.
The FIDE Ratings List updated for July 2016 is here. Check out the top 20 in the table below.
| Rank | Name | Country | Rating | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2855 | 0 |
| 2 | Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 2812 | 0 |
| 3 | Caruana, Fabiano | USA | 2810 | 9 |
| 4 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | FRA | 2798 | 10 |
| 5 | Aronian, Levon | ARM | 2792 | 0 |
| 6 | Nakamura, Hikaru | USA | 2787 | 0 |
| 7 | Giri, Anish | NED | 2785 | 9 |
| 8 | Ding, Liren | CHN | 2778 | 3 |
| 9 | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2773 | 9 |
| 10 | Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2770 | 0 |
| 11 | So, Wesley | USA | 2770 | 0 |
| 12 | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | AZE | 2764 | 12 |
| 13 | Topalov, Veselin | BUL | 2761 | 0 |
| 14 | Svidler, Peter | RUS | 2759 | 0 |
| 15 | Li, Chao b | CHN | 2758 | 0 |
| 16 | Harikrishna, P. | IND | 2755 | 9 |
| 17 | Rapport, Richard | HUN | 2752 | 13 |
| 18 | Grischuk, Alexander | RUS | 2747 | 0 |
| 19 | Navara, David | CZE | 2745 | 19 |
| 20 | Eljanov, Pavel | UKR | 2737 | 9 |
For this year’s Bilbao Masters, Wesley So is the defending champion, when he defeated Anish Giri in blitz playoff last year.
The Bilbao Chess press release:
The Final completes its competitive line-up, the strongest in recent years, with So, the winner of last year’s tournament, Nakamura and Giri, who are among the top ten of the international ranking and the 16-year-old Chinese player Yi Wei, the sport’s emerging world star.
The tournament, which has been recognised as one of the most prestigious in the world, will take place between 13 and 23 July at the Campos Elíseos Theatre, alongside the Villa de Bilbao, one of the most compelling Chess Opens of the year in which 140 players will compete.
This year’s edition of Bilbao Masters has truly gone more exciting, because on top of the familiar rivalry between Wesley So and Anish Giri, the organizers are bringing us a treat with the preview of this year’s World Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin.
In an astonishing round that had to have Gashimov smiling, the final round saw three of his compatriots winning their final games. However, the biggest result was of course Mamedyarov who defeated Giri in a superb rook endgame he played to perfection, right after beating Caruana in the previous round. In a nail-biting playoff, he defeated Caruana and snatched the title.
Coming in as the 6th seed in this tournament, Mamedyarov made it through the end, beating Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri in the last two rounds, and beating Caruana further in the tie-break playoff games.
Final standings before the playoff games follow:
No doubt, the reigning world champion is still on top with 2855, up 4 points from last month. But Vladimir Kramnik, from last month’s 2801, gained 11 more ELO points to take the second spot from Fabiano Caruana for this month’s official FIDE Ratings List June 2016.
Wesley So, although lost 5 points by virtue of his game 3 loss to Ding Liren, is still at No. 10, but now tied with Vishy Anand.
Here’s the current top 20 in the world:
| Rk | Name | Fed | Rtg | Gms | B-Year |
| 1 | Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2855 | 9 | 1990 |
| 2 | Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 2812 | 14 | 1975 |
| 3 | Caruana, Fabiano | USA | 2804 | 0 | 1992 |
| 4 | Aronian, Levon | ARM | 2792 | 9 | 1982 |
| 5 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | FRA | 2789 | 10 | 1990 |
| 6 | Nakamura, Hikaru | USA | 2787 | 0 | 1987 |
| 7 | Ding, Liren | CHN | 2783 | 4 | 1992 |
| 8 | Giri, Anish | NED | 2782 | 9 | 1994 |
| 9 | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2774 | 3 | 1990 |
| 10 | So, Wesley | USA | 2770 | 4 | 1993 |
| 11 | Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2770 | 0 | 1969 |
| 12 | Harikrishna, P. | IND | 2764 | 9 | 1986 |
| 13 | Topalov, Veselin | BUL | 2761 | 9 | 1975 |
| 14 | Svidler, Peter | RUS | 2759 | 7 | 1976 |
| 15 | Li, Chao b | CHN | 2758 | 9 | 1989 |
| 16 | Eljanov, Pavel | UKR | 2751 | 9 | 1983 |
| 17 | Grischuk, Alexander | RUS | 2747 | 8 | 1983 |
| 18 | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | AZE | 2746 | 9 | 1985 |
| 19 | Navara, David | CZE | 2744 | 11 | 1985 |
| 20 | Andreikin, Dmitry | RUS | 2743 | 9 | 1990 |
Chessbase lists the complete top 100 and discusses about the top climbers and descenders in the list, among others.
Praggnanandhaa is just 10 years and 10 months old, and he is about to receive his IM title soon, as he recently earned his third and final IM norm in Bhubaneswar in India.
Praggnanandhaa is the youngest chess IM in history.
The New Indian Express writes:
A couple of years on, the kid who slept during a game is one of the biggest stories in world chess. The 10-year-old from Chennai achieved his third and final International Master (IM) norm after beating a Grandmaster and holding two others at the KIIT International Festival of Chess in Bhubaneswar.
When I was 10 years old, I have yet to learn how to play the game of chess.
Thus, R Praggnanandhaa has at most 21 months to finish his GM norms in order to beat the current youngest GM ever, the challenger in this year’s world championship, Sergey Karjakin. We’re eager to watch out for that if he could indeed make it.
For your reference, the following is the list of the youngest GM’s, their age when they achieved them, their birthyears, and the year they achieved their GM title.
Ferrera shared a personal story about a young girl whose telling experience is a tough one to forget:
“I was moderating a conversation once among young women, and there was something that a young girl said that has really stayed with me. She stood up and she asked one of our panelists … ‘I was on the chess team. I was really good. But I was the only girl on the chess team, and it felt hard to be there, so I quit.’ And I haven’t been able to shake that. Because if we can’t get our young girls to stay in the room for the chess team, how are we gonna get them to stay in the room to be leaders in business, leaders in politics, leaders in medicine, leaders in science?”
A sad story, indeed. I know we still have to see a lot more women grandmasters competing at chess’ highest levels (Hou Yifan is currently the highest rated woman chess player at 2663 as of April 2016, and she’s only 85th and the only woman among the world’s top 100), but sexism shouldn’t be a reason why more women shouldn’t get to the top of the chess world.
After defeating Wesley So in the 2016 China-USA Chess Grandmaster Summit, Chinese GM Ding Liren advanced to spots in the Live Ratings as of today, May 12th, 2016.
Apparently, that event was rated.