Chess - The Scotsman 03/07/2012

ALTHOUGH international titles date back to the 1950s, it was only in July 1971 that Fide first published a rating list that had Bobby Fischer at the helm. Fischer’s top rating on that very first list was just 2760.

Since Fischer, only six other players have been “numero uno”, starting with Anatoly Karpov, who was first from January 1975 until July 1983.

It was Kaprov’s successor Garry Kasparov who dominated longest, though, taking over in January 1984 and remaining at the helm (apart from a couple of blips), right through to his retirement in the January list of 2006.

Those blips were Karpov, a couple of times, and Vladimir Kramnik, just once. And post Kasparov it has been a mixture of Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Kramnik once more and Magnus Carlsen. After his recent success at the Tal Memorial, Carlsen has taken his rating to a personal high of 2837 on the new Fide July rating list, just 14-points off of the all-time 2851 record set by Kasparov.

Since January 2010, Carlsen has held on to the top spot 13 times, with the exception being also a couple of blips, to Anand, whose rating plummeted 11 points in defending his title in May to Boris Gelfand.

Fide Top 10: 1. M Carlsen, 2837 (+2); 2. L Aronian, 2816 (-9); 3. V Kramnik, 2799 (-2); 4. T Radjabov, 2788 (+4); 5. V Anand, 2780 (-11); 6. S Karjakin, 2779 (=); 7. H Nakamura, 2778 (+3); 8. F Caruana, 2775 (+5); 9. A Morozevich, 2770 (+1); 10 V Ivanchuk, 2769 (+5).

G Kamsky - A Istratescu

Greek Team Championship, (1)

Catalan Opening

1 d4 e6 2 c4 Bb4+ 3 Bd2 a5 4 g3 d5 5 Bg2 dxc4 6 Nf3 Nc6 7 Bc3 Nge7 8 0–0 0–0 9 a4 b6 10 Qc2 Ba6 11 Rd1 Qe8 12 Ng5 g6 13 e4 Rd8 14 Na3 Bxc3 15 Qxc3 Nb4 16 Nxc4 Bxc4 17 Qxc4 c5 18 dxc5 Rxd1+ 19 Rxd1 Qxa4 20 Bf3 Qc6 21 e5! Qxc5 22 Qh4 h5 23 Ne4 Nf5 24 Qg5 Qxe5 25 Nf6+ Kg7 26 Nxh5+ Kh8 27 Nf6 Qxb2 28 g4 Kg7 29 Nh5+ Kh7 30 gxf5 exf5 31 Nf4 Qg7 32 Rd7 Re8 33 Kg2 Kg8 34 Bd5 1–0