Chess: Armenia’s Aronian falls to third place in FIDE rankings
Chess | 08.01.13 | 10:52

After staying in his record-high second position on the FIDE top players list for an entire year and achieving his peak rating of 2825 last May, Armenia’s best chessman Levon Aronian went a notch down on the latest rankings released by international chess’s governing body at the beginning of January.

Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik (rating 2810) supplanted Aronian (2802) in the second position, with Norwegian Magnus Carlsen still at the top with an incredibly high rating of 2861.

In 2012, Aronian led his nation to the third Olympic triumph in September, as well as shone individually by taking first place at the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands, in January and at the World Mind Games’ Blindfold event in Beijing, China, in December. But a few setbacks, including his performance at the London Chess Classic, prevented the 30-year-old Armenian grandmaster from improving or maintaining his ranking place at the end of the year.

Aronian is going to take part in another Wijk aan Zee tournament later this month and is scheduled to participate in the World Chess Championship Candidates Tournament in London in March.

Meanwhile, the latest Top 100 player rankings of FIDE (www.fide.com) also include four other Armenian grandmasters. They are: Vladimir Akopian (position 41; rating 2704); Sergei Movsesian (position 62; rating 2688), Gabriel Sargissian (position 79; rating 2666), and Hrant Melkumyan (position 87; rating 2656).

The FIDE Top 100 female players list includes two Armenian grandmasters: Elina Danielian (position 29; rating 2466) and Lilit Mkrtchyan (position 43; rating 2458).

Hungary’s Judit Polgar tops the rankings with a rating of 2696.

In the list of 157 chess nations ranked by the average rating of their top 10 players Armenia is currently in fifth place (average rating 2658; has 34 grandmasters and 25 international masters; ‘total titled’ – 94).

The FIDE nations rating list is topped by Russia (2743), followed by Ukraine (2707), China (2665) and France (2663).

Source: http://armenianow.com

Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
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