- Chess World Cup
- FIDE Grand Prix
- Olympiad
- World Championship
- List of strong tournaments
- List of world championships
- Checkmate patterns
- Chess openings
- Chess strategy
- Chess tactics
- Chess theory
- Endgames
- Pawn structure
- Problems/Compositions
The Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) is the organization that governs international chess competition. At monthly intervals, FIDE publishes the lists "Top 100 Players", "Top 100 Women", "Top 100 Juniors" and "Top 100 Girls", as well as rankings of countries according to the average rating of their top 10 players and top 10 female players. The Elo rating system is used.
The top 20 positions in the rankings as of January 2016 are as follows:
| Rank | Player | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | 2844 |
| 2 | Vladimir Kramnik | 2801 |
| 3 | Anish Giri | 2798 |
| 4 | Levon Aronian | 2792 |
| 5-6 | Fabiano Caruana | 2787 |
| 5-6 | Hikaru Nakamura | 2787 |
| 7 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 2785 |
| 8 | Viswanathan Anand | 2784 |
| 9 | Veselin Topalov | 2780 |
| 10 | Wesley So | 2773 |
| 11 | Sergey Karjakin | 2769 |
| 12 | Ding Liren | 2766 |
| 13 | Pavel Eljanov | 2760 |
| 14 | Pentala Harikrishna | 2755 |
| 15 | Alexander Grischuk | 2752 |
| 16-17 | Li Chao | 2751 |
| 16-17 | Peter Svidler | 2751 |
| 18-19 | Yu Yangyi | 2747 |
| 18-19 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | 2747 |
| 20 | Michael Adams | 2744 |
Women may play in the same events as men in chess and are rated together with men. The top 20 positions in the rankings as of January 2016 are as follows:
| Rank | Player | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hou Yifan | 2673 |
| 2 | Koneru Humpy | 2583 |
| 3 | Mariya Muzychuk | 2554 |
| 4 | Alexandra Kosteniuk | 2550 |
| 5 | Ju Wenjun | 2548 |
| 6 | Anna Muzychuk | 2537 |
| 7 | Nana Dzagnidze | 2535 |
| 8 | Viktorija Čmilytė | 2534 |
| 9 | Kateryna Lahno | 2529 |
| 10 | Pia Cramling | 2523 |
| 11 | Antoaneta Stefanova | 2515 |
| 12 | Dronavalli Harika | 2511 |
| 13 | Zhao Xue | 2506 |
| 14 | Tan Zhongyi | 2504 |
| 15-16 | Aleksandra Goryachkina | 2502 |
| 15-16 | Bela Khotenashvili | 2502 |
| 17 | Valentina Gunina | 2496 |
| 18 | Marie Sebag | 2490 |
| 19 | Lela Javakhishvili | 2486 |
| 20 | Nino Batsiashvili | 2485 |
Juniors are considered to be players who remain under the age of 21 years for the duration of the current calendar year.
The top 20 positions in the rankings as of January 2016 are as follows:
| Rank | Player | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Richárd Rapport | 2721 |
| 2 | Wei Yi | 2706 |
| 3 | Vladislav Artemiev | 2673 |
| 4 | Jan-Krzysztof Duda | 2660 |
| 5 | Daniil Dubov | 2646 |
| 6 | Illya Nyzhnyk | 2627 |
| 7 | Matthias Bluebaum | 2595 |
| 8 | John M. Burke | 2588 |
| 9 | Dennis Wagner | 2585 |
| 10 | Urii Eliseev | 2582 |
| 11 | Samuel Sevian | 2578 |
| 12 | Jeffery Xiong | 2575 |
| 13 | Alexander Donchenko | 2570 |
| 14 | Mikhail Antipov | 2567 |
| 15 | Grigoriy Oparin | 2565 |
| 16 | Kirill Alekseenko | 2560 |
| 17-18 | Diptayan Ghosh | 2556 |
| 17-18 | Aryan Tari | 2556 |
| 19-20 | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 2552 |
| 19-20 | Vaibhav Suri | 2552 |
This list includes female players who will remain under the age of 21 years for the duration of the current calendar year.
The top 20 positions in the rankings as of January 2016 are as follows:
| Rank | Player | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aleksandra Goryachkina | 2502 |
| 2 | Lei Tingjie | 2474 |
| 3 | Nomin-Erdene Davaademberel | 2468 |
| 4 | Dinara Saduakassova | 2423 |
| 5 | Sarasadat Khademalsharieh | 2392 |
| 6-7 | Zhai Mo | 2383 |
| 6-7 | Medina Warda Aulia | 2383 |
| 8 | Zhansaya Abdumalik | 2381 |
| 9 | Ni Shiqun | 2377 |
| 10 | Alina Bivol | 2368 |
| 11 | Iulija Osmak | 2343 |
| 12 | Aydan Hojjatova | 2341 |
| 13 | Gunay Mammadzada | 2344 |
| 14 | Stavroula Tsolakidou | 2338 |
| 15 | R. Vaishali | 2332 |
| 16 | Nino Khomeriki | 2321 |
| 17 | Dorsa Derakhshani | 2315 |
| 18 | Amina Battsooj | 2313 |
| 19 | Ewa Harazinska | 2310 |
| 20 | Paula Andrea Rodriguez Rueda | 2308 |
FIDE publishes two lists ranking countries. The first ranks them according to the average rating of their top 10 players, while the other ranks them according to the average rating of their top 10 female players. The top 20 positions in the former list as of January 2016 are as follows:
| Rank | Country | Average top 10 rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 2738 |
| 2 | China | 2711 |
| 3 | Ukraine | 2687 |
| 4 | United States | 2686 |
| 5 | India | 2663 |
| 6 | France | 2653 |
| 7 | Armenia | 2652 |
| 8 | Azerbaijan | 2646 |
| 9 | Hungary | 2645 |
| 10 | Poland | 2638 |
| 11 | Israel | 2637 |
| 12 | England | 2635 |
| 13 | Netherlands | 2631 |
| 14 | Germany | 2621 |
| 15 | Bulgaria | 2589 |
| 16-17 | Spain | 2587 |
| 16-17 | Cuba | 2587 |
| 18 | Croatia | 2583 |
| 19 | Serbia | 2582 |
| 20 | Georgia | 2580 |
The top 20 positions in this list as of January 2016 are as follows:
| Rank | Country | Average top 10 rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 2488 |
| 2 | China | 2487 |
| 3 | Georgia | 2435 |
| 4 | Ukraine | 2417 |
| 5 | India | 2394 |
| 6 | Poland | 2365 |
| 7 | Germany | 2341 |
| 8 | Hungary | 2338 |
| 9 | France | 2328 |
| 10 | United States | 2321 |
| 11 | Serbia | 2306 |
| 12 | Romania | 2304 |
| 13 | Cuba | 2285 |
| 14 | Azerbaijan | 2284 |
| 15-16 | Spain | 2280 |
| 15-16 | Bulgaria | 2280 |
| 17 | Netherlands | 2274 |
| 18 | Armenia | 2267 |
| 19 | Mongolia | 2251 |
| 20 | Kazakhstan | 2242 |