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The Year 2007 in Review

The World's Best Players

At the beginning of every calendar year, we take a look at the top chess stories of the previous year. The year 2007 saw frantic activity to establish some sort of routine in the selection of the World Champion, an increase in the number of top class grandmaster tournaments, and a host of lesser stories. Once again we owe a big debt to Mark Crowther's The Week in Chess (TWIC, see the link in the upper right corner), and for the first time we acknowledge a debt to the chess blogosphere. The chess blogs are often the first to report on budding chess stories. Between Crowther and the blogs, who needs mainstream press coverage of chess? As usual for our year end reviews, we'll start by listing the world's top players, calculated quarterly by FIDE. Names appearing in the top-10 for the first time were Mamedyarov, Radjabov, and Jakovenko. World's Top-10 (FIDE) 2007 Name NAT Born : Jan No : Apr No : Jul No : Oct No Anand, Viswanathan IND 1969 : 2779 2 : 2786 1 : 2792 1 : 2801 1 Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 1969 : 2750 5 : : 2762 4 : 2787 2 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 1975 : 2766 3 : 2772 3 : 2769 3 : 2785 3 Topalov, Veselin BUL 1975 : 2783 1 : 2772 2 : 2769 2 : 2769 4 Leko, Peter HUN 1979 : 2749 6 : 2738 8 : 2751 7 : 2755 5 Morozevich, Alexander RUS 1977 : 2741 8 : 2762 4 : 2758 5 : 2755 6 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyaz AZE 1985 : 2754 4 : 2757 6 : 2757 6 : 2752 7 Radjabov, Teimour AZE 1987 : : 2747 7 : 2746 9 : 2742 8 Aronian, Levon ARM 1982 : 2744 7 : 2759 5 : 2750 8 : 2741 9 Shirov, Alexei ESP 1972 : : : : 2739 10 Adams, Michael ENG 1971 : 2735 9 : 2734 10 : : Gelfand, Boris ISR 1968 : 2733 10 : : : Jakovenko, Dmitry RUS 1983 : : : 2735 10 : Svidler, Peter RUS 1976 : : 2736 9 : : In May, the Chess Oscar for 2006 was awarded to Kramnik, who received 204 first place votes and 3636 points overall. Second and third went to Topalov (44 first, 2828 points) and Anand (41, 2754). Next : World Championship 2007

More of this Feature • The Best Players • World Championship • International Events • National Championships • Opens • Computers • Passages  Related Resources • The Best Players 2006  Elsewhere on the Web • The Week in Chess