New rating
Total Chess Rating
A new rating for chess: one number for a player's strength across classical, rapid and blitz. It is the rating system of the Total Chess World Championship Tour.
Created by game theorist Dr Mehmet Mars Seven of King's College London, together with Norway Chess and its founder Kjell Madland.
The new system is separate from and does not affect players’ official FIDE ratings. FIDE will observe the Total Chess Rating during the pilot period, following discussions within the Working Group between Norway Chess and FIDE.
Based on FIDE's ratings of October 1, 2026
Top 100
| Rank | Player | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnus Carlsen | 2830 |
| 2 | Hikaru Nakamura | 2779 |
| 3 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | 2774 |
| 4 | Alireza Firouzja | 2765 |
| 5 | Javokhir Sindarov | 2753 |
| 6 | Arjun Erigaisi | 2751 |
| 7 | Ian Nepomniachtchi | 2745 |
| 8 | Wesley So | 2740 |
| 9 | Fabiano Caruana | 2740 |
| 10 | Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu | 2736 |
| 11 | Levon Aronian | 2726 |
| 12 | Wei Yi | 2725 |
| 13 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 2721 |
| 14 | Ding Liren | 2718 |
| 15 | Nihal Sarin | 2714 |
| 16 | Viswanathan Anand | 2714 |
| 17 | Jan-Krzysztof Duda | 2712 |
| 18 | Daniil Dubov | 2711 |
| 19 | Vladimir Fedoseev | 2707 |
| 20 | Peter Leko | 2703 |
| 21 | Hans Niemann | 2702 |
| 22 | Yu Yangyi | 2699 |
| 23 | Dmitry Andreikin | 2693 |
| 24 | Vladislav Artemiev | 2693 |
| 25 | Anish Giri | 2689 |
| 26 | Gukesh Dommaraju | 2686 |
| 27 | Vincent Keymer | 2686 |
| 28 | Jeffery Xiong | 2685 |
| 29 | Le Quang Liem | 2683 |
| 30 | Parham Maghsoodloo | 2680 |
| 31 | Sam Sevian | 2678 |
| 32 | Richard Rapport | 2673 |
| 33 | Alexander Grischuk | 2668 |
| 34 | Leinier Dominguez Perez | 2668 |
| 35 | Vidit Gujrathi | 2667 |
| 36 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | 2666 |
| 37 | Wang Hao | 2665 |
| 38 | Jorden van Foreest | 2665 |
| 39 | Teimour Radjabov | 2664 |
| 40 | Alexey Sarana | 2663 |
| 41 | Andrey Esipenko | 2662 |
| 42 | Bu Xiangzhi | 2661 |
| 43 | Haik Martirosyan | 2659 |
| 44 | Volodar Murzin | 2653 |
| 45 | Lu Shanglei | 2652 |
| 46 | Amin Tabatabaei | 2651 |
| 47 | Veselin Topalov | 2647 |
| 48 | Nodirbek Yakubboev | 2646 |
| 49 | Raunak Sadhwani | 2642 |
| 50 | Michael Adams | 2641 |
| 51 | Ray Robson | 2641 |
| 52 | Bogdan-Daniel Deac | 2639 |
| 53 | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 2638 |
| 54 | Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus | 2637 |
| 55 | Erwin l'Ami | 2636 |
| 56 | Rauf Mamedov | 2636 |
| 57 | Grigoriy Oparin | 2636 |
| 58 | Ferenc Berkes | 2635 |
| 59 | Ruslan Ponomariov | 2635 |
| 60 | Denis Lazavik | 2635 |
| 61 | Pavel Eljanov | 2632 |
| 62 | Yuriy Kryvoruchko | 2632 |
| 63 | Li Chao | 2632 |
| 64 | Vladimir Onischuk | 2631 |
| 65 | Ioannis Papaioannou | 2630 |
| 66 | Anton Korobov | 2630 |
| 67 | Jaime Santos Latasa | 2629 |
| 68 | Alexander Onischuk | 2629 |
| 69 | Sam Shankland | 2628 |
| 70 | Gata Kamsky | 2627 |
| 71 | Jules Moussard | 2626 |
| 72 | Wang Yue | 2625 |
| 73 | Nikita Vitiugov | 2625 |
| 74 | Alexander Morozevich | 2624 |
| 75 | Aravindh Chithambaram | 2623 |
| 76 | Vasyl Ivanchuk | 2623 |
| 77 | Matthias Bluebaum | 2623 |
| 78 | Pranav Venkatesh | 2622 |
| 79 | Harikrishna Pentala | 2622 |
| 80 | David Howell | 2621 |
| 81 | Rustam Kasimdzhanov | 2621 |
| 82 | Radoslaw Wojtaszek | 2620 |
| 83 | Awonder Liang | 2620 |
| 84 | Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara | 2620 |
| 85 | Kirill Alekseenko | 2619 |
| 86 | Igor Kovalenko | 2619 |
| 87 | Gawain Maroroa Jones | 2619 |
| 88 | Shant Sargsyan | 2618 |
| 89 | Luke McShane | 2617 |
| 90 | Boris Gelfand | 2617 |
| 91 | Aryan Chopra | 2617 |
| 92 | Etienne Bacrot | 2617 |
| 93 | Peter Heine Nielsen | 2617 |
| 94 | Aryan Tari | 2617 |
| 95 | Aydin Suleymanli | 2616 |
| 96 | Mikhail Al Antipov | 2615 |
| 97 | Aleksandar Indjic | 2614 |
| 98 | Vladimir Malakhov | 2613 |
| 99 | Pranesh M | 2613 |
| 100 | David Navara | 2608 |
Players with the same rating are ranked by the unrounded value. For the classical, rapid and blitz ratings behind these numbers, see FIDE's top lists(opens in a new tab).
How it works
Take a player's FIDE classical, rapid and blitz ratings, Rc, Rr and Rb. Their Total Chess Rating is
T = 400 · log10( ⅓ · ( 10Rc/400 + 10Rr/400 + 10Rb/400 ) )
The result is a single Elo rating for a player's strength across all three formats. A player rated 2700 in all three has a Total Chess Rating of 2700. If the combined rating is to keep some natural properties of the Elo system, this formula is the only one that does.
It predicts results the usual Elo way. For example, if one player has a Total Chess Rating of 2800 and another 2700, the 100-point difference corresponds to an expected score of approximately 64% for the higher-rated player.
Intuitively, this approximates the expected score you would get by selecting one of the three formats with equal chance and applying the usual Elo formula for that format.
But simply averaging the three format-by-format predictions does not always give a consistent overall ranking. It can produce a circle, where X is favoured over Y, Y over Z, and Z over X. For example, this happens with players rated (2800, 2400, 2000), (2400, 2000, 2800) and (2000, 2800, 2400).
No single rating can reproduce that circle. Total Chess Rating instead gives all three players the same rating, since they have the same three strengths arranged across different formats.
Read the technical details, with the formula, an example and the proof.
Tell us what you think
The Total Chess Rating is released as a draft for public feedback until the pilot event in Budapest. Send comments to Dr Mehmet Mars Seven at mehmet.mars.seven@kcl.ac.uk.
