IMAGE: 18-year-old D Gukesh became the youngest chess World champion by beating defending champion Ding Liren of China last month. Photograph: FIDE/Eng Chin An
Grandmasters Arjun Erigiasi and World champion D Gukesh retained their fourth and fifth spots respectively in the chess rankings released on Wednesday.
Erigiasi, who became the second Indian after the legendary Viswanathan Anand and 16th worldwide to reach the gold-standard ELO rating of 2800, continues to have 2801 rating points for the fourth sport.
While 18-year-old Gukesh, who defeated Ding Liren of China to win the World Championships title last month, is one place below Erigaisi at fifth with 2783 ratings.
Norwegian Magnus Carlsen continued to be at the top spot with 2831 ratings, followed by the American duo of Fabiano Caruana (2803) and Hikaru Nakamura (2802).
Anand is the third Indian in the top 10, occupying the 10th spot with an ELO rating of 2750.
Apart from Erigaisi, Gukesh and Anand six more Indians, including R Praggnandhaa (13th), Aravindh Chithambaram (23), Vidit Gujarathi (24), Pentala Harikrishna (36), Nihal Sarin (41st) and Raunak Sadhwani (48), feature in the top 50.
In the women’s section, newly-crowned Women’s World Rapid Chess champion Koneru Humpy leads the Indian charge. Humpy is placed sixth with a rating of 2523 in the list led by four Chinese players.
Former World champion Hou Yifan tops the list with a 2633 ELO rating followed by Ju Wenjun (2561) at second, Tan Zhongyi (2561) at third and Lei Tingjie (2552) at fourth.
Divya Deshmukh with a rating of 2490 is ranked 14th while Dronavalli Harika (2489) is two spots behind at 16th.
R Vaishali, who clinched a bronze in the women’s section of the World Blitz Championship, is 19th with a rating of 2476.
In the junior men’s section, Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa occupy the top two spots.
