I should have said: Women who Excel at Chess.
The six women in this photograph are among some of the best chess players in the world.
It’s estimated that there are over 800 million chess players in the world, if not billions, but there are over 360,000 active chess players ranked with FIDE.
These women are ranked among FIDE active players at:
From left to right:
- Anna Cramling (FIDE rating 2053, Woman FIDE Master)– FIDE Rank: 19,276
- Nemo Zhou (FIDE rating 2172, FIDE Master/Woman Grandmaster) – FIDE Rank: 9,590
- Jennifer Yu (FIDE rating 2283, FIDE Master/Woman Grandmaster) – FIDE Rank: 4,583
- Andrea Botez (FIDE rating 1837, no FIDE title) – FIDE Rank: 63,202
- Julia Schulman (FIDE rating 1859, no FIDE title) – FIDE Rank: 57,203
- Alexandra Botez (FIDE rating 2044, Woman FIDE Master) – FIDE Rank: 20,297
For reference, the highest player ever ranked, Magnus Carlsen, had a peak FIDE rating of 2882.
Players start with a score of 1000 and go up or down depending on how they play.
If you were to look at ratings on a bell curve distribution, novices usually have a rating of 0–1000 and the average of club or tournament players ratings is around 1500.
Ratings above 1800 are above the 99.16 percentile of players, ratings above 1900 are above the 99.50 percentile of players, ratings above 2000 are above the 99.71 percentile of players, ratings above 2100 are above the 99.85 percentile, ratings above 2200 are above the 99.83 percentile players, and ratings above 2300 are above the 99.97 percentile of players.
Women players in the FIDE system, ratings between 2000–2099 are Woman Candidate Masters, ratings between 2100–2199 are Woman FIDE Masters, ratings between 2200–2299 are Woman International Masters, and ratings above 2300 are Woman Grandmasters.
Archaic and retrograde “Woman Titles” in Chess. I know.
Here’s the FIDE reasoning below:
https://www.fide.com/docs/presentations/2022%20FIDE%20Exchange%20Forum%20-%20Smerdon.pdf
