England creeping up the world rankings!

[Keith Arkell]

Here's something for the pessimists who wail against the state of English chess:

FIDE now rank England 9 in the world, using the criteria of the average rating of each nation's top 10 players.

We have inched our way there one place at a time to this, our highest place for a good many years. I remember, for example, that about 8 years ago we were something like 19th.

http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml

[Jonathan Rogers]

That is good news in itself and presumably reflects the continued improvement of David Howell and Jonathan Hawkins - but the very recent return of John Nunn as an "active" player is presumably also an important ingredient. One also notices that one half of our top twelve are over 40 years old, in some cases by a long way. I can't actually follow Keith's link, but I wonder whether we have the oldest top 10 among, say, the top 15 countries.

So I will play the pessimist and suggest that this might turn out to be our high point in recent times.

[LawrenceCooper]

The return of Matthew Sadler didn't do any harm either

[Ian Thompson]

What caught my eye, because it used to be of personal interest, was the rating you need to have to get in the top 100 active English players. For a long time it's been 226x. Now, it's dropped to 2249.

[Angus French]

Ninth's not bad and it's good to be above Germany who have so many more rated players.

Notionally we'll drop back to 10th though when Arkadij Naiditsch transfers to Azerbaijan (and the USA will go from fourth to third when Fabiano Caruana moves).

[Jonathan Bryant]

All of which begs the question of what would be 'par' for England?

9th feels low to me but I know that’s because when I started playing we were second at Olympiads only to the Soviet Union, had three guys in the top 10 at one stage etc etc. If we assume that period to be an outlier what would be a 'reasonable' performance for England given our population size/economy etc? Might we even be punching above our weight?

I suppose it’s unanswerable / would depend on what criteria you chose to employ but I’m interested

(a) what’s your best guess as to where England 'should' be on average?
and
(b) what criteria would you use/what factors would you adjust for to make comparisons?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Punching above our weight by population size, certainly (we're somewhere around 25th in a sorted list of countries by population).

I haven't crunched the numbers to see where we'd be if the old countries still existed - three of the countries above us used to be part of the USSR, which would move us up two places, but we might lose a place to Yugoslavia (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia have ten 2600+ players between them).

[David Robertson]

Top 10' doesn't tell you much more than 'Top 1' might; certainly not 10x more. We're 20 at 'Top 1', by the way. And population metrics are manifestly nonsense: Japan doesn't play the game. Nigeria? Indonesia? Pakistan?

'Top 100' would, I suspect, be a more informative metric, at least as a comparator for those nations making chess a normal cultural opportunity. Then, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, USA and Hungary would, I guess, head the list. And England would decline.

On 'title metrics', I feel we're not grossly out of line (accepting FM is not much sought after). But Jonathan's point is important. And Ian's point strikes at the heart of the problem: commendable strength, but not in depth.

Hence, no reason for false comfort

[Matt Mackenzie]

Indonesia certainly has quite a thriving chess scene, tbf. Fair(er) comment on the others.

[NickFaulks]

FIDE now rank England 9 in the world, using the criteria of the average rating of each nation's top 10 players.

http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml

This surprised me, to the point that I felt the numbers needed checking. England being ranked above Germany didn't feel right.

Well, it is right. However, England's number 10, Stuart Haslinger, is rated 2526, which in Germany would put him at number 36, so I think my puzzlement can be forgiven.

[LawrenceCooper]

FIDE now rank England 9 in the world, using the criteria of the average rating of each nation's top 10 players.

http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml

This surprised me, to the point that I felt the numbers needed checking. England being ranked above Germany didn't feel right.

Well, it is right. However, England's number 10, Stuart Haslinger, is rated 2526, which in Germany would put him at number 36, so I think my puzzlement can be forgiven.

The fewer players compared the better it looks for England. Better still once Naiditsch jumps ship to Azerbaijan. They certainly have a lot more strength in depth though and are much better equipped to produce GMs in the future.