Ratings & Titles

The Elo Rating System

Chess ratings are built on a system designed by Hungarian-American physics professor Árpád Élő, adopted by the US Chess Federation in 1960 and by FIDE in 1970. The idea is simple: every player has a number representing their current strength, and that number updates after every rated game based on the result and how surprising it was.

Before a game, the rating gap between the two players predicts an "expected score" — a big favorite is expected to score close to 1 (a full point for a win), while two evenly-matched players are each expected to score close to 0.5. After the game, each player's rating shifts by a fixed maximum amount (the "K-factor") multiplied by the difference between what actually happened and what was expected: beating a much stronger player who you weren't expected to beat produces a large rating gain, while beating a much weaker player you were expected to beat barely moves your rating at all.

Players maintain separate ratings for classical, rapid, and blitz chess, since form and skill in one time control doesn't automatically transfer to another.

FIDE Titles

Titles are awarded for life once earned — a title holder's rating can later drop well below the qualifying threshold without the title itself ever being taken away. Earning one generally requires two things at once: reaching a minimum rating threshold, and achieving a number of strong tournament results ("norms") against a field that includes enough already-titled opposition from enough different countries.

• Grandmaster (GM) — the highest title, requiring a 2500 rating and three qualifying norms.
• International Master (IM) — the second-highest overall title, requiring a 2400 rating and three norms.
• FIDE Master (FM) — awarded on rating alone (2300), with no norms required.
• Candidate Master (CM) — the entry-level FIDE title, awarded at a 2200 rating.

Separate, slightly lower-threshold women's titles exist in parallel — Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM), and Woman Candidate Master (WCM) — though women are equally eligible for the open (non-gendered) titles above, and the strongest women players, including several champions covered on this site, hold the open Grandmaster title outright rather than its women's equivalent.