For the first time ever, the United States of America has more number of chess grandmasters than Russia. It is because, as per reports, an increasing number of top Russian players are refusing to represent their country after Vladimir Putin’s plan to attack Ukraine.
The International Chess Federation (FIDE), which is the governing body of chess, has made a release about its July rankings for the world’s top 100 players. It has 13 players from the US and 12 from Russia- the first time that the US has more players on the list.
As per reports, Fabiano Caruana, 29, Levon Aronian, 39 & Wesley So, 28, are all among FIDE’s top ten(10) players in the world this month, rating fourth, fifth as well as the sixth, respectively, whereas the 31-year-old Ian Nepomniachtchi is the only Russian grandmaster in the top 10, ranked seventh.
At the same time, leading Russian chess players, including 32-year-old Dmitry Andreikin, 35-year-old Nikita Vitiugov, 27-year-old Vladimir Fedoseev, 25-year-old Kirill Alekseenko, 28-year-old Alexandr Predke, 22-year-old Alexey Sarana, 20-year-old Andrey Esipenko, 34-year-old Anton Demchenko as well as 41-year-old Vladimir Malakhov, have switched to complete under the flag of the game’s international body.
The reports further added that, “Russia still has the most grandmasters (246) compared to 101 in the United States.
As per Emil Sutovsky, an Israeli grandmaster and FIDE’s director-general, outrage over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has provoked several top Russian players to exit the Russian Chess Federation & join FIDE.
As per reports, “Five years ago, Russia had 22 grandmasters in the top 100,” Sutovsky added. “It is just 12 o’clock today.” This is not due to the elder generation led by Kramkin has dropped off of the list; rather, as the war started, many great Russian chess players felt it was suitable to transfer to playing beneath the neutral flag of FIDE.”