Home > Vanguards > Wesley So > Notable Achievements [2]
| Highest Ever FIDE-Rated 14-Year Olds | |||||
| rank | elo rating | country | date achieved | born | |
| 1 | SO Wesley | 2610 | PHI | October 2008 | 09 Oct 1993 |
| 2 | RADJABOV Teimour | 2599 | AZE | January 2002 | 12 Mar 1987 |
| 3 | KARJAKIN Sergey | 2599 | UKR | January 2005 | 12 Jan 1990 |
| 4 | PONOMARIOV Ruslan | 2585 | UKR | July 1998 | 11 Oct 1983 |
| 5 | CARLSEN Magnus | 2581 | NOR | October 2004 | 30 Nov 1990 |
| 6 | HOU Yifan | 2578 | CHN | October 2008 | 27 Feb 1994 |
| 7 | BU Xiangzhi | 2570 | CHN | July 2000 | 10 Dec 1985 |
| 8 | BACROT Etienne | 2565 | FRA | January 1998 | 22 Jan 1983 |
| 9 | LEKO Peter | 2555 | HUN | July 1994 | 08 Sep 1979 |
| 10 | POLGAR Judit | 2550 | HUN | January 1990 | 23 Jul 1976 |
| 11 | CARUANA Fabiano | 2549 | ITA | July 2007 | 30 July 1992 |
| 12 | VACHIER-LAGRAVE Maxime | 2539 | FRA | October 2005 | 21 Oct 1990 |
| 13 | NEGI Parimarjan | 2538 | IND | January 2007 | 09 Feb 1993 |
| 14 | NGUYEN Ngoc Truong Son | 2520 | VIE | January 2005 | 23 Feb 1990 |
| 15 | MALAKOV Vladimir | 2510 | RUS | July 1995 | 27 Nov 1980 |
See Also: Highest Ever FIDE-Rated 15-Year-Olds
World’s Youngest Grandmasters
(related info in the comments section below)
ChessPHI 
7 comments
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January 5, 2009 at 9:26 pm
SugarDom
To libispusher, i’m aware you posted without intention to invoke discussion or debate….
:)
January 5, 2009 at 7:42 am
libispusher
Sugardom wrote:
“I also believed that you don’t have to apply that much ‘chessmetric’ on Kasparov, coz he was playing till 2005.”
“In fact, i did a rough calculation on his performance on rated tournaments from age 16 to 17 and he made 2800!(without chessmetrics or adjustments).”
—
As of now, this page currently lists the ratings for 14- and 15-year olds.
Considering FIDE’s initial rating for Kasparov (2595, ranked 3rd in the world) was issued in January 1980 well after his 16th birthday, I don’t know where else to find any performance data regarding his earlier games.
January 4, 2009 at 11:56 pm
SugarDom
I also believed that you don’t have to apply that much ‘chessmetric’ on Kasparov, coz he was playing till 2005.
In fact, i did a rough calculation on his performance on rated tournaments from age 16 to 17 and he made 2800!(without chessmetrics or adjustments).
That’s why i’ve been saying that the age 16 to 17 is more critical for Wesley, if we are to gauge that his strength is Kasparov-caliber or not.
January 4, 2009 at 11:42 pm
SugarDom
Thanks Libispusher, I think the comparison is accurate to a certain degree.
But, i’m not a big believer in the so called ‘inflation’ and chessmetrics.
Case in point, Eugene Torre was in the top 20s in the early to middle 80s with Elo of 2580. Nowadays, that kind of rating will put you in the 240s.
If you think about it, Eugene’s rating never went higher than 2580 as a matter of fact he’s only rated 2560 currently. Even though, he never stopped playing from the 70s till today, but his rating never got inflated. And i don’t believe that his level of play has degenerated. In fact he got a fantastic result in 2008.
I believe the increase in rating is more likely due to the increase in competition because of internet and computers. Its more likely that from middle 80s onward, 220 better players than Torre joined the competition.
Therefore, I believe that the increase of ratings of the top players today are not just because of inflation but is actually real(of substance). That said, i therefore conclude that Wesley So’s rating is not inflated compared to the previous generation as well….
January 5, 2009 at 7:11 am
libispusher
To Sugardom:
I posted the Sonas list for the purpose of ‘comparison’ between players of different eras (i.e. Fischer’s teen years in the 1950s where the rating system has yet to exist, compared to more recent times) with no intent of invoking discussions about rating inflation/deflation/equilibrium.
Past experience about the endless arguments regarding this have taught us that there is no one on either side that can satisfy their arguments with absolute and calculated certainty.
I guess we’ll have to leave that to FIDE to decide if their system needs to be continuously tweaked or stay as it is now.
But I do like to play the devil’s advocate every now and then.
Kind of confusing if not contradicting, as your statements regarding Torre seemed to imply:
a) Over the course of his career, Torre’s playing strength NEVER dipped but could not keep up with the best players ranking-wise.
b) Torre reached 2580 and could NOT improve his strength after that, since other players have overtaken him ranking-wise.
c) The rapid increase in the chess player database that started around the mid-1980s has absolutely no inflationary effect on their ratings.
During much of the 80s and 90s (i.e. the so-called grassroots chess program years) Eugene played countless rated games against aspiring local players mostly rated roughly 300-400 pts below him. Knowing that there is this 10-point ELO rating swing between winning and losing a game and Torre being not immune against the upset axe, one can only imagine how adversely it affected his rating and wondered how high could it have gone if, say, he stuck to playing the international circuit all those years.
January 4, 2009 at 10:51 pm
libispusher
To Sugardom:
Jeff Sonas made an attempt to get some degree of comparison among the different generations of chessplayers with his Chessmetrics system.
The available data, however, is available only until the end of 2004. The more recent players like Carslen, et al, are not yet conclusively included.
Here’s how it listed the prodigies:
Highest Chessmetrics-Rated Fourteen-year-olds
1. Judit Polgar 2623
2. Bobby Fischer 2620
3. Sergei Karjakin 2616
4. Vladimir Kramnik 2608
5. Gary Kasparov 2602
6. Teimour Radjabov 2597
7. Vladimir Malakhov 2596
8. Etienne Bacrot 2580
9. Peter Leko 2579
10. Henrique Mecking 2576
11. Bu Xiangzhi 2575
12. Ruslan Ponomariov 2574
Highest Chessmetrics-Rated Fifteen-year-olds
1. Gary Kasparov 2702
2. Bobby Fischer 2685
3. Vladimir Kramnik 2663
4. Ruslan Ponomariov 2663
5. Judit Polgar 2655
6. Teimour Radjabov 2640
7. Gata Kamsky 2632
8. Peter Leko 2624
9. Alexander Morozevich 2611
10. Etienne Bacrot 2600
11. Andrei Volokitin 2600
12. Vladimir Malakhov 2598
13. Henrique Mecking 2593
14. Evgeny Alekseev 2593
15. Bu Xiangzhi 2590
January 4, 2009 at 8:35 pm
SugarDom
What is remarkable here is that no undisputed champion (Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Topalov and Anand) is in the list….
So Wesley does not have to break Carlsen’s record…
But he’s still got 8 months, if he’s gonna do it…