A friend told me recently that he did “not understand why you are not 2600.” Obviously, this was a flattering reflection on my understanding of chess and ignoring my main weaknesses, such as a lack of reasonable openings, lack of physical fitness and lack of time to train – and also some motivation in developing my own chess, rather than that of my students. And finally, age.

Let’s not talk about me and why I am so obviously far from 2600 and instead look at the players over 50 who actually are over 2600.

Of these nine players, we need to exclude two from the list. Anand has played 1-2 Bundesliga games a year. We will discuss the flaws of the rating system at a later date, but for now, let’s ignore the top-rated player, as we would ignore Garry Kasparov, as he does not play tournaments (there are 19 inactive players over 2600). We can also exclude Afromeev (look him up for a laugh if you please). 

This leaves us with seven players over the age of 50, with a rating over 2600. Shirov, Adams, Gelfand, Ivanchuk and Kamsky all qualified for one or more World Championship finals, under different systems. 

The big exceptions are Milov and Van Wely. Two great players from my generation that continue to play at a high level. Van Wely has been elected to the Dutch parliament and Italian national coach, and play less than he used to as well. 

Forgive me, I don’t know what Milov is up to these days. His peak was at 2705 in 2008 – as number 28 in the World. He is the lowest rated senior, out of 7 of the +2600 players. One of only two not to play a World Championship final.

My peak rating was 2542, also in 2008. At the time I had potential to do better. I was playing at 2600 for a while, but abandoned playing seriously, in order to become the Managing Director at Quality Chess and a father to two daughters. I had half-hearted attempts at playing well. Milov is more active than I, although not as active as he used to be. His rating is just over 100 points less than it was in his mid-30s, and so is mine. The same is the case for all the active players on list. 

You cannot do statistics on an individual (or less than 10,000 examples) – but you absolutely can see the what the averages show. For a variety of reasons, a player in their early to mid-50s will be rated about 100 rating points below their peak. 

I will come back with more posts on the rating system at a later date. They will always be expressing a personal opinion and not be meant to represent the NIC Group, just as this little essay does not express the opinions of the Group, but simply my own observations. If you want a much more insightful and analytical investigation of the rating system, you should check out FM Nate Solon’s feature article in New in Chess Magazine 2024#5.