The May FIDE rating list has GM Ding Liren back as the world’s number two player, 58 points behind World Champion Magnus Carlsen and just two points ahead of GM Alireza Firouzja, who was in second place before. Meanwhile, the list reflects that a lot of young players are on the rise.

Ding completed no fewer than 28 games in a month in different events in China, with which he became eligible to replace GM Sergey Karjakin in the FIDE Candidates Tournament in case the appeal from the Russian Chess Federation will be denied by the Ethics & Disciplinary Commission. Ding won 7.2 rating points, is back above 2800 and back as the number two player. Consequently, if he’d play the Candidates, he’d be the top seed.

Except for Ding and GM Fabiano Caruana, who won five points in The American Cup, the other top 10 players who were active in this period all lost rating. A result of that was GM Richard Rapport, one of the FIDE Candidates, reaching his career’s highest position as the new world number five.

The biggest change at the top was a 20-point drop for GM Levon Aronian. Another American player did much better: GM Hikaru Nakamura won 10 points, also qualified for the Candidates and is now in 11th position, just one point behind number 10 GM Anish Giri.

A bit further down the list we see GM Jorden van Foreest reaching his career’s highest rating so far (2715) although he was coming from 2714 after a gain of 12 points in March. GM Sam Sevian broke 2700 for the first time and now sits on 2703, having won nine points for the April list and another 10 last month.

The biggest gain was for GM Matthias Bluebaum, who won 26 points which included the 20.4 points he gained while winning the European Individual Championship. 

Other young players who reached career’s highs are GMs Arjun Erigaisi (2675), Vincent Keymer (2667), Narayanan S.L. (2662), Gukesh D. (2659), Hans Niemann (2656), Haik Martirosyan (2652), Alan Pichot (2652), Jules Moussard (2651), and Amin Tabatabaei (2650) with the latter six names having entered the world’s top 100 for the first time.

Especially Gukesh stands out in the above list. The 15-year-old Indian player won two open tournaments back-to-back in Spain: first the La Roda Open and then the Menorca Open. With his second place in the Reykjavik Open just before that, Gukesh gained 45 points in the last two months. It will be exciting to see him play in India’s B team at the Olympiad, where GM Viswanathan Anand sadly decided not to participate.

Presenting the 🇮🇳 squad for the 44th #ChessOlympiad scheduled to begin from July 28 in Chennai 😎

Get ready to cheer for the 🇮🇳 stars as they prepare for the historic, 1️⃣st ever Olympiad in their home country 🥳#FIDECHESSOLYMPIAD2022 | @FIDE_chess | @DrSK_AICF | @Bharatchess64 pic.twitter.com/tqF138G9SX

— All India Chess Federation (@aicfchess) May 2, 2022

FIDE Standard Ratings Per May 1, 2022 (Top 20)

Data courtesy FIDE.