FIDE Rating List - January 2017

A new year means it's time to look at the January release of the FIDE rating list. Last year I made two posts out of it:-

• FIDE Rating List - January 2016
• FIDE's 'Not Rated' Players

Once again, FIDE's download page (see last year's post for a link) offers six different lists and once again I chose to download the 'STANDARD rating list'. The January 2016 list had over 231K players and this year's list has over 265K. I'll look at the new list in another post.

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The close of the old year brought news of another rating system for the new year. Shown in this video is 'Michael Khordarkovsky [sic], Spokesperson, The Grand Chess Tour', who is perhaps better known as 'Michael Khodarkovsky, President, Kasparov Chess Foundation'.

Universal Rating System (URS™) - New Chess Rating System (9:30) • '18 December 2016; For Immediate Release; Grand Chess Tour Introduces Innovative Universal Rating System'

The description continued,

The Grand Chess Tour (GCT) is pleased to announce that the selection of the 2017 GCT Tour wildcards will be based on a new rating system. This new system will be known as the Universal Rating System (URS™). The first URS™ list will be officially published on 1 January 2017 and will be accompanied by the launch of the official website explaining the methodology.

Someone really likes the trademark symbol ('TM'™)! For the rest of the press release, which is signed 'Graham Jurgensen, Technical Director, Grand Chess Tour', see Grand Chess Tour Introduces Innovative Universal Rating System. According to the release, the first official list should be available by now, and I'll also look at in another post.