Will 10 year old Keymer Vincent be the world chess champion in the future ?
FIDE ratings are given to players based on the performance of rated games played irrespective of age. If a player aged 10 years has a rating equal to that of a 30 year old player, you intuitively feel the 10 year old player has a lot more potential to succeed than the 30 year old player. In order to compare the strength of chess players across different ages I calculated z-score by age. Essentially a high z-score means a player is considerably stronger than players of his age group. The z-score of 3.0 means that he is stronger than 99.9% of players in his age group.
The following list gives the top 50 players with the highest z-scores based on the FIDE rating list of March 2015.
Z-Score Name Birth Country
4.34 Keymer Vincent 2004 Germany
4.07 Wei Yi 1999 China
4.01 Praggnanandhaa R 2005 India
3.90 Giri Anish 1994 Nederlands
3.89 Abdusattorov Nodirbek 2004 Uzbekistan
3.86 Rapport Richard 1996 Hungary
3.80 Artemiev Vladislav 1998 Russia
3.79 Carlsen Magnus 1990 Norway
3.75 Sindarov Javokhir 2005 Uzbekistan
3.73 So Wesley 1993 USA
3.73 Firouzja Alireza 2003 Iran
3.73 Caruana Fabiano 1992 Italy
3.68 Liang Awonder 2003 USA
3.64 Yu Yangyi 1994 China
3.57 Niemann Hans M 2003 USA
3.56 Sevian Samuel 2000 USA
3.55 Tabatabaei M amin 2001 Iran
3.55 Matviishen Viktor 2002 Ukraine
3.55 Fedoseev Vladimir 1995 Russia
3.55 Duda Jan Krzysztof 1998 Poland
3.55 Ding Liren 1992 China
3.53 Dubov Daniil 1996 Russia
3.52 Hong Andrew Z 2004 USA
3.51 Nyzhnyk Illya 1996 Ukraine
3.49 Hou Yifan 1994 China
3.47 Bjerre Jonas 2004 Denmark
3.46 Esipenko Andrey 2002 Russia
3.46 Cotes Ontibon Anibal Santiago 2007 Colombia
3.46 Kasparov Garry 1963 Russia
3.44 Donchenko Alexander 1998 Germany
3.43 Gasimov Parviz 2000 Azerbaijan
3.41 Izotov Ivan 2005 Russia
3.41 Xu Arthur Zihan 2007 USA
3.41 Vachier Lagrave Maxime 1990 France
3.41 Smirnov Anton 2001 Australia
3.40 Lomasov Semen 2002 Russia
3.39 Gadimbayli Abdulla 2002 Azerbaijan
3.39 Naroditsky Daniel 1995 USA
3.39 Li Ruifeng 2001 USA
3.38 Karjakin Sergey 1990 Russia
3.38 Deac Bogdan Daniel 2001 Romania
3.37 Bai Jinshi 1999 China
3.37 Robson Ray 1994 USA
3.37 Kozak Adam 2002 Hungary
3.37 Low Zhen Yu Cyrus 2002 Singapore
3.34 Xiong Jeffery 2000 USA
3.34 Vettese Nicholas 2004 Canada
3.34 Tari Aryan 1999 Norway
3.33 Bukavshin Ivan 1995 Russia
3.32 Karthikeyan Murali 1999 India
Since Keymer Vincent is only 11 years it would be difficult to predict how far he would go, his z-scores show that he is today very much stronger than his age group. I believe he has a chance of becoming world champion if he continues improving at the same rate. Past experiece shows that players with higher z-scores than their peers of the same age have shown improvement.
The following list gives the top 10 players with the highest z-scores based on the FIDE rating list of March 2010.
Z-Score Name Birth Country
4.22 Nyzhnyk Illya 1996 Ukraine
4.11 Carlsen Magnus 1990 Norway
3.94 Kasparov Garry 1963 Russia
3.91 Rapport Richard 1996 Hungary
3.89 Giri Anish 1994 Netherlands
3.88 So Wesley 1993 Malaysia
3.88 Berbatov Kiprian1996 Bulgaria
3.82 Topalov Veselin 1975 Bulgaria
3.79 Aronian Levon 1982 Armenia
3.79 Caruana Fabiano 1992 Italy
The younger players who had strong z-scores has had significant improvements over the last five years, Richard Rapport has increased his rating from 2486 to 2709, Nyzhnyk Illya from 2544 to 2622, Giri Anish from 2624 to 2790, So Wesley from 2665 to 2788, Caruna Fabiano from 2680 to 2802, Carlsen Magnus from 2813 to 2863. Berbatov Kiprian had stopped playing chess in 2011.
There are so many variables that would effect the ratings, like the coach, accessibility to funds, support from parents, the support from the countries chess federation, determination and talent. So its very difficult to predict future world championship candidates, how ever there is no doubt that the fifty names that’s on the list as of today are considerably stronger than their age and have considerable potential and worthy of receiving sponsorship.
The z-scores were calculated downloading Forestpin Lite on a laptop using a chrome browser on the following link
https://www.forestpin.com/lite
To learn more about z-scores checkout
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score
To download the FIDE chess rating list
