Chess

I shall talk a bit more about chess in this post.

The main governing body of chess competitions is the FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs, French for "World Chess Federation"). It was founded in France with its first president being Alexander Rueb. It organises major chess competitions like the World Chess Championships and the bienniel Chess Olympiads. The FIDE was also in charge of awarding chess titles like Grandmaster (GM) and International Master (IM) to strong chess players. The first chess players to receive the GM title included Mikhail Botvinik, Paul Keres and David Bronstein, who were all from the Soviet Union.

The Elo rating system, also known as Elo's system, was a set of ratings created by Arpad Elo. It was intended initially for chess players, but the system became widely adopted for other things like sports teams. A chess player's Elo rating was calculated by the FIDE, and currently, as of April 2009, the chess player with the highest rating in the world is Veselin Topalov, Bulgarian chess grandmaster, with a rating of 2812. He is closely followed by V. Anand, Indian chess grandmaster, with a rating of 2783, Magnus Carlsen, Norwegian chess grandmaster and prodigy, with a rating of 2770 and Vladmir Kramnik, Russian chess grandmaster, with a rating 2759. By the way, Singapore is ranked 64th in the world, with 3 GMs and 10 IMs, and an average rating of 2400.