8 games against 2750+ opponents (a fair definition of "top players"?) in those two events. 1 win, 2 losses, and 5 draws. The 2650-rated 14 year old has been EXPOSED!

Ah yes, these terrible results. Can you believe he didn't beat any 2700s... other than Van Foreest, Erigaisi, Fedoseev, and Aronian?

Excellent ask! Yes, here they are!

But to close I also want to note how extremely true it is that these have NOT been Mickey Mouse events. For two years (at just 13 to 15 years old) he has been taking on the toughest competition available, and beating rating expectations EVERY TIME. Absolutely remarkable.

Yes, I am excluding the two months where he had two game rated from Schachbundesliga and lost rating points, and not calling those distinct "events". Maybe that's slight cherry picking for the point.

13 events in that span and his rating change: Euro Champ '25 +13 TePe Sigman '25 +8 Svidler Match +16 TUR S. League +4 Grand Swiss '25 +11 World Cup '25 +7 MVL Match +11 Tata Steel '26 +18 Topalov Match +22 TePe Sigman '26 +5 Biel Masters '26 +3 TUR S. League 0 Olympiad '26 +15

In November 2024, Erdogmus played the European Individual Championship and lost 5 rating points. So his rating on that December list dropped from 2604 to 2599. 22 months later, he has not lost rating in ANY other tournament. Not once. Every rating since is equal or better.

14, January birthday

A graph I can't include as a supplement in a reddit comment so I'm posting it here without context (although it's pretty self explanatory and may be of interest even if you're not on the thread)

Love this!!!

So as a rule my benchmark for big gains is that if [new rating] < [performance rating to get there] I'll give it the benefit of the doubt as likely relatively legit, while if it's the other way around I get a lot more skeptical of the new rating.

Not enough to *prove* anything, but my point is this isn't one of the cases (that also happen) where someone jumps from like 2200 to 2500 with a performance rating for the month of 2350ish, by squeezing in a ton of games to one month

*performance ratings in May

Worth noting that both of them had performance ratings in June (2448 and 2380) that were *higher* than their new ratings. So this isn't k-factor shenanigans and overshooting their levels of play, it's just the k-factor working correctly to reflect their strong performances!

I'll bite, I would love to hear an argument that Keymer had a better 2025 than Pragg

Surprisingly Judit didn't hit top 50 until she was 16 (although she hit #55 at age 12) and when Fischer was that age, the rating system wasn't actually established yet.

Just to confirm for the broader audience, your use of the qualifier "non-provisionally" here means outside of the player's first 30 rated games, yes? Because 30 games played is (currently) a requirement for FM title eligibility?

This month's Prodigy Watch update is live: chess.com/article/view/chess… Welcome Charvi Anilkumar not only to the top 5 of the girls list but also to the open top-100 list! (And she's already gained 46 more live rating points on top of the published rating I use here)

My data structure is a database, so I have players and their birthdays in one table and published ratings by player and date in another, and can query ratings by age in various ways from that. Don't have a way to just share it all but I could put together a few reports.

Yeah, e.g. Judit Polgar is the highest rated player ever, prior to the (cherry-picked) age of 12.45, but on the "highest before turning 12.44" list she's 46th Of course that's looking at just before and just after publishing her 190 point rating gain (over 6 months)