Compare the playing strength histories of your favorite chess content creators of 2021! Could John Bartholomew beat Eric Rosen in 2013? When did Daniel Naroditsky reach Master-Level playing strength? Was Daniel Rensch ever better than Robert Hess? Was Aman Hambleton ever better than Eric Hansen? Answer all of these questions and more with this wonderful data visualization!
*The International Master (IM) and Grandmaster (GM) Titles are awarded after a series of criteria are met. One of these requirements is to achieve a certain rating (2400 for IM, 2500 for GM), but both titles have other requirements that must be met as well in order to earn the title. It is possible for a player to exceed the rating for IM or GM and not be awarded the respective title. This contrasts with the FIDE Master title (FM) and the Candidate Master title (CM) which are automatically and permanently awarded upon reaching 2300 rating and 2200 rating, respectively.
FAQ:
1. Why do you skip lots of months at the beginning?
I pulled this data directly off of FIDE’s website. That’s the only place this data is stored, as far as I know. FIDE only started tracking rating histories in 2000, and they only updated them every few months, so there’s no way to get the data for the missing months. Eventually FIDE started tracking rating histories after every month, and this is reflected in the data visualization. This sort of worked out in the end since the video would have been too long and likely too boring if all of the missing months were included.
2. Why is the timeline at the bottom all messed up?
The software I used to create this visualization automatically created the timeline based on the names of the x-values (months) every 10ish x-values. Since some months were missing from the data (see Q1), this results in a screwy-looking timeline.
3. [insert streamer / content creator] is a huge chess creator but they’re not in this video!
This is likely because of one of four reasons. The first is that the content creator has not publicized their full real name, so there is no way I can lookup their FIDE account (ex. ChessNetwork). The second is that their FIDE rating was too low for them to ever be graphed on the chart, or they don’t have a FIDE rating at all (ex. both Botez sisters, Jonathan Schrantz, Agadmator, salty_clown, etc.) If you suspect this is the reason, you can see if they’re in this video, which includes all the data I collected to create this visualization: . The third is that they are too small or a chess content creator or not active enough in the chess community in January 2021 for me to have decided that they were worth putting in the video. There are hundreds of chess streamers and personalities, so I had to only choose the most popular and active chess content creators. The fourth is that I simply forgot, in which case, I’m truly sorry.
4. Will you heart my comment?
Yes I will, 100%, especially if you appeared in this video.
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