2023 Year In Chess
The chess world had a busy year in 2023. From the World Championship in the spring to a busy December that featured the Champions Chess Tour Finals and a mad dash to the next Candidates Tournament, there was no shortage of chess being played.
Through it all, who was the best performing player of the year? Who had the best tournament performance? Who gained the most rating? And who played the most games over-the-board and on Chess.com? Those are just some of the questions we answer in our 2023 Year in Review.
As the clock ticks down, sit back and join the dive into the most fascinating numbers and stories from the world of chess this year.
Over-the-board statistics:
- Overall classical performance
- Top tournament performance
- Biggest rating gain
- Most games
- Most tournament games
- Longest game
Chess.com statistics:
- Most games played
- Most puzzles taken
- Most Titled Tuesday wins
- Most popular events
- Most read articles
- Most popular X/Twitter posts
- Most popular Instagram posts
- Most popular Youtube videos
- Most popular Tiktok posts
- Most popular Facebook posts
Overall classical performance
GM Fabiano Caruana tops the list of the highest average rating performance after an amazing year where he won major events such as the Superbet Chess Classic, Sinquefield Cup and U.S. Chess Championship, while also finishing third in the FIDE World Cup. The 31-year-old gained almost 40 rating points, crossed 2800 for the first time since 2021, and returned to number two in the world rankings.
GM Hikaru Nakamura is just four points behind at 2804 after two brilliant performances in Norway Chess and the FIDE Grand Swiss, which saw him qualify for the Candidates. Can you believe that the full-time streamer was not even among the world's 20 top-ranked players four years ago? Now he's third.
The Champions Chess Tour was dominated by GM Magnus Carlsen who won the Finals in Toronto, but his year in classical chess was below his usual standard. Despite winning the World Cup, the Norwegian also had some of his worst results in his career and scored a yearly rating performance below 2800 for the first time since 2007.
Top tournament performance
Caruana, Nakamura or Carlsen could not compete with the most spectacular performance of the year. GM Hans Niemann won the Tournament of Peace in Zagreb with a massive 8/9, three full points ahead of the field for a 2946 performance.
Polish GM Mateusz Bartel returned to the world's top 100 ranked players thanks in large part to his 8/9 in the Polish League, a rating performance of 2933, the second best of the year.
The third best performance was made by Caruana who won the Sinquefield Cup with 5.5/8 and a 2892 performance, ahead of Nakamura's 6/9 in Norway Chess and GM Vidit Gujrathi's 8.5/11 in the FIDE Grand Swiss, the event that qualified him for the Candidates in 2024.
Most rating points gained
Five of the six players who gained the most rating in 2023 hail from India. At the top of the list is 18-year-old Verdant Nagarkatte, who started the year with a 1698 rating, but gained a whopping 622 points through five months from April to September. He now has the FM title and is rated 2320.
Second on the list is 17-year-old Velpula Sarayu, who made headlines on Chess.com by scoring one of the most remarkable results in chess history when she defeated masters rated more than 600 points higher than her. She went from 1847 in January to 2444, ranking second in the world among girls under 20.
The other players on the top-eight list come from China and the United States.
Most games played
It's hardly surprising to see the Russian-born Spaniard GM Oleg Korneev topping the list, as the 54-year-old has been touring Europe playing almost non-stop for years. Korneev played a total of 294 FIDE-rated games in 2023. July was his most active month at 47 rated games, 45 of them in classical chess.
Korneev played 73 games more than the second-most active player, Ukrainian GM Valeriy Neverov. IM To Nhat Minh from Hungary is third, with GM Vitaly Sivuk and Peruvian youngster (as yet still untitled) Fabian Ricardo Reyes fourth and fifth respectively.
Most tournament games
The chess calendar has become increasingly packed with events, thanks to regular online events, but also over-the-board tournaments. But who are the most active players combined?
The most active top player in the world today is Peruvian GM Jose Martinez Alcantara who had 1084 tournament games in 2023, 26 more than Nakamura. The number was helped by playing in almost every Titled Tuesday and in Champions Chess Tour Play-Ins.
Nine of the top ten most active players are grandmasters, with IM Rudik Makarian, the only IM.
Longest game
It didn't reach 200 moves, but it wasn't far away. The game between Chen Hongsen and Adelard Bai in the World Youth U18 lasted 196 moves after a queen endgame, the longest classical game of the year. That's 17 moves more than the longest grandmaster game between GM Sam Sevian and GM Darius Swiercz.
Chess.com: Most games played
| User | Games | Average per day | |
| 1 | @bleuletalonoir | 105,274 | 297 |
| 2 | @TTom001 | 89,737 | 253 |
| 3 | @lagoonized | 87,671 | 247 |
| 4 | @Ladybird2690 | 77,075 | 217 |
| 5 | @OJS0870 | 76,485 | 215 |
This author played 1703 games on Chess.com this year, but that is miles away from our most active user. bleuletalonoir has played an incredible 105,274 games, or 295 games per day, in 2023. That is more than 15,000 more than the next person on the list, TTom001, who played 89,737 games.
A total of 12.5 billion games have been played on Chess.com in 2023. That's roughly 35 million games per day. On February 17, the year's busiest day, 69 million games were played on Chess.com.
Of course, by the time you have read this article, we will have added a few more!
Most Titled Tuesday wins
| Rk | Player | W | Total* |
| 1 | Hikaru Nakamura | 17 | 44 |
| 2 | Magnus Carlsen | 9 | 12 |
| 3 | Dmitry Andreikin | 6 | 16 |
| 4 | Alireza Firouzja | 5 | 8 |
| 5 | Nihal Sarin | 5 | 5 |
| 6 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 5 | 5 |
| 7 | Daniil Dubov | 5 | 11 |
*Total since February 1, 2022, the first week with two tournaments.
Nakamura continues to dominate Chess.com's weekly Titled Tuesday, the 11-round Swiss tournament for titled players. In 2023, the 36-year-old won 17 events, eight more than Carlsen. Twice during the year, they won one event each on the same day: July 11 and December 19.
Most puzzles taken
| User | Puzzles solved | Average per day | |
| 1 | @LukasKaras | 277820 | 783 |
| 2 | @faraway-galaxies | 274199 | 772 |
| 3 | @TheJooble | 195680 | 551 |
| 4 | @jamacfarlane | 168920 | 476 |
| 5 | @Suzee529 | 164464 | 463 |
We're sure you love to solve puzzles on Chess.com, but probably not as much as these users. LukasKaras has taken an unbelievable 277,820 puzzles this year, an average of 783 puzzles per day. User faraway-galaxies is not far behind on 274,199 puzzles.
The total number of puzzles solved on Chess.com in 2023: over four billion, or 35 million per day.
Chess.com: Most popular events
| Place | Event | Peak Viewership |
| 1 | FIDE World Championship 2023 | 572,000 |
| 2 | FIDE World Cup 2023 | 350,000 |
| 3 | PogChamps 5 | 182,000 |
| 4 | Airthings Masters | 171,000 |
| 5 | Champions Chess Tour Finals 2023 | 167,000 |
The World Championship match between GM Ding Liren and GM Ian Nepomniachtchi was unsurprisingly the event of the year, reaching a peak viewership of 572,000. Next was the FIDE World Cup, with three Chess.com events closely following each other after that.
The highlight of the World Championship was, of course, the final day of the match. The tiebreaks ended up receiving more than two million views on the YouTube stream.
Most read articles
The list of the most read news pieces is dominated by the FIDE World Championship match and the FIDE World Cup.
- Ding Liren Wins 2023 FIDE World Championship In Rapid Tiebreaks
- Carlsen Wins 1st World Cup, Caruana Places 3rd
- Praggnanandhaa-Carlsen In Final; Goryachkina Takes Women's Title
- End Of An Era: Magnus Carlsen Plays Last Classical Games As World Champion
Most popular X/Twitter posts in 2023
Ding Liren wins the 2023 FIDE World Championship 🏆
— Chess.com (@chesscom) April 30, 2023
Congratulations to Ding on becoming the new FIDE World Champion, and cementing his place in chess history after a thrilling match! 👏 pic.twitter.com/YqMTCtm6Zs
does green make our butts look big? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/1pd776nqmG
— Chess.com (@chesscom) November 23, 2023
🔥 @MoSalah pic.twitter.com/87qHWNL1dm
— Chess.com (@chesscom) November 25, 2023
Most popular Instagram posts
1. "crunchy"
3. "Tani Adewumi teases Gotham"
Most popular YouTube videos
First with 3.03 million views: Magnus Carlsen Arrives With Only 30 Seconds To Play
Second with 1.6 million views: Chess Grandmasters Solve Puzzles In 10 Seconds!
Third with 1.5 million views: Hikaru Nakamura Battles Against Magnus Carlsen's Speed
Most popular Tiktoks
1. Magnus and Hikaru bid 1 second apart in armageddon
Most popular Facebook posts
And that was the year in chess! What was your favorite video, post, moment, statistic, tournament, or match of the year? Let us know in the comments!
Tarjei J. Svensen is a Norwegian chess journalist who worked for some of the country's biggest media outlets and appeared on several national TV broadcasts. Between 2015 and 2019, he ran his chess website mattogpatt.no, covering chess news in Norwegian and partly in English.
In 2020, he was hired by Chess24 to cover chess news, eventually moving to Chess.com as a full-time chess journalist in 2023. He is also known for his extensive coverage of chess news on his X/Twitter account.
