Best female chess player

Judit Polgar has beat 11 World Champions.

Noone is in Judit Polgar's class to this point.

I really enjoy when she commentates games.

@tpr said in #17:

"Where is it verified that all these things are reliable indications of what would happen with players from nearly a century ago?"

• By the elo calculation Sonas conducted backwards in time based on all published chess game results.
  From now to a year ago, to 2 years ago, to 3 years ago... to 100 years ago.

Those may be the best estimates with current tools. But, ....
Extrapolation is inherently unstable so the error bars on those estimate would grow exponentially as the backward extrapolation progresses.

With all that said, it must be Polgar. Even by the Morphy criteria of biggest gap between #1 and #2 I guess it's still Polgar.

maybe humpy

i cant believe her sister was a world champion but not her... not saying her sister was bad

@mkubecek said in #13:
...

In August 2000 list, 15 players have rating 2700 or higher. In August 2025 it's 30 players (and people keep talking about "rating deflation problem" and need to solve it). Is rating of 2700 from 2000 supposed to be an equivalent of 2700 from 2025? Or is being ranked as No 15 an equivalent? It clearly cannot be both. People love having one magic number that can be used to compare easily what is "better" and what is "worse" but life rarely works like that.

The deflation exists. In 2010, almost 50 players had a rating 2700 or higher. There had been some inflation earlier, or maybe just the number of the FIDE-rated players had grown significantly before 2010, thus making a bigger base of the pyramid, so its top (the highest ratings) also became higher. Since 2010, the top 50 is slowly losing ratings in absolute numbers, compared to the previous top 50 ratings lists. (It's not about concrete players dropping out of top 50, but about the top 50 list as such.)

@ILikeBlitz said in #37:

The deflation exists. In 2010, almost 50 players had a rating 2700 or higher. There had been some inflation earlier, or maybe just the number of the FIDE-rated players had grown significantly before 2010, thus making a bigger base of the pyramid, so its top (the highest ratings) also became higher.
That's what I dislike about the generally accepted narrative that "There is deflation, it's a problem, we need to solve it." People take a specific interval (last 10-15 years), a specific metric (rating distribution of the narrow elite) and make conclusion without considering what does the overall rating distribution look like and how it was elvolving over time (and trying to ask why).

Even looking at the specific metric (number of 2700+ rated players), it's more complicated. When we take the actual FIDE rating lists rather than the virtual chessmetrics ratings, the numbers are 1 (1970), 2 (1975), 2 (1980), 2 (1985), 9 (1990), 10 (2000), 15 (2005), 34 (2010), 45 (2015), 37 (2020), 36 (2024) and 30 (2025). These are taken from 2700chess.com where, unlike on fide.com I was able to find the lists (the counts are from January lists). There are many factors like growing player base (how much?) and changes of rating floor and their influence should be investigated carefully. But what happens in reality is that it is widely accepted without much argument that there is a deflation and that it's a big problem that needs to be addressed. On the other hand, (almost) nobody seems to care about the much more rapid inflation period preceding it. Can't help wondering if it's a symptom of the "grow or die" corporate mindset.

I have even more "heretic" idea: assume the deflation seen in last 10 years is indeed a new trend that will continue unless we do something about. But... does it mean we should? What if it only reflects actual "flattening" of the top in the sense of performance? I've seen multiple elite players say that it's much harder to win against lower rated opponents than it used to be. (For various reasons like widespread use of engines in preparation, availability of game databases and efficient tools to process them, deeper opening theory knowledge no longer limited to a narrow group of top players etc.) Others complain that the draw rate in closed tournaments of strongest players is higher than ever. If all of that is true - and it really looks that way - isn't "flattening" of rating distribution among top players just a natural consequence? My point is that e.g. a difference of 100 in Elo rating is supposed to correspond to expected mean result of 0.66:0.34; if the stronger player is no longer able to reach (approximately) two points out of three games on average for whatever reason, the rating difference should not be 100, no matter what the difference in their rank is. But if that's the case, it's not wrong or a problem to address, it's rather a sign that the rating system works the way it was designed to work. And that if we want to do something about it, we should focus on the actual problem, not on its symptoms.

Anyway, for the purpose of this forum topic, it does not really matter what the reasons for inflation and deflation periods are and which of them is a temporary anomally or a long term trend. Either way it supports my claim that one cannot reasonably compare players from diferent epochs, and definitely not by comparing their ratings (whether real or virtual). Yet I understand that majority of people wants to have such simple measure, just like they want the numbers to keep growing and new records to be established.

Highest-Rated Active Female Player
Hou Yifan (China) holds the top spot with a live classical Elo rating of 2609.

Current Women’s World Champion
Ju Wenjun (China) is the reigning Women’s World Champion, having defended her title in April 2025 against challenger Tan Zhongyi in a best-of-12 match.

Greatest Female Chess Player of All Time
Judit Polgár (Hungary) is widely regarded as the best female chess player in history.

@mkubecek said in #38:

That's what I dislike about the generally accepted narrative that "There is deflation, it's a problem, we need to solve it." People take a specific interval (last 10-15 years), a specific metric (rating distribution of the narrow elite) and make conclusion without considering what does the overall rating distribution look like and how it was elvolving over time (and trying to ask why).

Even looking at the specific metric (number of 2700+ rated players), it's more complicated. When we take the actual FIDE rating lists rather than the virtual chessmetrics ratings, the numbers are 1 (1970), 2 (1975), 2 (1980), 2 (1985), 9 (1990), 10 (2000), 15 (2005), 34 (2010), 45 (2015), 37 (2020), 36 (2024) and 30 (2025). These are taken from 2700chess.com where, unlike on fide.com I was able to find the lists (the counts are from January lists). There are many factors like growing player base (how much?) and changes of rating floor and their influence should be investigated carefully. But what happens in reality is that it is widely accepted without much argument that there is a deflation and that it's a big problem that needs to be addressed. On the other hand, (almost) nobody seems to care about the much more rapid inflation period preceding it. Can't help wondering if it's a symptom of the "grow or die" corporate mindset.
(...)

Thanks for correcting me, it was 2015 and not 2010 when there were almost 50 players rated 2700 or higher. The player base had grown a lot in the previous years, as FIDE had lowered the minimal FIDE ratings and motivated countries to transfer from local ratings to FIDE ELO, thus widening the base of the pyramid.
I don't think that nobody cared about the previous inflation. When there was a rating inflation, its existence was widely accepted and some people even disliked it. (Possibly also some players who had reached their peak before the inflation and whose peak ratings looked too low in retrospect.) When there is a rating deflation now, its existence is also accepted, at least on the levels where it manifests itself.
I don't know how much is the deflation a problem or not, you're right that for many people it's a sort of a psychological problem.