Sunday saw the end of the excellently organized Open Tournament in Menorca. In the final spurt, Arjun Erigaisi secured tournament victory thanks to his superior tiebreak score. With this triumph, Arjun climbed to number seven in the live ratings list. Kirill Alekseenko and Maksim Chigaev grabbed second and third place, respectively. | Photos: ChessBase India, Menorca Open
With the top players mainly playing online and freestyle, there has been little change at the top of the rankings. Magnus Carlsen, the current World Champion in Rapid and Blitz, is still the world number one, as he has been since July 2011. Fabiano Caruana follows in second place and is the only other player besides Carlsen with a rating of 2800+.
It is 1 February and FIDE has published their new World Ranking List. There have been some changes in the rankings, mainly due to the results of the tournaments in Wijk aan Zee, but Carlsen, Caruana and Nakamura continue to lead the world rankings despite not having played a FIDE rated game in January. Ju Wenjun has moved back into second place behind Hou Yifan in the women's rankings.