Anyone for chess? Analysing chess ratings above high thresholds
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866909051099545600 |
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| author | Hjort, Nils Lid |
| author_facet | Hjort, Nils Lid |
| contents | Suppose some cleverness score parameter is sufficiently
interesting to be defined and then measured, perhaps for
different strata of specialists or for the broader population.
Such phenomena could have Gaussian distributions,
when it comes to all players in a stratum, but when interest
focuses on the very tails, for the top few percent,
those above certain high thresholds,
different models are called for, along with the need
to analyse such based on the listed top scores only.
In this note I develop such models and tools,
and apply them to the top-100 and above 2100 points
lists for regular chess ratings, for the currently active
14671 men and 753 women,
as given by the FIDE, January 2026.
It is argued that even when two or more distributions have
close to identical expected values, or medians,
even smaller differences in variance may explain gaps
for the few very best ones. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_04353 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Anyone for chess? Analysing chess ratings above high thresholds Hjort, Nils Lid Other Statistics Suppose some cleverness score parameter is sufficiently interesting to be defined and then measured, perhaps for different strata of specialists or for the broader population. Such phenomena could have Gaussian distributions, when it comes to all players in a stratum, but when interest focuses on the very tails, for the top few percent, those above certain high thresholds, different models are called for, along with the need to analyse such based on the listed top scores only. In this note I develop such models and tools, and apply them to the top-100 and above 2100 points lists for regular chess ratings, for the currently active 14671 men and 753 women, as given by the FIDE, January 2026. It is argued that even when two or more distributions have close to identical expected values, or medians, even smaller differences in variance may explain gaps for the few very best ones. |
| title | Anyone for chess? Analysing chess ratings above high thresholds |
| topic | Other Statistics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04353 |