March 2025 FIDE Ratings: Gukesh Up To 3rd, Pragg Back In Top 10

World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju is up to a career-best world number-three on the official March 2025 FIDE rating list after overtaking GMs Fabiano Caruana and Arjun Erigaisi during the 2025 Tata Steel Chess Masters. GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, who won the event in a playoff against Gukesh, is back in the top-10 for the first time since July 2024. GM Magnus Carlsen remains world number-one, while GM Hikaru Nakamura is up to second after Caruana's drop. 

We didn't report on the February FIDE rating list, since it fell in the middle of the supertournament in Wijk aan Zee. The players' live ratings were dramatically different from those published officially on February 1, but now the March 1 rating list does take into account all of the drama.

There were big winners and losers in the Tata Steel Masters, with the headline perhaps the disastrous results posted by the players who began as world numbers two and three, Caruana and Arjun.

Caruana called it "probably my worst tournament since the Olympiad in 2022," while also noting that if he'd won a winning position in round 11 against GM Pentala Harikrishna he might still have challenged for first place.

Arjun got off to a start so disastrous that it felt as though there might really be some curse on him in the Masters (he won no games and lost five as he finished last in 2023), though two impressive wins at the death limited what had been a loss of over 30 rating points.

The beneficiaries of those collapses were the players who tied for first in Wijk aan Zee, Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa.

Gukesh's first tournament since winning the world championship title went almost like a dream after GM Anish Giri missed a win in the first game. Despite losing in the final round he climbed above Arjun and Caruana to a career-best world number-three, while he's already stated his ambition to be the world number-one and not "just" the world champion.

It was Praggnanandhaa, however, who would ultimately have the most to cheer about, as he gained 17 points and climbed six places to world number-eight, matching his last entrance into the top-10 in July 2024. Of course he also managed to win the prestigious Tata Steel Chess trophy.

Praggnanandhaa was the first Indian player to do that since five-time champion GM Viswanathan Anand, and it was Anand he dislodged from the top-10, with the chess legend dropping from 10th to 14th after losing to GM Wesley So in the Chess Bundesliga.   

Other notable gains for players involved in the Tata Steel Masters include GM Vladimir Fedoseev adding 15 points and climbing eight places to world number-16, GM Anish Giri returning to the top-20, and GM Alexey Sarana picking up 17 points to reach 2689.

GM Vincent Keymer lost 12.2 points and dropped six places due to his Wijk performance and one loss in the Bundesliga, but winning $200,000 as champion of the Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam was not bad as a consolation prize!

One hard-to-predict rise came from 39-year-old GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, who climbed nine places to world number-11 after gaining 17 rating points. He scored two wins in the Bundesliga, but his main rise was due to starting the Azerbaijan Championship knockout with 6/6.

His opponent in the Final was GM Rauf Mamedov (2657), who had won just one of his first six classical games, but won each match in rapid or armageddon. The Final saw the first three games drawn before Mamedyarov blundered a fork and Mamedov clinched the title in the second rapid game. Mamedov had also knocked out GM Teimour Radjabov (2692) after a shocking blunder of a queen in the Semifinals. 

FIDE Classical Ratings | March 1, 2025

The exploits of Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa also, of course, keep them top of the Junior FIDE Rating List, while GM Javokhir Sindarov keeps not only impressing in Freestyle Chess but climbing the classical list thanks largely to his devastating form in the Bundesliga.

He did finally concede a draw in the next round.

19-year-old Belgium GM Daniel Dardha moved up two places to world number-four, but the revelation was 17-year-old French GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi, whose spectacular 2898 performance in Djerba and a win in the Bundesliga have taken him to a career high 2622, after gaining a whopping 41 points. He's back in the junior top-10, and younger than all the players above him.  

Junior FIDE Classical Ratings (Top 25) | March 1, 2025

The Monaco FIDE Women's Grand Prix finished just in time to be included in the March rating list. GM Tan Zhongyi started the event rated exactly the same as Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun, and had a chance to break clear before their world championship match that starts in just over a month's time. Instead a lackluster performance followed, though two wins at the end saw Tan limit the damage to six rating points.

Other players performed roughly as expected, so that changes to the list were limited, but IM Bibisara Assaubayeva, who fell ill during the event, dropped 16 points and four places after finishing in last position. IM Divya Deshmukh's tough Tata Steel Chess Challengers saw her drop 20 points and four places, but at 2470 she still remains the highest-rated female junior player by some margin.     

Women's FIDE Classical Ratings | March 1, 2025

All data courtesy of FIDE.