Luke McShane

English GM

“There’s a popular belief that the world’s strongest chess players maintain their high ratings thanks to a ‘closed elite club.’

According to this theory, the same players receive invitations to the same tournaments, where they play each other over and over again, and the large number of draws between equal opponents means that ratings practically never change.

There’s some truth to this: some elite tournaments do indeed turn into rather boring ‘draw festivals.’ However, the broader claim is nonsense — no closed club exists! Most top players regularly face ‘ordinary’ grandmasters as well — in national leagues, international team competitions, and sometimes at major open tournaments.

For example, the St Louis Masters tournament: It featured more than 70 players — from strong tournament players to Fabiano Caruana. His participation as the top seed was somewhat of a surprise for a tournament where the second seed was only slightly above the world Top-50 boundary.

The winner of the tournament, by the way, was not Caruana, but GM Mikhail Antipov. He literally demonstrated Magnus Carlsen-level play.”