2023 was a tumultuous year in the chess world, with a new world champion’s crowning and many upstarts crumbling in the limelight of the year’s biggest tournaments. With so much drama on and off the chessboard alike (and some of it still developing), it’s been a heck of a challenge to identify and choose the best and brightest players of the year—but we just about managed to do it for you as we head into 2024, even with the World Rapid and Blitz still ahead of us.
1. Fabiano Caruana
In terms of tournament performances and classical event accolades, it’s tough to argue against Caruana as the best-performing chess player of 2023. With a successful World Cup campaign that yielded a third-place finish and a Candidates spot, defending his US Championship title, and winning three of the five legs of the Grand Chess Tour, including the Sinquefield Cup, it’s no wonder the Italian-American has made it back past the coveted 2800 threshold, a feat especially impressive at a time of rating deflation.
Even with heartbreaks at Norway Chess and the Grand Swiss (both inflicted by Hikaru Nakamura, interestingly enough), 2023 proved to be a standout year for the world number two, who has also significantly improved his showings in faster time formats, putting him in a strong position heading into 2024’s Candidates Tournament.
2. Hikaru Nakamura
Oof, is that the sour smell of controversy in the air? Admittedly, there’s a bit of “grading on a curve” going on here, but everyone’s favorite chess streamer has put up some pretty impressive performances in the few classical tournaments he deigned to participate in, be it Norway Chess or the Grand Swiss, confirming back-to-back Candidates appearances for the first time in his career.
A calm and relaxed Nakamura is a huge threat to even the strongest players in the chess world, but the finals of the Champions Chess Tour showed that the occasion can still get to him sometimes, as he finished chess.com’s premiere rapid competition at a disappointing fifth place.
3. Magnus Carlsen
Number three for the world number one? Yeah. Even with a couple of stinkers, the sort we haven’t seen in a decade, the Norwegian remains the undisputed best at the tournaments he is still willing to take seriously. It’s just that this didn’t include some of the most prestigious competitions in the chess world for 2023, which would have an adverse effect on anyone’s rankings. Carlsen has picked up the last missing trophy for his cabinet in the form of an elusive World Cup win, and he has gone from strength to strength in rapid and blitz tournaments.
However, as far as the classical side of things is concerned, it’s been a spectacularly poor set of showings by the world number one’s standards. Having abdicated his world championship title in the slowest format and opting against participating in the Candidates cycle, there was clearly a “been there, done that” attitude to his non-World Cup showings throughout the year, and there’s a reason why he ends 2023 20 Elo points lower than 2022.
4. Wesley So
Talk about a late rush. Throughout 2023, Wesley So continued to rack up his trademark solid and steady results with his hard-to-beat style with little in the form of standout showings at the biggest tournaments of the world. And yet, he found himself with a realistic chance at qualifying for the 2024 Candidates Tournament across two different avenues, with both the FIDE Circuit and the ratings spot being very much at play. He’s also shown his teeth in faster time controls at the Champions Chess Tour finals in Toronto, scoring a super-impressive win against Magnus Carlsen after a blistering sacrificial attack.
It’s the nature of the beast that is the chess world that he may still miss out on Candidates qualification. December 2023 turned out to be quite a controversial month for the elite of the royal game, with players rushing to last-minute tournaments of varying quality in a bid to rack up circuit points and Elo ratings for those coveted final spots. Say what you will about So’s playstyle and personality, if he were to ultimately make it to the showpiece event, he would have definitely earned it the hard way.
5. Parham Maghsoodloo
The Iranian 23-year-old may not have been a part of the big invitational tournaments of 2023, but he had a quietly impressive year as he kept inching ever closer to the big boys on the ratings charts.
He got on the casual fans’ radar this time last year when he made a splash at the Rapid and Blitz World Championship, and he battled through the open circuit with poise to peak at 2742 Elo in December at a career-best 12th place on the world rankings. Having entered the super-GM club in October 2021 and staying there ever since (if you make an exception for 2699 points, which I will), he broke through quite the barrier in 2023 to pick up 23 invaluable points and could well start showing up in the big invitationals in 2024. Watch this space.
So… why is Ding Liren missing from the list?
Ding Liren is the new world chess champion, after all, right? Well, it takes playing chess to be one of the best players on the planet, and the Chinese grandmaster did not do a lot of that in 2023 (or even the past few years, for what it’s worth). It started out as a mystery, and it was sort of confirmed to be a health reason, but that doesn’t change the fact that the biggest ambassador of the game was missing in action during what was quite a turbulent time for chess. He will return at 2024’s Tata Steel event in January with buckets of ring rust to shake off. It will be an important first step on a long road to legitimacy with Carlsen and Caruana around.
