Is the average rating of the top players decreasing?

There is no doubt that the age at which players gain the IM and GM titles has been steadily decreasing for decades, with numerous rising stars having earnt their GM title before reaching High School age.

But what does this mean for the average age of the top rated players?

Well let’s take a look at the data:

Top 10 Rated Players Average Age

We can deduce two things from the above chart

1.There was a surge of young talent in the 1980’s to reduce the average age significantly from 40 in 1980 all the way down to 34 in 1990.

2. The Average age has not decreased at all over the last 20 years. The top 10 players in the world have consistently had an average age of around 30.

Top 100 Rated Players Average Age

The data for the years pre 2000 was difficult to get, and there was no way I was going manually gather it, so we will have to settle for the years 2000-2020.

We can see the following

1.During the 2000’s there was a significant decrease in the average age of the top 100. Maybe this was due to younger players working with computers better than the older generation.

2.This pattern was broken in the 2010’s and the average age increased back up to where it started.

So to answer the original question: Is chess becoming a young person’s sport?

Well, no.

Early 30’s is the peak for chess performance. This has been the case for the last 20 years and there is no evidence of it decreasing.