The Best Performers of Women’s Chess: a 12-month Collection

The standard way of assessing a player’s strength is through their rating. It is also fun to take a player’s performance rating, which mathematically spits out the strength that a player has played at over a period of time, given their results against their given opponents.

“Women’s Chess Coverage” has put together the 12-month tournament performance ratings (TPR) of the top women’s players, and compared them to their official FIDE ratings.

Nine players have performed at a 2500-level over the last 12 months (up to June 1, 2025). Unsurprisingly, four of the top five are Chinese players who dominate the standard rating leaderboard, and then notably, Anna Muzychuk has had a splendid year, playing at an excellent 2560-level, while several formerly-representing-Russia players – Aleksandra Goryachkina, Kateryna Lagno, Alexandra Kosteniuk – have fallen below the lofty precedents they have set for themselves. Obviously, if you outperform your rating it will increase to ‘catch up’, and if you underperform it will go down. It would be interesting to see this with their ratings at the start of the 12-month period too.

It is also impressive to see that several players have played over 100 games in this time. On the flip side, Lei Tingjie has been very quiet, as has World Champion Ju Wenjun outside of the title match.