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Highest chess rating ever achieved by computers

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Artificial Intelligence

About this data

Highest chess rating ever achieved by computers
Chess ability is measured with the Elo rating system, which is calculated based on game results. A higher rating indicates that a player is more likely to win a game.
Source
Chess.com (2020); SSDF (2022, 2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 5, 2024
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1985–2023

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Chess.com; SSDF – Computer Chess Elo Ratings

This dataset provides a historical record of the highest ELO-rated chess engines from 1985 to 2022. The data for the years 1985 through 2019 was sourced from Chess.com, with the primary data originating from the Swedish Computer Chess Association (SSDF). The compilation of this segment involved manual extraction from video content to identify the chess engine with the highest ELO rating for each year, due to the unavailability of the data in any other format.

For the years after 2019, the data was obtained directly from the SSDF, with each year's highest ELO-rated chess engine recorded as a separate data point. These data points are available through archived links of the SSDF's website.

The 2020 data point can be found here. The 2021 data point is documented here. The 2022 data point is accessible here. The 2023 data point is accessible here

This dataset provides an objective overview of the progression of chess engine performance over the years, offering valuable insights for research and analysis in the field of computer chess and artificial intelligence.

Retrieved on
February 5, 2024
Retrieved from
https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1263457516605845505
https://ssdf.bosjo.net/list.htm
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Chess.com (2020); SSDF (2022, 2023)

This dataset provides a historical record of the highest ELO-rated chess engines from 1985 to 2022. The data for the years 1985 through 2019 was sourced from Chess.com, with the primary data originating from the Swedish Computer Chess Association (SSDF). The compilation of this segment involved manual extraction from video content to identify the chess engine with the highest ELO rating for each year, due to the unavailability of the data in any other format.

For the years after 2019, the data was obtained directly from the SSDF, with each year's highest ELO-rated chess engine recorded as a separate data point. These data points are available through archived links of the SSDF's website.

The 2020 data point can be found here. The 2021 data point is documented here. The 2022 data point is accessible here. The 2023 data point is accessible here

This dataset provides an objective overview of the progression of chess engine performance over the years, offering valuable insights for research and analysis in the field of computer chess and artificial intelligence.

Retrieved on
February 5, 2024
Retrieved from
https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1263457516605845505
https://ssdf.bosjo.net/list.htm
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Chess.com (2020); SSDF (2022, 2023)

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At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Highest chess rating ever achieved by computers”, part of the following publication: Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from Chess.com; SSDF. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/computer-chess-ability.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Chess.com (2020); SSDF (2022, 2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Chess.com (2020); SSDF (2022, 2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Highest chess rating ever achieved by computers” [dataset]. Chess.com; SSDF, “Computer Chess Elo Ratings” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/computer-chess-ability.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Data API

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/computer-chess-ability.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear