By IANS
New Delhi : World champion Viswanathan Anand once again moved past the 2800 Elo ratings mark and is sole first in the world rankings list for April 2008. He also opened a huge 15-point gap over Vladimir Kramnik, who was tied with him for first in the previous list. Third placed Alexander Morozevich is 14 points behind at 2774.
Anand, who first moved to the top spot in April 2007 list, gained four Elo points from his previous 2799 and is now perched at 2803.
Koneru Humpy, who has been second on women’s list for a quite a few years crossed a landmark, when she became only the second woman to go past the 2600-mark on Elo ratings list. She is now 2603.
The topper in women’s section is Judit Polgar (2709), whose rating makes her 21st in the overall list. Then there is Humpy and in third place is the Chinese sensation Hou Yifan, who turned 14 just a month ago. She is third at 2549.
Krishnan Sasikaran is 43rd on the list after a career-high 21 at one stage in 2007, while Pentala Harikrishna, who once was as high as 25th, is now 41st.
There are three other Indian girls in top-50. S. Vijayalakshmi is 26th at 2464 and Dronavalli Harika is 27th at 2461. Tania Sachdev is 43rd at 2423.
Anand, who has consistently been among the top three in the world throughout the 1997-2007 period, first became the No. 1 after winning the Morelia-Linares title in 2007.
Anand is only the sixth person after Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Kramnik and Vesselin Topalov to ever claim the World’s No. 1 ELO rating since the rating system was introduced in 1970.
In the men’s section Kramnik stays at second place with 2788, while Morozevich gained points to move to third place at 2774. Like Kramnik, Veselin Topalov shed points to slip to fourth at 2767.
The big sensation is Magnus Carlsen, who at 17 years and four months is in fifth place, just 38 points below the leader. Carlsen is at 2765 Elo points.
Levon Aronian has gained 24 points to install himself firmly in place six and he is just two points behind Carlsen and four shy of Topalov. Other notables in the April 2008 list include 21-year-old Teimour Radjabov, who gained 16 points to move from place 12 to place eight.
Peter Svidler lost 17 points to drop from place five to nine while Peter Leko, who is having a bad spell, dropped 12 points and two ranks to end 10th at 2741. Vassily Ivanchuk, who in October 2007 was second in the world, is now number 11 at 2740. Alexei Shirov lost 15 points to drop from seventh to 12th at 2740.