Grandmaster Earnings

  

The average pro chess player makes near nothing. World Champions and super-GMs  make decent livings but compared to pros in other sports, their earnings amount to almost nothing.  From time to time you hear stories about IMs and how broke they are and how they have to beg for money to go to tournaments.  Here is an interesting article from the October, 2005 Cleveland Scene magazine describing life for one IM…Read article

WGM Pogonina recently did an article estimating the prize money income for top GMs in the world today.  Read article  Note that her list does not include all prize money or other chess related income.

 

#1 Viswanathan Anand, India: $2,000,000

#2 Boris Gelfand, Israel: $1,100,000
#3 Magnus Carlsen, Norway: $480,000
#4 Levon Aronian, Armenia: $330,000
#5 Sergey Karjakin, Russia: $300,000
#6 Fabiano Caruana, Italy:  $290,000
#7 Hikaru Nakamura, USA:  $275,000
#8 Vladimir Kramnik, Russia:  $250,000
#9 Alexander Grischuk, Russia:  $185,000
#10 Dmitry Andreikin, Russia : $150,000