Context Rankings are a constant phenomenon in society, with a persistent interest in the stratification of items in a set across various disciplines. In sports, rankings are a direct representation of the performance of a team or player over a certain period. Given the straightforward nature of rankings in sports (points based system) there is the opportunity to statistically explore rankings of sports disciplines. Content The dataset comprises monthly rankings data of the Top 100 Chess players between July 2000 and June 2017 . The data is housed in a single csv file. Acknowledgements Data was sourced from the official site of the World Chess Federation: fide.com Inspiration This dataset could be of use to anyone interested in the distribution of rankings in competitive events.