Chess Grandmasters

There is a certain prestige to being a grandmaster in chess. Beginners often wonder how they can become one. Grandmasters command respect from their opponents. When you see a GM title in front of someone's name, you know that person knows a thing or two about chess.

The term "grandmaster" has been used in a chess context for a great many years. A gentleman writing into the magazine Bell's Life in 1838 referred to the English chess author William Lewis as "our past grandmaster." Lewis's student, George Walker, referred to the 18th century French player François-André Danican Philidor as a grandmaster. The tournament directors at Ostend 1907 and San Sebastian 1912 dubbed their events grandmaster tournies. In the run up to the tournament at St. Petersburg 1914, both the German magazines Deutsche Schachzeitung and Weiner Schachzeitung referred to that tournament as a grandmaster event. In 1940, Robert Lewis Taylor wrote into the magazine, The New Yorker, suggesting that the finalists at St. Petersburg 1914, Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Siegbert Tarrasch and Frank Marshall had been described as grandmasters by Russia's Tsar Nicholas II.

In 1924, the French Chess Federation organized a tournament in Paris held at the same time as the Olympic games. Pierre Vincent proposed that a world chess federation be created, and thus, the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) was born. In its early years, FIDE focused on organizing the chess Olympiads, but as yet had no titles as such.

In 1929, Boris Verlinsky won the 6th Soviet Championship, and was declared the first Soviet Grandmaster, although this title was revoked in 1931. In 1935, Mikhail Botvinnik became the second Soviet Grandmaster for his victory at the Moscow international tournament that year. In 1936, the Chess Section in the USSR established a set of rules requiring the players attain a certain minimum score, a 'norm' in tournaments of at least 10 games to become eligible for the title of Master of the USSR.

In 1950, FIDE voted to implement a system of titles, with international grandmaster being the most prestigious. The first set of GMs included then world champion, Mikhail Botvinnik, and those playing in FIDE's first Candidates tournament at Budapest, 1950, such as former world champion Max Euwe, Reuben Fine, Paul Keres, Samuel Reshevsky, Vassily Smyslov along with other players who had been world class at their peak.

In 1953, FIDE brought in rules for a player to become a GM by finishing in the top two places in an international tournament with 80% GMs or International Masters playing. The 1957 regulations returned the focus to players qualifying for FIDE's Candidates tournaments. In 1965, FIDE established a system of tournament categories based on the percentage of GMs or IMs present, and players had to achieve GM norms by winning a certain percentage of games against the GMs, IMs and untitled players playing.

In 1970, FIDE adopted the rating system of the physicist Arpad Elo, using the average rating of participants to determine a tournament's category. In 1978, FIDE introduced a rule that GMs must have achieved a minimum rating of 2450 to qualify for the title. In 1988, FIDE raised the minimum from 2450 to 2500. The current regulations require a player to achieve 2 norms in 2 tournaments of at least 27 games as well as a minimum rating of 2500.

In future blog entries, I hope to look at the players who have become grandmasters in Canada, and annotate some of their games.

References

Chess Informant 26 (1978) and 46 (1988)

FIDE Title Regulations effective from 1 July 2017. FIDE website.

Földeak, Arpad. 1979. Chess Olympiads 1927-1968. Dover.

Hooper, David and Kenneth Whyld. 1992. The Oxford Companion to Chess. Oxford University Press.

Soltis, Andrew. 2000. Soviet Chess 1917-1991. McFarland.

Winter, Edward. Chess Notes 5144 Tsar Nicholas II. Chess History.com Website.

Winter, Edward. 1999. Kings, Commoners and Knaves: Further Chess Explorations. Russell Enterprises.