Lowest rated grandmaster

Grandmaster is a lifetime title.

Who's the grandmaster with lowest Elo rating?

Who's the grandmaster with biggest loss from peak rating to the present rating?

Part 1 is pretty easy - just use an Advanced Search on the FIDE site and it will give you the answer. The lowest rated GM at the moment is Nicola Spiridonov from Bulgaria with a FIDE rating of 2135. He also happens to be at least 77 years old.

Unfortunately, I don't think the Advanced Search function returns a player's peak rating, just their current rating, so I don't know how you'd go about answering your second question.

And the second lowest rated grandmaster is an original International Master: Arthur Bisguier.

You can't put words which people haven't used in inverted commas. 

Batman.

Yeah, I don't know that the original poster was trying to imply these grandmasters were somehow unworthy - just that their present rating is not what it once was. I think it's very impressive that they're still active even at their ages: clearly it's not a matter of winning or losing for them (if it ever was) but really for the sheer joy of the game, which I think is awesome.

An FIDE rating of 2135 is pretty impressive for anyone of whatever age. I don't think many of us, including myself, will ever get anywhere near that. As david writes, having a rating means that these GMs are still active. I've gave up playing in rated tournaments and matches decades ago but I sense that if I hadn't I be heading towards a senior rating much, much lower than anything I attained during my pomp.

@Karpark

what do you figure get worse as you get much older-  do you end up blundering  alot or does your visualization falter??  or do you just lose stamina to do good chess during long, difficult games?

: curious. and from a middle-aged guy...

also wondering whether a good exercise program helps and is important to fight off some of the effects of this.

Also, moved to "Chess Players"...

Boris Gulko discusses why your chess skills decline as you get older.  In one of his books he talks about how whatever part of your brain stores tactics, starts to decline as we age, as where the part of the brain that stores positional/strategic ideas stays with us longer.  

Loss of stamina is definitely part of it, I reckon. It's not so much that you blunder (though of course that can happen) as your calculation faculties aren't so good and you find it a little harder to think far ahead, resulting occasionally in tactical errors but more often in positions that you hadn't anticipated as candidate positions (cf. Kotov) but would have perhaps when you were younger. In some respects, however, your deeper strategic understanding of the game and a wider recognition of patterns and motifs, both born out of experience and, in particular, of years of looking over the games of the good and the great (an activity that old age has made me realise is really useful), can actually enhance your game and compensate for this. Though I don't do these, I'm sure too that blindfold chess exercises - as I still work I don't have as much time as I'd like and so don't do these - would be useful. Of course I can only really speak for myself. Others may have other views and may be experiencing the aging process in different ways.  

p.s. Just seen the comment on Gulko which was posted as mine was. We seem to agree broadly speaking.

I am not sure if the OP's post has been modified but I see nothing about implying unworthyness.  I think the question of how our cognitive abilities decline as we age is an interesting one.  IQ tests are not typically in the public domain, but chess ratind are and so present a real window into that process.  Yes, I understand that there are many confounding variables but it is certainly an interesting data-set which could be mined for some insights.  Great post. 

some players Keep playing not SO far from their peak, then. ok.  so one wonders what they Are doing to keep in top notch form that others are not...

I am curious as to whether a persons physical fitness factors into this.  does anyone know of chess masters who have made big efforts to exercise and still fit?  ofc, I would imagine this HAS to help (being in fit). 

If you are older and are playing,  what do you do to train.  Diet? Exercise?  long hours of study?  gentle training and lots of sleep and vitamens??

Best comment I have seen on these forums.  Well played.

The title of Grandmaster has always been intended as lifetime (but not posthumous!) title. The original crop of grandmasters included a lot of elders - Mieses (then 85), Maroczy, Bernstein, Rubinstein, Duras, Vidmar, Tartakower, Kostic, Levenfish, Grünfeld, Sämisch.

In 1950, Euwe, then 49, was still active, and fought (but lost) Candidates Tournament of 1953, age 52.

So, how active were the abovementioned 11 elder grandmasters?

Of course, Elo rating did not exist before 1970. So, for any player who was at peak before 1970, the top rating is undefined.

i though he is asking so he can have some hope to achieve the title...

No hope ;-)

But: does the activity of such low rated Grandmasters help others become Grandmaster?

Two effects:

1. Players who give up chess and retire or die at high rating destroy Elo points by so doing. Players who keep playing while past their prime return their Elo point into circulation
2. The requirements for a tournament to give grandmaster norms include average rating of tournament, which has to be at least 2380, but also presence of at least 3 grandmasters. So an old past prime grandmaster may drive down the average rating of the tournament, but can be balanced be a majority of international masters in their upper 2400s, and count into the required 3 grandmasters.

So, has there been a tournament attended by 3 grandmasters, one of whom was Bisguier well past his prime?

gift me a membership plsssssssssssssss