FIDE Title Devaluation

https://en.chessbase.com/post/a-gm-is-a-gm--fide-title-devaluation-270613

Lot of good points in there

Too lazy to click on the link ?  I dont usually do that but sometimes I am forced to .  Nice fish btw !  

Good article, Rex.  Thanks.

Perhaps FIDE will take the next degenerative step and embrace postmodern titles,  In other words, it isn't what you objectively do to get a title, it's how you feel about your strength that will count toward a GM before your name.  I can only dream of how many titled players I could beat right here at Chess.com.  

Hey Bob ! Good point about the postmodern titles . I feel like a GM today so I am one ...   To me the world seems to be going crazy . 

Oh, it is, Rex, it is going crazy!

I find this argument thoroughly pointless, honestly. The rating inflation debate should not affect our views of strength. When you sit down to play chess, you do not sit down to play a number and a title. You sit down to play good moves, and if your opponent plays better moves than you do, they win. A rating (and by extension a title) is simply an indication of the likely result. But I don't need to tell anyone that it is entirely possible for a person with a lower rating to play better moves than someone with a higher rating. I think that if more people have titles, it doesn't mean much. The idea of a "special" award to people playing good chess is still existent in many ways, in rating, in winning tournaments and from tournaments, prize money, and above all, the satisfaction of playing good chess! If that is not enough for some people to pursue chess, if they to pursue chess to gain letters before their names, then I think that is their own problem. 

I think this article's argument is similar to the argument against computer chess. Our beloved game, and indeed, our beloved world, is changing. Chess is no less beautiful because of the rise of computers. It is simply different to the way it was 50 years ago. And the same can be said for titles. If the meaning of a title is changing, I do not think it is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, it is simply something different to what it was 50 years ago. 

Why does that picture look like stalin vs hitler from the side 

When moustaches were law.

The editorial, written in 2013, was basically an argument in favor of limiting the number of GMs simply because there are so many players who can break 2500 now. 

In 1950, the number of people who had run a sub 4-minute mile was zero. Now, there are over 1300 who have accomplished the feat. There has been a clear devaluation of the 4-minute mile over time. 

In order to become a Grandmaster, a player must still outperform other GMs (norms) in at least three FIDE approved events. There is no title devaluation just because there are more people who can accomplish the feat.

Added: the title of Grandmaster hasn't been devalued, but there has been an idea for many years of "Super GMs". That has long been identified as players who have broken 2700. Another way to categorize elite players that has been bandied about is the Candidates Club. That is, the club of players who have qualified for the Candidates at least once in their lives.

You would have made a great Stoic, Mr. Bibber, but then I never agreed with the Stoics.  Take your argument about computers and chess beauty.  The truth is engines have leveled out the styles of the best OTB players and completely changed correspondence chess to the detriment of the game's beauty.

There is an article in the February 2018 Chess Life by Jon Edwards, a top correspondence player at the engine-aided ICCF, where he contends that to be competitive in CC today you have to play like Petrosian.  He puts forth evidence for his conclusion.  Though I enjoy Petrosian's games, I don't want everyone to play like him.

You see, I agree with you about chess and beauty, but I would add depth and variety too.  It is these qualities that attracted me to this game when I was quite young.  My aesthetic sense compels me to read a work like Levitt and Friedgood's Secrets of Spectacular Chess rather than spend time playing blitz (read my review here).

However, despite beauty and depth and variety, standards must be maintained if you believe in excellence.  Don't count on FIDE or even Mr. Rensch here at Chess.com to uphold standards let alone the exclusivity of titles not because they prefer aesthetics over results but because their major concern is the popularization of the game.

After my father taught me chess in the early 1960s, there was something deep within that drew me like a moth to a flame; I wouldn't have given a hoot in hell if someone had tried to sell chess to me by popularizing it and making it something it wasn't.  I see title and rating inflation the same way, as a cultural push toward popularization.

Unfortunately, this illness of the modern age runs through everything and not just chess.  It may be inevitable, but unlike some Stoic I can't go gentle into that good night.

Well, computer chess DOES mean that high level players are a bit more savvy about how to counter dubious moves, especially in the opening. Opening preparation is a large part of GM chess obviously. But I think that the ingenuity involved in FINDING lines to explore with the computer is undervalued. The beauty of high level chess nowadays is finding inventive new moves, and proving that they work. As for depth and variety, there is plenty of that still, especially at your level and mine. Computer chess simply shows us how bad moves are bad. 

You seem to have a set idea of how chess should be based on how you were introduced to it and learned it. I respect that opinion, but everything in this most dynamic world of ours is everchanging, whether we want it to or not. It is a decision to not accept that change. Not to say it is a bad decision, but I would like to relieve you of the idea that every idea which disagrees with your own conclusions is an illness. The children of the 21st century are not ruining the world. They are changing it. Similarly, the chess players of the 21st century are not ruining the game of chess, they are changing it. Personally, I have come to view change as a constant process, not to be judged based on what it leaves behind, but what it proposes to instate. For example, you do not judge a queen trade in chess based on the loss of your queen, but rather the endgame you trade off into. 

I understand your attachment to chess in the day of Mikhail Tal. He was a truly brilliant player, convincing his opponents that his dazzling sacrifices were sound. And, often, they were. However, we are now experiencing chess in the day of Magnus Carlsen, where he will punish you and squeeze you for the slightest mistake. Attacking and inventive chess is not dead however, as can be seen from such players as Alexei Shirov, Veselin Topalov, and Baadur Jobava.

Correspondence chess , for me , is a particular sore point . I played in several organizations for about 2 decades before there were strong chess playing comps/programs and really enjoyed it . I sometimes had as many as 50 games going at the time and when we were using actual post cards delivered by snail mail . When the strong comps arrived on the scene I quit playing . For me , and many others like me , they ruined the game . Who wants to play games that often last years when all you are doing is seeing who has the strongest engine ? ICCF allows engine use because they cannot stop it , other correspondence organizations should realize that they cannot stop it either and just allow it . 

Many titled players here treat cc as blitz chess. 

Lazy and crazy !!  

Fide should lower some title like the candidate master, 2200 elo is master not CM, fide should start with 2000 fide for CM and fide master 2200, I think its reasonable adjustment. It is extremely hard to get 2000 elo otb rating and that should suffice any requirement for CM.

WilliamShookspear: "You seem to have a set idea of how chess should be based on how you were introduced to it and learned it. I respect that opinion, but everything in this most dynamic world of ours is everchanging, whether we want it to or not. It is a decision to not accept that change. Not to say it is a bad decision, but I would like to relieve you of the idea that every idea which disagrees with your own conclusions is an illness."

Like I said, spoken like a true Stoic philosopher.

WilliamShookspear: The beauty of high level chess nowadays is finding inventive new moves, and proving that they work.

Then again, perhaps an American Utilitarian?  In my opinion, today's computer-aided correspondence players are mere data managers and arbiters, going from engine to engine and judging which move fits their need.  What a sad death to a creative game.  Too bad Kotov isn't around today, he could have written a best seller with the title Think Like a Data Manager.

WilliamShookspear: The children of the 21st century are not ruining the world. They are changing it.

Perhaps not a Stoic or a Utilitarian but a Rousseauian Progressive, saluting the unspoiled child of nature as some creative genius.  I find it interesting that you chose to move from the particular art of chess to something far broader in its implications, implications the you embrace and ones at which I despair.

Yes, children are changing the world with all the immaturity, petulance and self-righteousness a child can muster.  One need look no further than the behavior and insipid beliefs of children -- I refuse to call them young adults let alone adults -- on college campuses, and that includes their Frankfurt School, Marcusian inspired professors.  Here's the legacy Eloi-like children leave for Western Civilization.

I know it sounds like I've been trying to pigeonhole you, and perhaps I have because words have meaning.  From my point of view, you seem to take resignation, turn it on its head, and it comes out optimism.  If I didn't know better I'd think you were an American rather than an Aussie.

Great read, I completely agree.

If I remember the story correctly, the five or six "grandmasters" of chess were declared by the Russian Czar.  Until the FIDE came around, the title was reserved for world champions and championship contenders.

Because of the devaluation of the FIDE titles outlined in the chessbase article, perhaps a new superlative should be created.  Super-grandmaster?  World Class Grandmaster?

The title of grandmaster was first used in 1907 at the Ostend tournament.  In 1914, Nicholas II, the Czar of Russia, conferred the title 'Grandmaster of Chess' on Emanuel Lasker, Alekhine, Capablanca,  Tarrasch, and Marshall after they took the top 5 places in the St. Petersburg tournament.  These are the five original Grandmasters.