The best adult improver in history

Im out.

If he were in prison for a substantial amount of time, then chess is probably all he had to keep himself entertained. Given the chance with him and his thoughts for hours a day, it makes some sense that he got so highly rated.

he got to 2789 by completely abusing the system

What he did was that each time a new prisoner came into the prison, Bloodgood would arrange for all his other rated prisoners to lose to the new prisoner. The new prisoner would now have a high established rating. Bloodgood would then play a rated game against the new, high-rated prisoner and win. In this way, Bloodgood gained more and more rating points in this closed pool until he was #2 in the nation.

USCF also put an end to this way of cheating eventually, so yeah

bro just knew by reading rodgy's blog

you should poison your enemy king's square

A man who killed his mother and then rigged the system and the competition to matchfix an unfairly high rating doesn't strike me as the appealing role model.

Rating manipulation worked for Mr Bloodgood.

Ben Finegold interview, 6-15, by Dina Belenkaya

 "I started playing in tournaments when I was six and the first two or three years it was just me losing.  Then my rating got a lot higher when I was 10, 11 and I started not losing all my games. So that was nice."

Were your parents kind of pushing you?

"No. No. I wanted to play chess all the time. I wanted to go to tournaments all the time. My dad didn't really coach me growing up, but we would play chess in the house. So, you know, it was sort of coaching."

So, you were a prodigy.

"When I was six, seven, eight, nine, nobody thought I was talented. And then when I was 12,people thought I was talented. But I think it's just because I played hundreds of tournament games. So like for example, I became a USCF master when I was 14. And if you wanted to become a lifemaster at that time those you had to play 300 games as a master... I became a master at 14 and a lifemaster at 15." 

So, Ben, you became GM at 40. Um, does that mean that anyone can become a GM as an adult improver?

"Anybody can become a GM except for Gotham Chess. That's the that's the only exception. It's hard to become a GM because there's 7 billion people in the world and there's less than 2,000 GMs. Becoming a GM shouldn't be your first goal. You want to have incremental goals as a chess player and reach those goals, ones that you can reach. And then, you know, if you study all the time and don't work and have your parents pay for lessons and you get lucky and you get better quickly, then you have good chances to improve, you know, pretty quickly. When I was a kid, kids were not good at chess, which is hard to understand now, but like if you were 2000 and you were a kid, they were like, 'Wow, how are you 2000?' Now, if you're 2000 and you're a kid, they're like, 'Get out!' And when I play in tournaments, most of my opponents are kids. I've played twice in Charlotte since I 'unretired' and I played one adult and I played 11 games. 70s, 80s, and 90s when I was getting better at chess... there's no kids in the tournaments. Kids played in kids' tournaments, and they weren't very good. And so I stood out when I was between like 12 and 16 as one of the top juniors. Now, if I took my ratings when I was 12 to 16 and was now like that, nobody would know who I am. I would never play in the US Junior Championship. Nobody would think I was a talented junior. And at that time, I played in five of them. So, I was one of the top juniors in the country with a rating of like 2400 USCF. And when I was a kid, kids weren't good, which was good for me cuz I got better. And most kids just didn't play as much as me 'cause they didn't have a national master for a Dad."

You mention that anyone can become a grandmaster except Gotham Chess.

"Yeah, I like to give Levy sh*t."

Why? What has Levy done to you, Ben?

"It's too sad to talk about on the podcast. Okay. Levy hasn't done anything to me. I like to talk about people and he's pretty famous. So, if I talk about somebody nobody's ever heard of, nobody cares."

Why do you think Levy is not gonna become a grandmaster?

"Levy is what I call a chess personality. He's not not a chess player. So he he's not somebody who's like 12 years old who gains 200 rating points a year or 300. He's in his late 20s... there's two reasons he can't become a grandmaster. One is he has no grandmaster norms. So there's that's and there's one that's even more important. His rating is really low. And if you're an IM and you're rated between like 2450 and 2500, if you get Grandmaster Norms, you'll get to 2500. Levi's rating when I checked like a year or two ago is like 2330, his FIDE rating. And to get to get the GM title, he would have to gain over 150 rating points. And in my opinion, when when Levy was not super famous, he was playing more tournaments and he was a better player."

Um Vladimir Kromnik. And his fight against cheating. Do you think he's doing the right thing?

"I don't know why he cares about cheating online. People cheat online. They get caught. They don't get caught. He came to the conclusion that everybody's cheating. So that ruins his argument... when he just accuses everybody, 'cause it's just silly. So yeah, he's obviously lost his mind. I'm the only person that tells Kramnic he's insane that he doesn't block. And I said, 'He hasn't blocked me cuz I'm a grandmaster.' And he said, 'No, I haven't blocked you 'cause you haven't made it personal.' And I'm like, 'What? I've made it more personal than anyone. I said, 'You've lost your mind.' And his response was, 'Atleast I have a mind.' And my wife thought that was really funny, so she laughed at that. But yeah, I used to complain to Kramnik a lot about his crazy ideas and then I said like, 'Well, I'm done.' 'Cause he just keeps tweeting, 'everybody's cheating'. So that's, you know, now obviously if three people are cheating out of a hundred and you accuse 90 of them, then the three people get caught. Kramnic's like, 'See, I said that guy cheated.' Well, you said 87 other people cheated too and they didn't. I mean, he's gone overboard."

What about his eternal battle against the chess mafia?

"The chess mafia will never defeat them. Yeah. I don't know what that's all about... although I like the term 'chess mafia'."

hello I'm new to this game, can someone help me practice?

thanks

swfitie I would like to redirect you to @rodgy's blogs

they're the perfect person to learn from!

How long after he died did he get a chess.com account?

Died in 2001.

🤨

Much has been written about Bloodgood that is exaggerated and misleading.

Yes, he obtained one of the highest ratings in the USCF.

No, he was not actually one of the strongest players in the country.

He received his high rating due to a flaw in the rating system. At one time, the USCf awarded 1 point to a player who won a game, even if the opponent was rated 800 or more points below the winner.

Bloodgood was serving a life sentence. He played many games a day against other prisoners, most of whom were much weaker than him. He accumulated scores of points every week and eventually became one of the highest rated players in the country. While he may have been a decent player (say, Expert or low Master), no one really considers him to be a GM

According to one account that I read, Bloodgood himself brought this flaw to the attention of the USCF Rating Committee. One of the committee’s annual reports in the 1990s (I forget which year) describes the corrections it made to the rating system.

Chess Life had a lengthy article on Bloodgood sometime back in the 1990s.

He should not be your role model for achieving a high rating in adulthood.

Your chess role model? Really? He murdered his mother, and cheated to get to 2700. Someone please delete this forum.

From Wilipedia:

Claude Frizzell Bloodgood III (alias: Klaus Frizzel Bluttgutt III; July 14, 1937 – August 4, 2001) was a controversial American chess player. As a young man, he got into trouble with the law and was arrested several times. He was sentenced to death in 1970 after having been convicted of murdering his mother, although this sentence was later commuted to life in prison.[2] While in prison, he remained a very active chess player, playing a large number of correspondence games and rated games with other inmates. Over time, he achieved a very high ranking in the United States Chess Federation (USCF) by playing in a closed pool, which allowed rating manipulation. He died in prison in 2001.

He was cheating before cheating was a "thing".

Swiftie,

You may want to check out a Forum called “Encouraging Adult Master Improver Stories.”

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/encouraging-adult-master-improver-stories-non-gm#comment-115391130