Should the grandmaster title be scrapped? |
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| Monday, 07 October 2013 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 By GM Daniel Gormally   Carlsen and Gormally- spot the difference? Looking through the top of the FIDE rating list makes depressing reading when you're a lowly grandmaster like me. But not if you're a Magnus Carlsen fan. He stands alone, supreme, at a staggering, scarcely believable 2870, which means he's an incredible 74 points above his nearest rival, Vladimir Kramnik, the world number two. It's even more mind boggling perhaps, when you consider the gap between Carlsen to me, ranked a puny 886th in the world. I'm currently rated at 2504, which means there's a yawning, Himalayan 366 points between me and Carlsen. If you look at it from another perspective, that means there's the same difference in strength between me and Carlsen, as there is between me and someone ranked 2138. Now you might find this rather rude if you are indeed ranked in the 2100s, but I don't consider players of this level very strong. In fact most other players of my level tend to refer to these kind of players as "fish" and "patzers" (not that I would ever be so rude of course.) and complain wholeheartedly if any of our colleagues are lucky enough to paired against such opposition in tournaments when we are competing together. Of course again I apologise if you are indeed ranked 2138 and you are offended by this. But the reality is, that although we might drop the odd draw to you every now and again and even the occasional loss, we see you as being a weak chess player. So using the same logic, Carlsen must surely regard me as being an extremely weak chess player as well. If he was ever unfortunate enough to be paired with me in a tournament, he would no doubt think "easy day for me today, got some fish called Gormally." Which begs the question, why should I be ranked the same as Carlsen? After all we both hold the same title, but are competing on completely different levels. I think the solution to this is rather simple- FIDE should scrap the Grandmaster title altogether. I would go even further, scrap all titles down to FM, and the same with the women's titles as well. I think the problem is it's become too saturated, too watered down. There are simply far too many Grandmasters and people in general with titles. Most of which have as much in common chess-wise, with Carlsen, as the guy booting the football around in the local park has with Lionel Messi. We already have a perfectly adequate rating system, which is in fact better than ranking systems in most sports, for reflecting the strength of players. The Elo system has been in place for many years, and despite it's faults, on the whole does a pretty good job. In fact ELO ratings for me are far more indicative of someone's strength than titles are. The situation often exists in chess were you have an International master ranked 2550 getting worse conditions than a Grandmaster who's day has gone and is down at 2400, or even lower. Is that fair? I don't think so. You could make the argument that Grandmasters have worked to gain their title, and had to do so in several tournaments. To gain the Grandmaster title you have to achieve three norms, not an easy task. It certainly wasn't for me, in fact I struggled heroically for my Grandmaster title, after a notorious period where I missed several norms by half a point. But I got the title, did it really change much? ot really. I'd already been 2500 strength for years. If anything it destroyed my motivation as I had nothing to strive for anymore, other than the existential desire to gain rating points. If sports like Golf and Tennis don't have titles, why should we? You don't call Rafael Nadal "Rafael Nadal, Grandmaster" because he doesn't need it. His name speaks for itself, just as it would (or already does) for Carlsen. So this begs the point of what the Grandmaster title is even for. There was a time of course when the Grandmaster title stood for something, it was something worth gaining. Not anymore, and the situation will only get worse. I can see 10,000 grandmasters in the near future. That's far too many. (1417 as of now - Pogonina.com) The other argument is to create something like a "Super Grandmaster title" with a cut-off point, of say 2700. The problem is that will only delay the inevitable, as with the march of time, this will surely become saturated as well, as we will be talking about far too many "Super Grandmasters" And the dreary and self-contradicting words "Weak Super Grandmaster" will become commonplace. No there's only one real solution- scrap the Grandmaster title, and all other titles with it. GM Daniel Gormally is open for chess lessons. You can contact him using this This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Other posts by GM Danny Gormally: ECF Book of the Year? Is being a chess pro worth it - continued? Is being a chess pro worth it? An Elitist Game? Does hard work in chess pay off? World Cup Final preview World Chess Cup Semi-Final preview World Chess Cup Quarter-Final preview World Chess Cup 1/8-final preview Why are Russians so good at chess? British Champs-2013 Ghent and now the British I'll never be fat again! Lessons learnt! The sad case of Borislav Ivanov: Part II Does Anyone Have a Cure for Anger Problems? The Depth of Chess Fundraising in chess Nurturing a Chess Prodigy The Sad Case of Borislav Ivanov 4NCL Impressions: no country for old men - Part II 4NCL Impressions: no country for old men One move, one line - Part II One move, one line Candidates Final Review & Preview of Upcoming World Championship Match Would Carlsen have beaten Capablanca?
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