Zach Hambrick, Ph.D. Michigan State University Department of Psychology, sent me this email recently:
Zach Hambrick
To Michael Bacon
Apr 11 at 9:38 AM
Hi Michael–do you happen to know who the oldest person to ever achieve GM is? That is, oldest age of being GMed? Thanks! Zach
Although I went to Startpage.com and sent him some of what was found, I ask for your help in answering his question. I renewed membership in order to do so. I believe Zach wants to know the oldest player to have earned the title, and not the oldest to have been awarded the title.
It’s an interesting question, and it may depend on the definition of ‘earned’ the title. I understand Zach is probably not interested in those who received the honorary title, but what about those who earn the title by winning the World Senior Championship? If that is the case, you have a number of players 60 and over who have ‘earned’ the title that way. If it is through the norms process, that is a different question. Do you know which is which?
I guess it depends on your definition of “earned”, but I consider that someone who got the GM title by winning the World Senior Championship to have been “awarded” the title, rather than to have “earned” it. That holds true for anyone who received a title of any kind for a performance in one particular tournament only. I would be interested to know who the oldest person was who got it the old fashioned way, by reaching 2500 FIDE and also getting the necessary title norms.
Perhaps the oldest to get the GM title was Janis Klovans, who was born in 1935 and won the world senior championship in 1997 to gain the title. He won the world senior championship 3 times. Klovans was a strong master, but was not granted many opportunities for foreign travel by the Soviets during the Cold War.
The world senior tournament is no joke. Many older GMs play in the event and take it seriously. The fact that Klovans won the title 3 times says something about his strength and the validity of his GM title. During the time he was champion, his rating was still over 2400 FIDE. I do not have all of the Informants going back to the first issuance, but the ones for 1978 list him as an IM at 2490 FIDE. He would have been 43 at the time. With a little more digging we might find that he earned GM norms for each of the world senior championship victories. For sources other than Informant, you can google Bill Wall, Edgar Winter, or go onto chess.com. Better yet, where is Louis Blair when you need him to find something for us.
I suspected that would be your answer, although I somewhat disagree that you are ‘awarded’ the title when you win a qualifying event. I would suggest you are ‘awarded’ the title when it is not based on a specific set of qualifying criteria - that the criteria only require one event doesn’t (IMHO) make it less of a qualification-based earning of the title.
We seem to be getting hung up on the semantic distinction between “earned” and “awarded”, and what constitutes each one. Leaving that aside the question still remains: who is the oldest person to receive the GM title by achieving three title norms and a FIDE rating of 2500?
Depends in part on whether you are using award as a verb or noun. One earns something that is awarded. The title of Grandmaster (the award) is earned and awarded according to a variety of methods with which one may agree or disagree. If one wants to argue that the title of GM is only valid if earned by ELO and FIDE norms, then the first GMs named by the Tsar* count for nothing as would the original Soviet awarded title Grandmaster of the Soviet Union started in 1936 and which could actually be lost for a drop in performance. That Soviet title was quite difficult to earn, more so than the one Frank Marshall allegedly picked up from the Tsar. Since FIDE got into the business of awarding GM titles in 1950 there have been at least four revisions of the criteria. So which set of FIDE criteria should one use? Take your pick or not. There is no one answer to the OP’s question from his friend.
*Winter claims there is no evidence at the time of the alleged award from the Tsar that it was actually awarded. Philador and others going way back were occasionally referred to as GMs.
Not that this answers either the original or modified question in any way, but …
Titles that are earned by finishing within the top three places in designated international competitions (world, continental, and sub-continental championships) are called “direct titles.” While some direct titles are comparatively easy to earn, many (most?) require a much better performance than what would usually be required to earn a title norm. (Some of the direct titles earned in sub-continental competition are perhaps a bit shaky. For instance, in a recent North American U20 championship, the winner won the IM direct title without having faced any IMs.
Just out of curiosity, I checked the most recent FIDE rating list to find the lowest rated player for each title:
GM: 2146
IM: 1815
FM: 1429
CM: 1161
WGM: 1839
WIM: 1614
WFM: 1182
WCM: 1015
Of these, the GM and IM are both older players who are presumably experiencing the effects of age. All the other players earned their title as a direct title.
FIDE’s qualification committee doesn’t usually explain the basis for individual titles it awards so it is hard to determine which were “honorary.”
In some cases, it’s obvious. Vladimir Makogonov was 83 and hadn’t been playing for decades when he became a GM in 1987. Mario Monticelli was 83, Esteban Canal was 81, Arthur Dake was 76, Harry Golombek and Vladimir Alatortsev were 74, etc.
Among the people who got the title by making norms late in life were Semyon Furman (45), Yair Kraidman (43) Leonid Shamkovich (42).
The idea that making norms is the traditional or more legitimate way to get the GM title is relatively new. When FIDE began authorizing the title, almost no one received it because of norms.
That means Fischer, Petrosian, Spassky, Tal, Geller, Taimanov and many others got the title in other ways, such as qualifying for a Candidates tournament or simply impressing the qualification committee with other, non-international results. Does that make them less legitimate? Tal made light of the fact that he became a GM because of one tournament, a Soviet championship, in a package deal in which Evans and Bisguier also became GMs.
The distinction between “earning” the title and being “awarded” the title seems to have gained currency after a certain player began saying she was the first woman to earn the GM title, implying that the women who preceded here had only been awarded it.
These are excellent points: does the winner of the World Junior Championship (one way to attain the GM title) not ‘earn’ it? My recollection is that Fischer became a GM by qualifying at the Interzonal - just one tournament. Etc., etc.
Hey Michael–what I’m looking for is the oldest age a person became GM for the first time, by the normal route. Hope this makes sense! That is, the oldest age at which a person first earned the status. Thanks! Zach
I gave Zach the url to this thread with this response:
Awesome–thanks!!
Could not put it better myself.
Hopes this clarifies the question.
The chances of a player rated 1337 where 2500+ players play is, what - one in a billion? The next question is: has it ever happened? I believe the correct answer is ‘no.’ Probably the most surprising result was an Expert once winning the World Open (although even then that was not nearly the tournament it is now). I think he beat a couple GMs/IMs and probably drew with a couple more. Still, a really strong result. That said, he was no 1337 player.
The odds of such a performance are much lower. The odds of a 1300 player winning a tournament of at least nine rounds (and I believe all of the tournaments in which one can win a direct title are at least nine rounds) are probably closer to one in a sextillion. For a 1200 point rating difference, the probability distribution used in both the US Chess and the FIDE rating systems give a win expectancy of 1/1,001 (or 10^-3). The probability of winning, say, seven such games would be about 10^-21. Personally, as a member of the Ethics Committee, I would consider such a performance extremely convincing evidence that a player was cheating, and I’m guessing the FIDE Qualification Commission would investigate such a matter very thoroughly.
Theoretically the 1300 player, under these tournament rules, can get a GM title if he or she does win a tournament like the World Open or the US Open for example. What would that person’s rating be? Will it go from 1300 to 2200 or something over night or something? Also, the reason I say it can happen is because, what if, the 1300 player doesn’t play any OTB games let’s say for the next 5 to 10 years, but his/her chess performance is that of a 2000+ rated player the next time he/she enters another OTB tournament because of the training and the training with various chess engines and so forth…