Which players U.S and or world wide should be Grandmasters ? I would like to her some opinions with reasons why a player or players should be grandmasters.
I wish FIDE would make grandmasters posthumously. Americans who died before 1950 (and therefore were ineligible for the title) who are deserving include Paul Morphy, Wilhelm Steinitz, Harry Pillsbury, and Frank Marshall. Former world champions Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine also deserve the title along with many others from the pre WWII era.
I suppose the issue is where to stop? What about Chigorin? Zukertort? Anderssen, Staunton? Philidor?
Or how about St. Amant? LaBourdonnais? Szen?
A committee would have to be formed to decide who would be eligible. The following is just my ideas: The full title is “International Grandmaster” so the mater must be successful not only on a local or national level, but on an international level as well. Therefore, players who were only their national champion do not qualify.
Prior to 1870, there were hardly any international tournaments, so grandmaster status should only be bestowed on players who won match(es) against other players who were recognized masters. So in this era I would award grandmaster to LaBourdonnais, Staunton, Anderssen, and Morphy.
The first true round-robin super-tournament (1851 London was a match-tournament) was Baden-Baden in 1870, and starting around 1880 there was on average about one very strong tournament a year. Also starting in 1886, the official world championship matches started. I think it’s a no-brainer that world champions should get the title (Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine), and I also think anyone who scored at least moderately well against them (say 35%) in a world championship match should also get the title (Zukertort, Chigorin, Gunsburg, Schlecter)
The difficulty is determining how well a player must score in a tournament in order to score a “norm”. In the early tournaments (1870-1900) a norm would be given to the first 3 places in a “super tournament” (however that is defined) and to the winner of a “strong tournament” (also defined). Two norms equal the title. In later tournaments (1900-1939), there would (hopefully) be a sufficient number of players who had “earned” the GM title, and more precise norms by score could be calculated.
Maybe if I ever have a few months of free time, I would work on this now it looks like fun.
Arpad Elo in his book on ratings has charts and tables on the performances of many of the old masters over time. This could be the starting point for studies for norms, 5 year best performance averages, highest rating, and the like. It was passing strange that when FIDE published its first list of GMs in the 1960’s that it left out the recognized world champions. It rectified the granting of titles for some of the older masters, but not these giants of the game. You would have thought that they would have at least made a starting point for recognition the year that FIDE was formed. Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine spanned those years and played successfully against many of the masters of the 1930’s who would later go on to be granted FIDE titles.
The first titles were awarded in 1950. Titles were awarded to both the strongest players at the time (Botvinnik, Rehevesky, Smyslov, Bronstein, Euwe, etc) and players who were well past their peak but were still alive at the time (Bernstein, Grunfeld, Levenfish, Maroczy, Rubinstein, and Tartakower among others). However, they were not awarded posthumously so many deserving players from the early 20th century (and earlier) were left out.
Oops, typo. I meant the 1950’s. The first rating list in the early Informants could have corrected the problem, too, but failed to do so.