Beards in grandmaster chess

[JustinHorton]

Which grandmasters, especially world-class grandmasters, sport or have sported beards? I'm assuming they were very frequent in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but how often have they been seen more recently?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I think Topalov has a beard?

You might like this old blog post...

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.co.uk/2007/ ... s-car.html

"Topalov is paying price for his beard"

http://en.chessbase.com/portals/4/files ... alov01.jpg

Alexander Khalifman as well:

http://en.chessbase.com/portals/4/files ... fman01.jpg

[Matt Fletcher]

Yusupov always had (probably still has? Haven't seen a recent picture) a healthy beard.
And obviously Fischer in his later years.

[Mike Gunn]

Fischer (in his later years) and Donner spring to mind ...

[Simon Brown]

Ian Rogers had a splendid beard in the early 90s. Mestel.

[Mike Gunn]

Hubner and Quinteros are couple more beardies ...

[Jon Mahony]

Jon Speelman, had one in the early 80's

[Gordon Cadden]

Also Lev Psakhis and Julio Kaplan. Believe that Jonathan Mestel has recently decided to remove his famous beard.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Regarding Mestel's beard, if you visit his homepage at Imperial, you will see before and after pictures:

http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/~ajm8/

I'm not sure whether the reference to the appearances being before and after he was appointed Director of Undergraduate Studies is entirely in jest...

[Joey Stewart]

Stuart conquest has a pretty well trimmed beard

[Clive Blackburn]

I have had a beard for years, does that improve my chances of becoming a world-class Grandmaster one day?

Perhaps at the age of 63 with a grade of about 120 I have left it a little late

[Paul Habershon]

When is a beard not a beard? I am no expert in logic but I think the following may be an example of 'reductio ad absurdum':
Q: Is one hair growing from your chin a beard?
A: Well. no.
Q: Are two hairs growing from your chin a beard?
A: No
Q: Are three hairs.......etc. etc.

The point is that you eventually come to some absurd conclusion that (e.g.) 33 hairs constitute a beard but 32 hairs don't.

So beards are too subjective to argue about definitively. How long does stubble have to be before it's a beard?

Good grief! Why on earth am I posting on this subject?!

[Arshad Ali]

Shaving has become an indulgence only the bourgeoisie can afford -- the price of razors has become prohibitive. Here in the US, Gillette and Schick have divvied up the market between them (about $4bn for Gillette and $1bn for Schick). Of course, this duopoly -- with a tacit price agreement -- means they can jack up the prices at will. And they do (a pack of ten Gillette Sensor Excel razors now sets me back $27). The purpose of explaining all this is that a linear regression will reveal a correlation between affluence and propensity to shave. Since chess masters are an indigent lot (on the whole), one would expect a disproportionate number of them to have beards. More study of this is clearly required.

[John Upham]

This hot topic deserves resources to be allocated by the

International Society for Chess Research

[Ian Kingston]

This hot topic deserves resources to be allocated by the

International Society for Chess Research

An organisation that appears on this page (and elsewhere) to have adopted the slogan of the Complaints Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Inadvisable, I would have thought, even if intended humorously.