Youngest grandmasters

[MartinCarpenter]

Mostly just the modest cost/bother and the fact that it wasn't something that was even possible until relatively recently I guess. These things don't move terribly fast

Better than 3 games on the Saturday (ugh!) but I can imagine some people not being happy with having Friday evening congress games rated. For a change there's an obvious solution to that

[Christopher Kreuzer]

So no takers in trying to guess who will become the first person born this century to become a grandmaster? (Of course, the dividing lines between centuries are arbitrary and meaningless, but marking a moment like this still helps to bring home the inexorable passage of time and the rise of different generations).

Another way to look at things like this is to look at when world champions were born relative to each other. Kasparov was 9 when Fischer became world champion. Kramnik was born three years after the Fischer-Spassky match, and was 10 when Kasparov became world champion. Carlsen was 9 when Kramnik became world champion. Maybe someone aged about 10 now will become one of the future world champions?

[Roger de Coverly]

So no takers in trying to guess who will become the first person born this century to become a grandmaster?

The FIDE rating site can list by year of birth. But no names yet leap out as future world stars.

[NickFaulks]

Most congresses I go have 5 rounds including one on Friday and are invariably 4 hour games (I don't go to the congress otherwise).
None of them are FIDE rated.

So it seems solving the above two problems doesn't change organisers' minds. Surely it can't just be the 40 moves?

The mindset in the UK is still that only strong competitions should consider registering for FIDE rating. Of course, there is a problem with critical mass. It does seem pointless to register a Swiss event where few of the players are already FIDE rated. That will be much less true after 1st July, when most games involving one rated player will count for something.

France has 134 players rated under 1200, England has one. All credit to Tai Remus Elliot, but he loses most of his FIDE rated games because his opponents are always 500 points above him.

[Roger de Coverly]

The mindset in the UK is still that only strong competitions should consider registering for FIDE rating.

That's a mirror of FIDE's own attitude that its rating service is elite. So if you have unqualified arbiters, your event cannot be rated. If your move rate is too fast, your event cannot be rated. If you have players who aren't registered with FIDE, what's the sanction? Is it that the event cannot be rated, or will cost the organiser a large sum of money?

[NickFaulks]

The mindset in the UK is still that only strong competitions should consider registering for FIDE rating.

That's a mirror of FIDE's own attitude that its rating service is elite. So if you have unqualified arbiters, your event cannot be rated. If your move rate is too fast, your event cannot be rated. If you have players who aren't registered with FIDE, what's the sanction? Is it that the event cannot be rated, or will cost the organiser a large sum of money?

I haven't worked out how to split quotes, so all in one go...

The rating system is absolutely not intended to be elite, and England is rare in taking that view. Spain, for instance, routinely submits all tournaments that are used in its national rating system. England's attitude looks very much like a boycott.

What can you mean by "unqualified arbiters"? You could make your cat a licensed arbiter if it paid its €20 to the arbiters' trade union. Many federations on both sides of the K/K fence think this is daft, and I hope there will be moves to make the structure more sensible at commission meetings in Tromso. Bermuda will be on the side of the good guys, but I imagine that the ECF will maintain its usual aloof posture.

The reason for requiring games played by >2200 players to be on at least a four hour schedule is that those players are believed not to want their FIDE ratings to be affected by quickish games. I have heard this view expressed with particular force in England. If I am wrong, the ECF should be pressed to lobby for a change. It might happen.

The question of all players in rated tournaments having a FIDE ID is severely practical. Managing a club of half a million members with an office of four staff is a challenge, when every mis-identification has to be dealt with individually. It is no surprise that Ignatius Leong turned this into the Spanish Inquisition, since he's like that. Now that he's gone, you should expect to see a system that is more friendly to everyone.

[MartinCarpenter]

People in England are just very used to the idea that some games are graded on some lists and not others Not just ECF/FIDE: nearly all of the Yorkshire evening leagues - including some of the biggest leagues in the country - aren't ECF rated at all. (The usual sort of slightly sad/silly historical/political reasons behind that.).

Probably sundry non ECF rated internal club competitions too. Harry Lamb even seemed to do a NW grading list (scaled as per elo) when I was originally in Manchester, perhaps he still does. Goodness knows if anyone payed any attention to it.

[Roger de Coverly]

What can you mean by "unqualified arbiters"?

UK Arbiters are keen to maintain standards and do not like someone they didn't regard as being of the appropriate standard being designated an arbiter, no matter how much they had paid FIDE. Having someone as an assistant wouldn't be a problem for an event only graded by the ECF and is a route to becoming a qualified arbiter, but is a problem when it becomes a reason for FIDE to reject a rating report.

The rating system is absolutely not intended to be elite, and England is rare in taking that view.

It has been regarded as such in the past and the ECF based part of its membership scheme on the premise that players would be required to become members at the highest tariff in order to take part in FIDE rated events. Having a FIDE rating means the player has moved on from being purely someone taking part in three hour games on weekday evenings.

As I'm sure you are aware, there's a attitude amongst some English players and organisers that FIDE is a body that you are required to be part of, rather than that you want to be part of. The ridiculous President and the Rotten Boroughs voting system being just two reasons for hostility.

[Clive Blackburn]

Probably sundry non ECF rated internal club competitions too.

Our internal Club Championship is being played at the moment. It has been ungraded for years but this time it will be submitted for ECF grading for the first time ever.

[NickFaulks]

As I'm sure you are aware, there's a attitude amongst some English players and organisers that FIDE is a body that you are required to be part of, rather than that you want to be part of.

So you're saying that it is a boycott. Fair enough, but in that case there's no need to keep coming up with claims that the system is cunningly devised to keep club players out, which it isn't. Other federations just as opposed to Kirsan as the ECF, though which have managed to avoid ripping themselves apart over it, see no reason not to take advantage of those features of FIDE which work pretty well.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

One of the IMs I noted above as being among the youngest IMs (Samuel Sevian of the USA) has achieved a GM norm:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/13-year-ol ... aint-louis

That report also points out that Kayden Troff (USA) became a GM recently, at 16 one of the youngest at the moment along with Wei Yi and Vladislav Artemiev and Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

An earlier thread from 2011 on Sevian here:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2534

[Leonard Barden]

at 16 one of the youngest at the moment along with Wei Yi

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/m ... us-carlsen

[Francis Fields]

Players becoming GM's at a young age has been dubbed 'the database generation' by the chess media and to me it seems quite apt. The ability to digest large quantities of information is surely a fundamental skill to chess?

Players dropping out due to poor results cannot, in my view, be inflationary which I believe doesn't exist in chess in any significant way.