Ages when British Isles titles obtained

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Jun 02, 2011 1:02 am

This post follows on from the data presented several months ago here:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2165

That is a thread from September 2010, titled: Timeline of British Isles titles (1950-2010). That list only goes up to 2010, and does not include recent title applications (though it does include one from early 2011).

I've stripped out the titles awarded in the 1950s, the ones gained under a federation other than ENG, SCO, WLS, or IRL, and stripped out a couple of the post-1950s title awards (specifically the GM titles for Golombek and Penrose), as those are outliers, awarded (I think) following their playing careers.

That left 47 GM titles, 122 IM titles, 6 WGM titles, and 9 WIM titles. I then dropped the WGM and WIM data, because there wasn't enough to give a meaningful distribution (possibly I should have also restricted this to one federation such as ENG, but including SCO, WLS and IRL increased the data).

I then ordered each subset by the age when the title was awarded. Unfortunately, the data is only an age range obtained by subtracting the birth year from the title year, as I've been unable to pinpoint the exact ages, but for various reasons this shouldn't make too much difference.

The results are below.

GM

15-16: 1 : @
16-17: 1 : @
17-18: 1 : @
18-19: 2 : @@
19-20: 1 : @
20-21: 2 : @@
21-22: 3 : @@@
22-23: 3 : @@@
23-24: 3 : @@@
24-25: 4 : @@@@
25-26: 3 : @@@
26-27: 2 : @@
27-28: 7 : @@@@@@@
28-29: 5 : @@@@@
29-30: 1 : @
30-31: 1 : @
31-32: 1 : @
32-33: 1 : @
33-34: 3 : @@@
34-35: 0 :
35-36: 0 :
36-37: 0 :
37-38: 1 : @
38-39: 0 :
39-40: 0 :
40-41: 1 : @

By decade, that is : teens (6); 20s (33); 30s (7); 40s (1).

Mode is 27-28, with 28-29 next (i.e. most common age in the British Isles to attain the GM title is 27-29).

This analysis has been done back in 2009 for some set of GMs worldwide, see here:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... 314#p38314

"...a figure of 1238 is broken down into 233 obtaining the GM title in their teens, 606 in their 20s, 293 in their 30s, 62 in their 40s, and 44 after the age of 50..."

So it looks like the British GMs' age-obtained distribution is pretty much in line with the overall distribution.

IM

12-13: 01 : #
13-14: 02 : ##
14-15: 01 : #
15-16: 01 : #
16-17: 03 : ###
17-18: 05 : #####
18-19: 09 : #########
19-20: 13 : #############
20-21: 09 : #########
21-22: 09 : #########
22-23: 09 : #########
23-24: 12 : ############
24-25: 08 : ########
25-26: 05 : #####
26-27: 03 : ###
27-28: 02 : ##
28-29: 04 : ####
29-30: 04 : ####
30-31: 04 : ####
31-32: 03 : ###
32-33: 02 : ##
33-34: 03 : ###
34-35: 02 : ##
35-36: 00 :
36-37: 01 : #
37-38: 01 : #
38-39: 01 : #
39-40: 00 :
40-41: 01 : #
41-42: 00 :
42-43: 01 : #
43-44: 01 : #
44-45: 00 :
45-46: 00 :
46-47: 00 :
47-48: 00 :
48-49: 01 : #
49-50: 00 :
50-51: 00 :
51-52: 00 :
52-53: 00 :
53-54: 00 :
54-55: 00 :
55-56: 00 :
56-57: 00 :
57-58: 00 :
58-59: 01 : #

By decade, that is : teens (35); 20s (65); 30s (17); 40s (4); 50s (1).

Mode is 19-20 (with 23-24 next). Sustained peak from 18-25 as most likely age in the British Isles for attaining the IM title.

I don't think anyone has done an analysis of any worldwide dataset for the ages at which the IM title has been obtained (like the one quoted above for the GMs), though it should be fairly easy to do. I would think the distribution would be fairly similar to that seen here.

If anyone wants to plot the above in graphical form, please feel free.

Quiz questions (to make this more interesting):

1) Who are the three youngest GMs listed above? All 18 or under.
2) Who are the five youngest IMs listed above? All 16 or under.
3) Who are the eight oldest GMs listed above? All 30 or over.
4) Who are the five oldest IMs listed above? All 40 or over.

EDIT: Until proper graphics can be done, added ASCII-style bar charts.
Last edited by Christopher Kreuzer on Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ian Thompson
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Ian Thompson » Thu Jun 02, 2011 1:17 pm

Your statistics will be distorted to some extent by changes in the title regulations. Specifically, up until 2000 (give or take a year) title norms had a limited life. You had to get the title within so many years of getting the norm, or the norm expired. Also, you had to achieve the minimum rating for the title at some point between your first and last norms (I think, but might be wrong on this). When the title regulations changed, norms retrospectively became valid for ever and the minimum rating could be achieved at any time. This meant that some older players qualified for a title as soon as the regulations changed. They'd got several norms, but never previously had enough valid at the same time. Although I can't think of any, it could also have affected younger players who had the norms, but didn't previously have the required rating at the right time.

Mick Norris
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Mick Norris » Thu Jun 02, 2011 1:57 pm

Is the oldest to achieve IM Jeff Horner?
Any postings on here represent my personal views

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:53 pm

Mick Norris wrote:Is the oldest to achieve IM Jeff Horner?
Yes, though he was one I left in despite being (I think) based on earlier results (as mentioned above). I say "I think", because I don't know enough about the history of some of the title awards to know whether they were obtained from recent results, or earlier ones brought in after this became possible.

Mick Norris
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Mick Norris » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:55 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
Mick Norris wrote:Is the oldest to achieve IM Jeff Horner?
Yes, though he was one I left in despite being (I think) based on earlier results (as mentioned above). I say "I think", because I don't know enough about the history of some of the title awards to know whether they were obtained from recent results, or earlier ones brought in after this became possible.
Jeff had 2 norms from years ago (Benedictine comes to mind), but achieved his third (Isle of Man?) just before he was awarded the title
Any postings on here represent my personal views

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:58 pm

Ian Thompson wrote:Your statistics will be distorted to some extent by changes in the title regulations. Specifically, up until 2000 (give or take a year) title norms had a limited life. You had to get the title within so many years of getting the norm, or the norm expired. Also, you had to achieve the minimum rating for the title at some point between your first and last norms (I think, but might be wrong on this). When the title regulations changed, norms retrospectively became valid for ever and the minimum rating could be achieved at any time. This meant that some older players qualified for a title as soon as the regulations changed. They'd got several norms, but never previously had enough valid at the same time. Although I can't think of any, it could also have affected younger players who had the norms, but didn't previously have the required rating at the right time.
That is true. It would be good to know which titles from the original list are examples of this.

The other point is that the age at which titles are obtained probably varies over time, and from country to country. Looking at all the Soviet and Russian titled players over time would likely give a different picture to that seen in other countries.

What I was wondering was whether the ages I came up with of 27-29 for the GM title and 18-25 for the IM title sound about right, and whether that is more or less than the peak age at which the titles are obtained in other countries?

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Jun 02, 2011 7:46 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: What I was wondering was whether the ages I came up with of 27-29 for the GM title and 18-25 for the IM title sound about right, and whether that is more or less than the peak age at which the titles are obtained in other countries?
You could work through the list of recent title applicants at http://ratings.fide.com/title_applications.phtml
They've even tabulated the year of birth for you to make setting up the calculations straightforward :)

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Ages when British Isles titles obtained

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Thu Jun 02, 2011 10:45 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: What I was wondering was whether the ages I came up with of 27-29 for the GM title and 18-25 for the IM title sound about right, and whether that is more or less than the peak age at which the titles are obtained in other countries?
You could work through the list of recent title applicants at http://ratings.fide.com/title_applications.phtml
They've even tabulated the year of birth for you to make setting up the calculations straightforward :)
Not tonight. And if I did do something like that, I'd download the entire FIDE rating list.

http://ratings.fide.com/download.phtml

What I'd do is do a distribution curve for each year for the IM and GM titles and see if the peak age changes over time. The problem being that not all the FIDE player rating entries record the year the player was awarded the title. I'm also not trained in statistics in any way, so would make some horrible oversimplifications and errors. I might have downloaded an earlier list before, but would have to download the latest data again. Have always wanted to know how many current IMs there are.

OK, someone already added that to Wikipedia:

"The November 2010 FIDE rating list records 3036 players holding the IM title."
"The November 2010 FIDE rating list records 1299 players holding the GM title."

Wonder if they included inactive players or not.

I would have thought there would be more IMs than that. Though you have to remember that each GM was also an IM (with some rare exceptions), so you have to add the number of GMs to the number of IMs to get the true number of IM titles awarded.

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