Fide title devaluation

[Keith Arkell]

I'm hoping some GM's from the UK come in to this thread to respond to this thread.

I think that the general quality of players has risen especially in England(computer era). If I take Keith Arkell as an example of a solid yardstick. I think he struggles to stay at high 2400's/2500 due to the fact we have lots of underrated players in the UK. I noticed when I played in France and Czech Republic that in Central Europe the 2100's are NOT the same standard as they are here.

I believe you are right Ben that it is tougher here than on many foreign shores to maintain any given rating. Certainly this is the case with the circuit I operate on. For example I play against the likes of Alan Merry over and over again. He is rated 2237 but easily cruised to an IM norm, with a 2500+ performance, at the recently concluded Big Slick tournament.

I think there is too much lag when it comes to current ratings attempting to reflect current playing strengths. This is because k-factors should have increased in some kind of proportion to the increase in regularity of rating lists, but they didn't. I won't bother to explain how this works, but mathematicians will understand why this is the case.

Anyway, this is a side issue. I may be able to shed a little light on the general question regarding whether the GM title is being devalued due to proliferation: Sorry, I can't remember who it was, but someone used a chain of results between a series of GMs, creating a link between giants of the past up to Beliavsky to 'demonstrate' that there has been no improvement.
The relevant bit for the point I'm going to make is that the argument was 'clinched' by the claim that the 30 year old Beliavsky was obviously stronger than the currently 2650 rated 60 year old Beliavsky. I would argue that this isn't the case. I think that any decline due to age is more than compensated for by the simple fact that Beliavsky has been around during the last 30 years to observe and learn from the general accumulation of chess knowledge and understanding.

I am not just using idle speculation to make this point. I have a couple of examples which go a little way to bearing it out.

1) After one of my games against an ageing David Bronstein, some 15 years ago,we had a post-mortem, and during it he made the following comment: '' In my day we believed that my Black Knight on d4 was stronger than your Bishop on c4, but this is now known to be false, and the reverse is the case'' or words to that effect. Ergo,Bronstein gained in knowledge and understanding just by staying on the scene and watching the development of chess.

2) An ageing Tal, in the 1980s declared that he would have slaughtered the 1961 World Champion Tal!

In my own experience, I am sure that I am a better player now than when,17 years ago, I was rated 2546 and ranked about 200 in the world. I understand a helluva lot more, and know a helluva lot more, and believe that this outweighs any slowing down of thought processes due to age.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Stewart,

I still think I’m kind of close linking Chess with Music.
I’d pull in Maths as well and we would have the three classes for child prodigies
but I know nothing about maths. (it's a posh name for sums).

I cannot accept any attempt at grading these players to compare with today's inflated grades.
If I am not being allowed to link Chess to Music then I cannot allow the link between Chess and Maths
and a mathematical theory of probability.

A cold number does reflect the players persona, his OTB influence. All the great players had it.

If they want numbers then it must be done properly.
Go back to London 1851 and produce a grading list every six months..
That will give you 324 different grading lists.
Then you could see whose name appeared on the top of these lists the most often.

Agree Morphy’s opponents did not know to how defend but without these lads
who lost these games then perhaps none of us would know how to defend or how to punish such play.
More credit should be given to the bloke who was first to grab the QNP.
The merry chap who moved his pieces twice, thrice in the opening and got mated.

Also agree titles are a good thing but the bar should have been raised.
It’s too late now so we are stuck with a system where you have GM’s being seeded 130 in a tournament.
Players being shifted down boards in league matches to get norms.

If a country wants to boost it’s GM ratio it could bring in a handful of unscrupulous
GM’s and set up a tournament so their man would get his norms.
(Note my use of the words ‘if’ and ‘could’. )

Of course one could bribe their way into the Candidates but that would require involving
a lot of different federations and other players. That would be risky.
But I’d settle for one or two GM’s getting in with a back-hander.
At the moment there are over 1,300 GM’s swanking about and that is about 1,200 too many.

So yes, IMHO the GM title has been devalued.

Thank you for replying Stewart, I will now continue my endless war v The Borg.

(Jazz.......?)

-----------------------------------------------------

Computers:

OK then where are they?

If these wee magical boxes help people improve so much how come we are not up to our necks in GM’s.
(1,300 in only ankle deep. )

You have had the the top boxes for 15 years now and the titles are drying up.
The gifted and the blessed have been pointed towards these things by lazy coaches and conned by the advertisement blurbs.
Their creativity and wiliness to learn has been sucked out them.

People who claim a computer has help then get better because their grade has gone up are deluding themselves.
They have not got better, their computer assisted opponents have stagnated, that is why their grade has gone up.

The player thinks ‘Wow, these computers really do help.’
So it’s books in the dustbin, the chess set gathers dust and there they sit not understanding
a position they are about to play but happy in the fact it is 0.78th of a pawn up.

Their play won’t deteriorate but it won’t rise. Another bright prospect has been assimilated.

They will become drones waiting their turn to be lowered down the board order in the 4NCL to get a norm.

1980 - MCCU Championship Nuneaton 1st= Miles, Cafferty and Hebden

32 years later….

April 2012 :Huddersfield Rapid Play - Winner Mark Hebden
April 2012 :Staffordshire Congress - Winner Mark Hebden
April 2012 : Nottingham Congress - Winner Mark Hebden

Mark never learned his craft with the aid of a box and he is kicking your butts up and down the country.

Switch off the computer. There is no quick fix.
It’s Book, Board and Bedroom. The tried and trusted method.

[Roger de Coverly]

Switch off the computer. There is no quick fix.

Think of it as a productivity issue. There's little point in wasting time on wild flights of fantasy that are never going to work. On the other hand, if a computer assessment challenges conventional wisdom that a line or position is dodgy, there is potential mileage there.

[Mats Winther]

ChessBase has published an article about Fide title devaluation. In the beginning, the GM title was awarded players such as Paul Keres and Gideon Ståhlberg, that is, players who had truly brilliant qualities.

I'd be willing to back any modern-day GM at his peak against Keres or Ståhlberg at theirs.

Keres and Ståhlberg had celebrity status whereas a modern-day GM will hardly attract attention. It is time to introduce yet another title, which carries with it celebrity status. The SGM (super-GM) title has long been in the waiting. There is also time for a new title: EM (engine master), for having attained mastery in the use of hidden computer chips.

Mats

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Roger

"...if a computer assessment challenges conventional wisdom that a line or position is dodgy,
there is potential mileage there."

I don't think the full potential of a chess computer has been reached.
What's on the market today is really a toy compared to what it will be.

When they have these things looking at a position and knowing it is difficult for a human
and saying 'look here - investigate, tricks a plenty, difficult to defend, awkward to play against."
At the moment if such positions are there but given -0.01 v + 0.01 then the user will not get
a chance to see it, though OTB the -0.01 is the was to go as it set more OTB problems for the opponent.

Positions players like Jack Rudd (Britain's next GM if he wanted to be.) etc... thrive on.

This is why it's only good players who can really benefit from computers.
They have the ability to question a computers evaluations and often you see them
dis-agreeing with what a box says in their notes to games.

Also it's not quite flights of fancy is it.
All the great players up to Kasparov never got good with the aid of a computer.
There is a proven method of improving one's play and it's been known for 150 years before computers.

Jack:
You are modding on here and on all these official boards....
Quit the lot and get back on the chessboard.

I was going to spend my Birthday going through Keres games looking for a combo
he pulled off that a Modern GM missed in a similiar positon and post 1-0.

Of course you would have to find a combo Keres missed that a GM found and post 1-1.

But I win because I will have tricked you into looking at the games of Paul Keres.
The spark, the inspiration...it will come back. Keres games have that effect.

Instead family came around and I was banned from crawling away into my study like I normally do.
Tomorrow off to see Blondie and Debbie Harry.
(birthday present from daughter. I would have preferred my usual £20.00 book token but I'm looking forward to it. )

[stevencarr]

If you look at games from Informator 10, which was the first one I bought, and games in the current Informator you will see a big increase in quality.

In those days people were knocked over in the Sicilian with countless Knight sac's on b5, d5 or f5. Or they were torn apart in open games, with things like the Goering gambit.

Defensive technique just seems a lot better today. People just know more than they used to.