The Latest GM/IM Norm Scam

[MartinCarpenter]

No, its a different sort of strength to being able to score well vs your notional grading peers but its a very real measure of strength.

As mentioned above, getting 78/79 against any sort of even remotely credible opposition is incredibly hard. Especially with FIDE having a non trivial, if reducing, minimum grade. Hard not to be rather suspicious really.

I guess if FIDE do (as planned?) let their minimum grade get very low it could actually be theoretically possible to do this legitimately. Still, really not easy lining up tournaments full purely of beginners that'll let a strong player in.

[PeterFarr]

Well indeed, even Fischer dropped the odd point to relatively much weaker players.

Of course it might not be so hard to organize the right sort of tournament in certain countries. And the other option is to just make it all up.

Btw, none of this is really difficult to research I’m afraid – just fairly random rooting around the FIDE website for a couple of hours. It’s that easy.

On a totally unrelated subject, I sometimes wonder not just whether whole tournaments are completely made up, but whether some 'players' actually exist. Let's just say, completely hypothetically, that I fancied setting up a series of fictional 'tournaments' with a view to manufacturing FIDE titles. To make it work, I need a compliant group of players who won't object. Included in this must be a number of titled players, a few other reasonably strong players as "ballast" and one or two fall guys who will be minced up by everybody else (so that my norm "clients" can achieve a high tournament rating, while still preserving the ratings of my titled players). This all requires a certain amount of work and cash to smooth the wheels and make sure everybody in the loop is happy.

Would it not be easier just to invent a few players? They don't need paying off, they will never object to losing a few rating points where necessary, and they will never blow the whistle. It seems only one small step further than the fictitious tournament, and really it reduces the overhead costs of the entire operation.

I should say that I have no evidence for this at all - maybe it's just a fantasy.

Incidentally, if anyone wonders how the 'players' that get minced up could - still hypothetically - manage to get a good enough rating for it to be worth including them in the tournament, there are at least a couple of answers - either you do a "one-time" solution with a retired player, which trashes his rating, but he doesn't care, or you set up some subsidiary "rating" tournaments, where you can create the desired effect. In this case, your fall-guy is actually allowed to "win" the lower level rating tournament, picking up the necessary points. This method allows you to re-use a fall-guy time and again, although I have the feeling that it might eventually turn into something resembling an unsustainable pyramid scheme. But of course there is no evidence that such "rating" tournaments are ever manipulated in this way. None at all. Not even the merest suspicion.

Again to change the subject completely, there was another norm tournament in Bogoroditsk in July 2013. Two intrepid Azerbaijanis topped the leader board, but sadly one player, already on a real losing streak from previous Tula region tournaments, managed 0/12. Terrible that a player still in his early 50's and once rated in the 2400's should decline so badly.

[Matt Mackenzie]

It is rare, but not unknown, for previously strong players to go into complete free fall.

Though you might have thought they would let him score at least a half point or two to makes things *slightly* more believable

[Roger de Coverly]

In this case, your fall-guy is actually allowed to "win" the lower level rating tournament, picking up the necessary points. This method allows you to re-use a fall-guy time and again, although I have the feeling that it might eventually turn into something resembling an unsustainable pyramid scheme. But of course there is no evidence that such "rating" tournaments are ever manipulated in this way. None at all. Not even the merest suspicion.

The mathematics of the system favour using new players in the unlikely event of this happening. The point being that you might gain points with K=30 and lose them with K=10/15. One of the Federations in Asia had a problem with this as it seemed to be inflating the ratings of their players so much, that they started to appear in top 100 lists etc.

[PeterFarr]

Actually that reminds me, one fellow scored 14/17 in a "ratings" tournament in Tula one November, and then collapsed to 0.5/12 in the norm tournament, also in Tula, which started a few days later. In the first event his k*chg was +19, and in the second it was -43. Maybe he developed a cold between events.

I'm sure that was an isolated instance though.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Peter,

I'm sure you can invent players, tournaments and games.
All you would need is to be prepared to pay for the grading fees etc.

I recall inventing a Dunfermline Open when I editied the Edinburgh Chess mag. CapaTal Chess.

I had pictures, games, a cross table and even a made up fight in the car park.

I even invented an edition of CapaTal Chess.
I found out people were collecting them so it jumped from issue 17 to 19 and I kept
referring to things, good things, that appeared in issue 18.
It drove some people mad.

[PeterFarr]

that's extremely disappointing, I just ordered a copy of number 18 on eBay, in a job lot with a 2nd hand IM title (vgc) for £99.50. I was told it was a rare collectors' edition.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Peter

That is a recent fake, on the cover is a picture of Borislav Ivanov
playing the piano with with his twinkled toes.

[PeterFarr]

[NickFaulks]

Afromeev achieved his huge rating by playing a large number of opponents much lower rated than himself and scoring a huge percentage. He didn't play aginst enough titled opponents, or was the Ra high enough to get a title norm.

I was told that, but it is not true. Only one event fits this description. He had many results which would have been GM norms but for insufficient foreigners. Two of his final events look like good GM norms, and I think he had at least one already, but no title application was ever submitted. My belief is that the Russian Federation finally told him to stop it.

[David Sedgwick]

Afromeev achieved his huge rating by playing a large number of opponents much lower rated than himself and scoring a huge percentage. He didn't play aginst enough titled opponents, or was the Ra high enough to get a title norm.

I was told that, but it is not true. Only one event fits this description. He had many results which would have been GM norms but for insufficient foreigners. Two of his final events look like good GM norms, and I think he had at least one already, but no title application was ever submitted. My belief is that the Russian Federation finally told him to stop it.

If so, they don't seem to have told him to desist from his arbiting activities.