Chess-themed quiz questions

[Matt Mackenzie]

I would certainly include 1948, if only because there was of course no incumbent WC at the time.

[JustinHorton]

Yes. To include cases like that, you could phrase it as: "who are the four chess players who became world chess champion after failing to win the first match they contested for the title?" (I don't think that are any who contested two matches and failed to win the second time

Not quite sure what you mean there

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Yes. To include cases like that, you could phrase it as: "who are the four chess players who became world chess champion after failing to win the first match they contested for the title?" (I don't think that are any who contested two matches and failed to win the second time

Not quite sure what you mean there

Challengers who contested a match for the World Chess Championships twice or more and lost every time. Not including those rematches where a former champion tried and failed to win. i.e. perpetual challengers who never managed to win.

[JustinHorton]

Are you forgetting Viktor Korchnoi?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Mikhail Chigorin, Efim Bogoljubov and Veselin Topalov, as well. (I'm not sure about the status of David Janowski's matches, but he might be another addition to the list.)

[Matt Mackenzie]

As tirelessly reiterated by E G Winter, only the second of the Lasker-Janowski matches "counts".

[Gavin Hughes]

Here is a toughy:
According to the FIDE Country Top Federations, England rank in at a respectable 12 with 36 GM's and 62 IM's.

Question is can you name all 36 GMs? (no cheating)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Question is can you name all 36 GMs? (no cheating)

Really, naming the IMs should be part of it as well...
And are these only the ones with an active FIDE rating?
Here is my attempt (against the clock, 5 mins, starting at 12:00, or 11:00 according to the forum clock):

[Turner and Gallagher are not ENG registered]

Adams
Short
[David] Howell
Jones
Sadler
McShane
Pert
Nunn
Arkell
Hebden
Parker
Fernandez
Gordon
Keene
Mestel
Hodgson
Plaskett
Conquest
Emms
King
Gormally
Summerscale

Hmm. Only 22 in 5 mins. Given longer, I might remember more.

[EDIT: Oh dear, I missed some very obvious ones!! I would have remembered those given 15 mins or so... Some I wouldn't have got even after thinking for longer. And it is 36 GMs even if the rating is not active.]

[Brian Towers]

Who is the lowest rated English player to appear in the top 100 of a FIDE rating list?

Reminder: The first official FIDE rating list appeared in July 1971.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Who is the lowest rated English player to appear in the top 100 of a FIDE rating list?

Reminder: The first official FIDE rating list appeared in July 1971.

Ooh, difficult.

While thinking about it, will see how many of the 14 GMs I failed to get in the previous questions I can remember....

[Another previously ENG-registered GM (there are a few of these) is Davies, now WLS and Chandler, now NZL.]

Ward
Watson
Penrose
MacDonald
Speelman
Wells
Hawkins
Williams

Managed to forget James Howell, Flear, Haslinger, Stean, Levitt and Kumaran!

Of those 36 GMs, there are 12 that have inactive ratings (Hodgson, Haslinger, Kumuran, James Howell, Stean, Levitt, Mestel, Penrose, Sumerscale, Keene, Conquest, King). That number would be higher if not for the recent return of several players to participate in senior World and European events.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Who is the lowest rated English player to appear in the top 100 of a FIDE rating list?

Reminder: The first official FIDE rating list appeared in July 1971.

Are we supposed to trawl Olimpbase for the answer?

http://www.olimpbase.org/index.html?htt ... mmary.html

So maybe Peter Markland (2510) who tied for positions 63 to 76 on the list in July 1971?

http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/Elo197107e.html

(By the next list the following year, he had dropped 90 rating points to 2420 and position 251: http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/Elo197207e.html were some of the early calculations a bit hit-and-miss until enough data was present?)

EDIT: Hang on! A late entry: Raymond Keene at 2505, position joint 78 on the May 1974 list:

http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/Elo197405e.html

And John Nunn at 2500 in the January 1979 list (joint 94th):

http://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/Elo197901e.html

[I give up!]

[Brian Towers]

You're getting close. Looking at the Olimpbase list of lists, as it were, ask yourself on which of those lists could you expect to find a sub-2300 player in the list?

[Tim Harding]

While looking at the live ratings site, I noticed that there may be a new contender for oldest player in the world top 100:

Igors Rausis, 57 years old, and currently rated 2651.

Is this his highest ever rating?

There has been a very recent Facebook thread about this player (started by Lawrence Trent) and his method of accumulating points by scoring heavily against low rated players. Emil Sutovsky is clearly very suspicious of his ability to score that heavily whilst others have expressed more balanced views.
[/quote]

I haven't seen Igors in many years but we met on a few occasions (ICCF congresses) in the 1990s and my impression was that he was one of the good guys. Originally he was from Belarus but when he married the number one female correspondence player Olita Rause, from Latvia, he moved there and took her surname. I am indebted to him for a copy of the Soviet chess encyclopaedia that he gave me when the ICCF congress was held in Riga.

I don't look at Facebook because it's evil.

[LawrenceCooper]

While looking at the live ratings site, I noticed that there may be a new contender for oldest player in the world top 100:

Igors Rausis, 57 years old, and currently rated 2651.

Is this his highest ever rating?

There has been a very recent Facebook thread about this player (started by Lawrence Trent) and his method of accumulating points by scoring heavily against low rated players. Emil Sutovsky is clearly very suspicious of his ability to score that heavily whilst others have expressed more balanced views.

I haven't seen Igors in many years but we met on a few occasions (ICCF congresses) in the 1990s and my impression was that he was one of the good guys. Originally he was from Belarus but when he married the number one female correspondence player Olita Rause, from Latvia, he moved there and took her surname. I am indebted to him for a copy of the Soviet chess encyclopaedia that he gave me when the ICCF congress was held in Riga.

I don't look at Facebook because it's evil.
[/quote]

You appear to have got the quote tags rather wrong. Can you either correct them or remove the part quoting my name please?

[Brian Towers]

There has been a very recent Facebook thread about this player (started by Lawrence Trent) and his method of accumulating points by scoring heavily against low rated players. Emil Sutovsky is clearly very suspicious of his ability to score that heavily whilst others have expressed more balanced views.

I haven't seen Igors in many years but we met on a few occasions (ICCF congresses) in the 1990s and my impression was that he was one of the good guys. Originally he was from Belarus but when he married the number one female correspondence player Olita Rause, from Latvia, he moved there and took her surname. I am indebted to him for a copy of the Soviet chess encyclopaedia that he gave me when the ICCF congress was held in Riga.

I don't look at Facebook because it's evil.

You appear to have got the quote tags rather wrong. Can you either correct them or remove the part quoting my name please?

Erm, Loz, if you check your post you also have the quoting screwed up.

To be fair to Tim (and you), there appears to be a bug in the quoting system whereby if there are more than 3 nested levels of quotes it auto "corrects" and screws up what you may have correctly done.

PS If you look at what I appear to have quoted it misses out the bit which was originally written by Christopher Kreuzer. I did originally have that, however the dodgy software just removed it!

Here is the missing bit -

While looking at the live ratings site, I noticed that there may be a new contender for oldest player in the world top 100:

Igors Rausis, 57 years old, and currently rated 2651.

Is this his highest ever rating?

If I paste this last bit in the right place creating 4 levels of indent and then preview it removes it and leaves you with what you see above.

Doubtless Carl will tell us it is a carefully designed feature rather than a bug