Q. Consider the following statements on Chess related titles:
- Grandmaster title is valid for life, unless a player is stripped of the title for a proven offence such as cheating.
- Russia (and the erstwhile USSR) has produced the most Grandmasters in the world, followed by the United States and Germany.
- Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu of India has become the second youngest grandmaster in chess history.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer:
1, 2 & 3
Notes:
- Grandmaster is the highest title or ranking that a chess player can achieve. The Grandmaster title — and other chess titles — is awarded by the International Chess Federation, FIDE (acronym for its French name Fédération Internationale des Échecs), the Lausanne-Switzerland-based governing body of the international game. The title is the badge of the game’s super elite, a recognition of the greatest chess talent on the planet, which has been tested and proven against a peer group of other similarly talented players in the world’s toughest competitions.
- Besides Grandmaster, the Qualification Commission of FIDE recognises and awards seven other titles: International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), Candidate Master (CM), Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM), and Woman Candidate Master (WCM).
- All the titles, including that of Grandmaster, are valid for life, unless a player is stripped of the title for a proven offence such as cheating.
- In 1950, FIDE started to formally designate the best players as Grandmasters, based on a set of laid-down criteria. Twenty-seven Grandmaster titles were awarded in the first batch in 1950, including to then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik of the erstwhile USSR.
- A player must have a performance rating of 2,600 or higher in a FIDE tournament that has nine rounds.
- FIDE has so far recognised fewer than 2,000 Grandmasters out of the millions who play the game around the world. A vast majority of Grandmasters have been male. Russia (and the erstwhile USSR) has produced the most Grandmasters in the world, followed by the United States and Germany.
- India became a chess powerhouse in the 2000s, and now has more than 70 Grandmasters.
- The Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu became the second youngest grandmaster in chess history at age 12 years, 10 months, and 13 days after getting his third grandmaster norm with a performance of 2,710 at the Gredine open in Ortisei, Italy in 2018. In 2016, Praggnanandhaa had become the world’s youngest IM at age 10 years, 10 months, and 19 days.