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.