Grandmaster Devaluation

Browsing recently in "The Oxford Companion to Chess" (second
edition) by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, I was struck by the
following sentence in the "grandmaster" entry: "In 1991 there were
almost as many grandmasters from Britain as there were from the
whole world in 1950."

I don't know how many grandmasters actually strode the earth in
1950 (maybe someone with access to the old ranking lists can tell
me), but in 1997, according to last September's FIDE rating list,
there were twenty-six from Great Britain. If we assume that there
were fewer than that in 1991, six years earlier, then we can safely
infer (if Hooper and Whyld are correct) that in 1950 this planet was
host to no more than twenty-five grandmasters.

Maybe that shouldn't be too surprising, since twenty years later,
around 1970, I recall that there were about a hundred grandmasters
in the world. What surprised me was the discovery, after a quick
tally of FIDE's September 1997 grandmaster directory, that the
number of international grandmasters in the world now exceeds
*six hundred*, not counting those with the woman grandmaster
title.

Six hundred grandmasters! Who can keep track of them? My old
friend Pal Benko, who is still actively involved in professional
chess, told me recently that he's never heard of most of them.
Here's a little quiz ... to see how many you recognize (answers at
the end of the paragraph): Which of the following are international
grandmasters on the current FIDE list? Josef D. Dorfman (France),
Mikhail Pletnev (Russia), Hakan Hagegard (Finland), Hugo
Spangenberg (Argentina), Darryl Johansen (Australia), Vladimir
Chuchelov (Belgium), Randy Gardner (New Zealand), Eduard
Meduna (Czechosovakia), Keith Arkell (England), Rustem Dautov
(Germany), Nicholas Karabots (Greece), and the ever-popular
Salauat Izmukhambetov (Kazakstan). The answer? They're all
international grandmasters from the countries named except
Pletnev (a Russian pianist and conductor), Hagegard (a Finnish
baritone), Gardner (an American ice-skater), and Karabots (an
American businessman who owns Games magazine, for which I
am a senior editor).

Honestly now, did you recognize any of those names? I could list a
few hundred others you've never heard of.

A generation ago, when I was the editor of "Chess Life," I knew
the name and nationality of virtually every one of the world's
hundred grandmasters, just as, a generation before that, I knew the
name and team of almost every baseball player in the major
leagues (of course, there were only two leagues and sixteen teams
in those good old days, when Willie Mays and the Giants played in
the Polo Grounds and when I lived and breathed baseball). Today's
grandmasters, except for the few at or near world championship
level, have become indistinguishable. The great majority of them
are unrecognizable names in a crowd (like ballplayers). The title
has become cheapened by its commonness, its prestige diluted.

I think a player who reaches an exalted level of achievement--by
which I mean the ability to maintain a top rating over a minimum
period of time--should be recognized with a title commensurate
with that achievement, a title that sets him or her apart from the
crowd. "International grandmaster" simply doesn't cut it anymore.

I toyed with a number of ideas for a new title, but all seemed
unsatisfactory for one reason or another: "super-grandmaster"
(natural but clumsy), "elite-master" (just clumsy), "senior
grandmaster" (suggests advanced age), "mega-grandmaster,"
"megamaster," "best-master," "high-master," "grand champion,"
"international champion," "supreme master," and others. My
favorite idea was "worldmaster," but unfortunately that's the literal
English translation of the German "Weltmeister," which refers to
the world champion. Finally I came up with an idea that might
work.

I propose dividing the grandmaster category into four levels, from
"one-star grandmaster," the lowest GM category, one step higher
than international master, to "four-star grandmaster," the highest
category, which would apply to perhaps a dozen players of world
championship class.

The advantages of this idea are several. First, three- and four-star
GMs (at least) will once again command the special prestige that,
as in days gone by, rightfully belongs to the very best players in
the world. Second, most players who have earned the GM title
under the present system have gone as far as they can go and have
nothing more to strive for (unless they're at world championship
level). Under my proposed system, any GM below the four-star
category would have an incentive to improve his or her status.
Third, tournaments organized for the express purpose of awarding
GM titles would provide additional playing opportunities and
would increase public interest. Most tournaments today are played
only to determine which few players will win the lion's share of the
prize money or qualify for some future event; nobody much cares
about those who finish lower in the table. But with something at
stake for everyone--that is, the chance to move up in the
ranks--even minor tournaments can be interesting again for players
and public alike.

Speaking of tournaments, the approaching millennium provides a
unique opportunity to put the new system into operation. Possibly
some major corporation or consortium is already planning a major
chess event to mark the millennium. What I would like to see is a
series of tournaments held over the course of an entire year and
involving as many active grandmasters as are willing to participate.
Prize money would be at stake, of course, but their main purpose
would be to establish the new grandmaster categories and
determine who will populate them.

A new system like this would not become fully operational
overnight. I expect many current grandmasters would strongly
resist any proposal that might put their coveted title in jeopardy or
reduce its value. I am not suggesting that current grandmasters, not
even the lowest-rated ones, should lose their titles--in fact, it is
quite possible that current international masters could become
one-star grandmasters under the new system--but only that the title
should be made more meaningful. The fact is that the grandmaster
title has lost much of its value. My proposal means to restore it. 