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The World Chess Federation, FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), awards several performance-based titles to chess players, up to and including the highly prized Grandmaster title. Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and norms (performance benchmarks in competitions including other titled players). Once awarded, FIDE titles are held for life, though a title may be revoked in exceptional circumstances.[1]

[1] "Handbook > FIDE Title Regulations effective from 1 July 2014" https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=174&view=article

(Quote from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_titles

This is obviously would one of those exceptional circumstances.

It is a title, and titles are used to promote the own sport. If a person is not a good sportman, then the title has to be revoked to improve the quality of that title for the rest that really deserve it.

Sorry I didn't have time to research before, because you know this thing called work.

You ... work? *gasp*. How uncommon.

But here it is for you, I spent the time to look at the FIDE handbook instead of wikipedia. At 50 moves you can claim a draw, which is automatically implemented online at every chess website I've played on

I know only two online chess services, one of which I've written myself, the other being FICS (freechess.org), which AFAIK is the largest free such service out there. Neither of the two systems automatically invokes the draw.

, but it's actually at 75 moves it legally ends as a draw whether or not you claim it in OTB tournaments. So we were both wrong.

Enjoy:

http://www.fide.com/fide/handb...

Section 9.6

'any consecutive series of 75 moves have been completed by each player without the movement of any pawn and without any capture. If the last move resulted in checkmate, that shall take precedence.'

So, what exactly does OTB mean? Genuine question, because so far I assumed it means playing in meatspace using a physical chess board+pieces, which can't be the case if your statement is to be trusted because it somehow seems to not cover tournament games for which the rule you quote does not apply. (Although you're a] using the phrase "OTB tournament" and b] seem to use it to distinguish from online games).
What is the difference between an OTB game, and a tournament game? The clock (and only the clock?) Because then it would make sense to introduce a rule which limits overall gameplay.

Go fist yourself.

Thanks for making obvious that you've realized how dumb most of your statemens in the preceding answer were.

Sorry I didn't have time to research before, because you know this thing called work. But here it is for you, I spent the time to look at the FIDE handbook instead of wikipedia. At 50 moves you can claim a draw, which is automatically implemented online at every chess website I've played on, but it's actually at 75 moves it legally ends as a draw whether or not you claim it in OTB tournaments. So we were both wrong.

Enjoy:

http://www.fide.com/fide/handb...

Section 9.6

'any consecutive series of 75 moves have been completed by each player without the movement of any pawn and without any capture. If the last move resulted in checkmate, that shall take precedence.'

Go fist yourself.

the fifty-move rule which states that the game may end in a draw if you play 50 moves without any pawns moved or any captures made

FTFY. It doesn't end automagically, a player has to invoke that rule explicitly.

(or 100 moves in certain special board states).

I've never heard about that, but the wikipedia article you linked says that this rule was in effect from 1952-1992. It's not anymore

I'm willing to call this proof of concept as chess even if it doesn't fully implement that.

We don't need no proof of concept for chess, it's kind of an old thing. The point here is to fit the stuff in <512 bytes, which they say they couldn't do without leaving away en passant, castling, etc. So I don't really see how this is proving any concept.

That being said, It's pretty impressive to implement what they did in this little amount of storage. It's just not chess. Now get off my lawn.

Or maybe they don't care whether it's a total order or not, because they have things like Elo ratings to approximate that in real time.

It so happens that Carlssen has been absolutely destroying the Elo classification for years now. Fun fact: the gap between Magnus Carlssen and number 2 on the FIDE list (Levon Aronian) is equal to the gap between number 2 and number 20! (Source: http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men )

What a Championship gives you is "the man who beat the man". It's more a honorary title than an objective assessment of your chess capability (though historically there's been reasonable correlation between the two), but people happen to care about that stuff too.

The 4th best player on the current rankings is from the US: http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml Behind Norway, Armenia & Russia ...

they have some vague idea that the wins are statistically unlikely

I wouldn't call it a 'vague idea'. Ivanov, while being a very good player at a 2227 'master' rating, was playing at an estimated level of over 3000 over the course of an entire tournament (until they cut the internet feed). This would make him the best player in the world by far, and also the greatest player the world has ever seen.

This would be like a college basketball small forward chosen number 10 or so in the NBA draft beating Lebron James 1on1 9 times in a row. To quote the article:

Either:

1 Borislav Ivanov is probably the first adult (as opposed to a junior talent) with a confirmed low rating ever to achieve a 2600+ GM norm performance in an event of nine rounds or more or

2 [He] is the first player ever to successfully cheat at a major tournament over multiple rounds without the cheating mechanism being detected.

No speculation needed: http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=8602980

And there is no mention about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen

who was ranked first at the ELO Fide page at the age of 19 !

Since chess competition between men is much tougher, it's really an amazing achievement (Judit Polgar is 49th: http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men )

Well, given that the US chess championship for 2010 features a $170,000 purse, while a player may not be able to live only on chess, they can certainly do alright by it, assuming they're any good.

More pertinently Ilyumzhinov is up for re-election as President of FIDE soon and is currently in a battle with former World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov for the Russian Chess Federation's nomination. This couldn't have come at a better time for Karpov. Roll on a new era in chess administration and please lets put an end to Chess Grand Prix's and other prestigious tournaments being held in the back of beyond to satisfy some curious regional egotism!

One might think so, but in fact the FIDE (World Chess Federation) world rankings are overwhelming male-dominated - there's only one woman (Judit Polgar of Hungary at no. 27) in the top 100. So FIDE also has a women's ranking list.

One might think so, but in fact the FIDE (World Chess Federation) world rankings are overwhelming male-dominated - there's only one woman (Judit Polgar of Hungary at no. 27) in the top 100. So FIDE also has a women's ranking list.

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men

That link says "men" in it, but in fact includes women as well... or rather one woman, Judit Polgar, at #27. The 2nd ranked woman doesn't make the top 100 (ELO: 2618).

http://www.fide.com/component/content/article/2-articles/1327-fide-videos

Video named "Kirsan Ilyumzhinov As A Chess Boxer!" (bottom left)

I'm sure its not against the rules, but I think it is quite questionable.

Actually, the FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs or World Chess Federation) Handbook, does have rules against distractions. It is covered in Chapter 15, Ethics http://www.fide.com/official/handbook.asp?level=A0 115. Chess has been around so long, that the rules have evolved to handle just about anything.

Must be some correlation between this and their tech-IQ:

http://www.fide.com/ratings/topfed.phtml/

Don't drink too much coffee, FIDE conducts drug testing, because of this insane delusion that chess will get into the Olympics. Sadly, this is not even the most pathetic thing about FIDE.

Personally, I believe that copyrights should expire in 14 years, as the US first intended, so that classic games would be public-domain by now. Pac-man should be as free as Chess

Both "MS. PAC-MAN" and "FIDE" are trademarks, but anybody can make a game whose object is to step on each space in a maze without infringing as long as isn't called "PAC-anything". Copyright applies only to the expression of a game, such as the specific layout of each maze and the graphics used to represent the characters. Even if Namco had thought to patent such gameplay methods, any U.S. patent on such gameplay will have expired, as patents in the U.S. and most other countries last only 20 years after filing.

She's actually equal 10th based on ratings. Just check good old www.fide.com

She's 11th.

While I'm sure it's a good program, none of the humans was in the top 100 human players.

That said, it is almost certain that computers will dominate humans in chess at some point.

No, it's if the same position occurs 3 times, not necessarily on successive moves. But someone needs to claim the draw. If nobody claims, the game can go on indefinitely

Does anyone close to the Chess community know about this?
Were there problems in the past with it? Any anecdotes?
This is incredibly bizarre to me.

Chess uses the ELO system for rating players. As per this system, a players new ratings is dependant on their old rating and the rating of their opponent and the result of the match between them.

If a player does not play any matches at all, the rating does not change. So that list can be considered to be an all-time chess player ranking.

FIDE also has a list of current world top players as well as a 32 best players. Not exactly sure what the criteria for the best 32 players is though.

Cheers,
Vivek

Chess uses the ELO system for rating players. As per this system, a players new ratings is dependant on their old rating and the rating of their opponent and the result of the match between them.

If a player does not play any matches at all, the rating does not change. So that list can be considered to be an all-time chess player ranking.

FIDE also has a list of current world top players as well as a 32 best players. Not exactly sure what the criteria for the best 32 players is though.

Cheers,
Vivek

I wouldn't say that Kasparov is a better player, but he is rated higher.

More details are at the site and at the FIDE's network site (Fédération Internationale des Échecs).

As far as this tournament is concerened, I welcome it entirely and enthusiastically. Finally there will be a way for the greatest chess programmers (in theory) to be under the "same roof" and possibly get together to swap secrets so that the mid-level bots on-line could actually dish out something other than four variations and stumble the rest of the way through.

And to any players on /. that are also on USCL drop me an email through my link and we'll see if we can get together for some games.

See you on board :o)

I meant to mention that you'd have to do something about time pressure and sudden death. The FIDE rules governing computer play suggest giving the computer a different time control to allow for the lag with the human operator, but doesn't have a suggestion.

One thing I found interesting is that the FIDE rules say a computer "can only receive special computer prizes, if any" but doesn't say anything about rating points.

--

Kasparov hasn't been the official FIDE world chess federation champion since 1993, when he broke with FIDE to play against the legitimate challenger Nigel Short.

Karpov regained the FIDE title in a 1993 match and lost it by not playing in the 1999 FIDE world championship. This matter is currently under legal dispute.

Kasparov did not play his legitimate challenger, Alexei Shirov, and attempted to set up a "championship" match with another leading player, Viswanathan Anand of India before hand-picking Kramnik as his challenger here.

However Kramnik is number 3 on the FIDE rating list and so was a worthy challenger, just not the man who deserved the match, Shirov.

Kasparov hasn't been the official FIDE world chess federation champion since 1993, when he broke with FIDE to play against the legitimate challenger Nigel Short.

Karpov regained the FIDE title in a 1993 match and lost it by not playing in the 1999 FIDE world championship. This matter is currently under legal dispute.

Kasparov did not play his legitimate challenger, Alexei Shirov, and attempted to set up a "championship" match with another leading player, Viswanathan Anand of India before hand-picking Kramnik as his challenger here.

However Kramnik is number 3 on the FIDE rating list and so was a worthy challenger, just not the man who deserved the match, Shirov.

How exactly does one become a grand master in chess? Do you have to win a certain # of matches against highly ranked opponents? Is there a chess board somewhere that deems one a 'grand master'?

The world chess federation adopted a rating system devised by Professor Arpad Elo. Players start off with a base value and have points added or subtracted to their rating on the basis of how they fare against their opponents in a tournament. So if your rating is 2400 and the average rating of your opponents in a tournament is 2300, you are expected to have a positive score against them(ie. win more than lose). Your rating goes up if you score more than the expected amount, down if you score less.

Grandmaster and International Master titles are awarded when players maintain a certain level of play(determined by calculating number of points that should be scored depending on opponents' ratings) over a certain number of games. There are other requirements, such as a minimum of three grandmasters playing in a tournament for it to qualify as one where grandmaster ``norms'' may be awarded. A collection of at least two grandmaster ``norms'' spanning a certain number of games(I think 24) qualifies one for the grandmaster title. There are exceptions and other means of being awarded a title. The winner of the world junior championship is awarded a grandmaster norm. If a non-grandmaster qualifies for the Candidates' cycle(to determine a challenger for the world champion), the grandmaster title is automatically awarded. With the political turmoil that exisits in the chess world, this Candidates' tournament no longer exists.

The GM and IM titles are awarded for life. Ratings change depending on one's performance. A minimum number of rated games must be played per year for a player's rating to be listed. You can search rating lists here.