Talk:Grandmasters without the title

Proposed merger with Grandmaster (chess)
I appreciate that effort has gone into this article, but I think it is clearly WP:Original Research. It is also very POV - it makes judgements about who "deserved" to be called a Grandmaster. I'm thinking the article should be deleted (with maybe small bits moving to Grandmaster (chess) or renamed and cut back. Rocksong 03:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Now turning this into a formal proposal... Rocksong 11:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The 1st section (1914) and 3rd section (1950) are adequately covered in Grandmaster (chess) so can be deleted.
 * The second section (between 1914 and 1950) is interesting and parts of it should be added to Grandmaster (chess).
 * The last section is very subjective and should nearly all be deleted. Suffice to note that, in the early days (before, say, 1970) the GM title was hard to get and reserved only for those close to World Championship strength. So it is not surprising that many strong pre-1970 players missed out.
 * This article should then be deleted. It is making a subjective judgement, deciding who "should" have been awarded a GM title. That is a value judgement Wikipedia should not make; plus it is WP:Original Research.

As the author of the "Grandmasters without the title" article, I have no problem with this interesting suggestion being implemented. But my main points in writing the article are: 1) because of geographical inequities in the way chess tournaments can be set up around the world, as a function of FIDE's rules for scoring norms, players in certain situations missed out on the titles; 2) then there is the case of the Soviet Union's extraordinary depth of talent, between 1945 and 1990, for examaple, so quite a few very strong players (Aronin and Nezhmedtinov are but two examples) did not get many or any international opportunities, but now that the Soviet Union has broken into many nations since the early 1990s, this is no longer a problem of the same extent, and is one reason why the number of GMs has increased so much, along with the increasing popularity of chess; 3) then there are also interesting cases such as Bohatirchuk and Verlinsky which were politically motivated, and Anderson, who got ill at the exact wrong time. So, it is some original insight which can be backed up by facts, as opposed to strictly subjective conclusions, which is the criticism which has been levelled. There is some repetition, but there may be enough original stuff in my piece to warrant expanding the "Grandmaster" article in some new directions. For example, the "Grandmaster of the USSR" title needs some more research, and this is original to wikipedia, so far as I have been able to determine. Cheers. FrankEldonDixon 11:15 p.m., GMT +4, March 15, 2007.


 * I agree "Grandmaster of the USSR" would be useful to add to the Grandmaster (chess) article - as I've already noted, the stuff between 1914 and 1950 is mainly good. I see subjectiveness in two ways: first, you are deciding whether someone was "unlucky" or "GM strength" (or whatever) (the very title "Grandmasters without the title" implies we are making a judgment that they deserved the title); and second, you are subjective in who to include in the list. I re-iterate my point: before 1970 or so the GM title was very hard to get, so there are lots of players who didn't get the title who would almost certainly have got them if they'd been playing in the 1990s. The Grandmaster (chess) need only make that point, rather than include a list which is (IMHO) subjective in the two ways I mentioned.


 * In 1950 FIDE was smart enough to award the GM title to all living players who'd been world class strength even if they weren't world class strength in 1950 (e.g. Akiba Rubinstein), so the only real hard luck stories in my opinion are the world class strength players who died between 1914 and 1950, such as Carl Schlecter, Richard Reti and Aron Nimzowitsch. Rocksong 07:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

You are getting at the heart of the issue, in my opinion. with some excellent points. But we now have a pretty objective method of actually deciding which players should have had the title and didn't get it, instead of a subjective one. The website chessmetrics.com retrospectively rates events and players from the eras which didn't either have ratings or formalized criteria for earning grandmaster qualifications. It's a mathematical approach, which also endeavours to harmonize rating calculations thoughout history. Granted, it is not perfect, because it is only as good as the information with which it is working, and there are many important events which have still not been entered into the system, and this of course affects the calculations. But for the first time it is now possible to see how strong the players were 100 years ago compared to today, in terms of their results. So this is the approach I was going to take to determine which players were left out of the grandmaster qualification realm. If we look at 2600 performance against a strong field as a grandmaster norm, and a peak rating of 2500 or more at some stage (the criteria FIDE itself applies for its titles now), then we can see which players were not rewarded. There are many strong cases which can be made. FrankEldonDixon 14:53, GMT+4, 16 March 2007


 * At first glance, I like that idea! While it is definitely WP:Original Research, it's also no doubt interesting, so perhaps it's a case of WP:Ignore all rules. Rocksong 05:51, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I wish we had sources, but based on my general knowledge of chess history, I have little reason to doubt the specific claims in this article. For stylistic reasons, I do think it should be merged with the main "Grandmaster" article. YechielMan 20:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Rocksong's original proposal. The last section can't be reconciled with WP:NPOV - even Chessmetrics has its own inherent biases and limitations (it rewards players who play often, for example, but the database it uses isn't complete). youngvalter 20:59, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've performed the merge. youngvalter 02:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)