Talk:Stefán Kristjánsson

Definition of "Icelandic grandmaster"
I'm not a chess expert, so my question regarding your revert: What is the exact definition of an Icelandic grandmaster? Bobby Fischer was a grandmaster, and he was a naturalized citizen of Iceland from 2005. I thought that would make him an Icelandic grandmaster. Or are the grandmaster titles somehow bound to the country of citizenship where they were originally earned? Gestumblindi (talk) 11:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Those are excellent questions, and you aren't the only person to wonder if Fischer should be termed an Icelandic grandmaster. Here are what I think are some of the relevant considerations:
 * FIDE (the International Chess Federations) confers the GM title and every player is affiliated with a FIDE national federation. A player's federation can change over his or her career, but each rated player is always affiliated with exactly one federation.  (In unusual circumstances the player federation will be recorded as FIDE itself rather than one of the national federations, but that didn't happen with Fischer.)  Had Fischer ever been affiliated with the Icelandic Chess Federation then this would be strong evidence that he could be called an Icelandic GM, but Fischer remained affiliated with the US Chess Federation his entire career until his death.
 * Place of birth can be considered, but most often the FIDE federation is a better determiner. There are many cases of players leaving their birth country with their families when they were young children and earning the GM title 15 or 20 years later, and their chess careers would normally not be associated with a birth country that they left at age 4.  If Fischer had moved to Iceland at age 8 and become a GM at age 15, it would probably be accurate to call him an Icelandic GM.  Of course in this case Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois.
 * Fischer never played a rated game of chess as an Icelandic citizen. He retired from competitive chess in 1992, twelve years before he went to Iceland.  Can someone be called an Icelandic GM if they never played a competitive game of chess when in Iceland or as an Icelandic citizen?  If an American baseball player born in the US retired to the Bahamas, would he be called a Bahamanian baseball player?
 * Looking at the Bobby Fischer article, it starts "Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster". It doesn't say "an American and Icelandic chess grandmaster".  Now it's reasonable to note that that presupposes the answer to the question, but the question whether Fischer was an Icelandic GM was considered at the central article and decided in the negative for the two reasons listed above.
 * Continuing the third item, Fischer is in Category:American chess players but not Category:Icelandic chess players.  Categories are supposed to record defining characteristics.  The "fooian chess player" categories are not for every fooian person who plays chess as a hobby, but for people for whom playing chess is a defining characteristic.  Playing chess was the defining characteristic for Fischer, but playing chess in Iceland or as an Icelandic citizen was not—as noted before he had retired from chess more than a decade before he came to Iceland.  The notable connection with Fischer and Iceland is that he was an American GM and former world chess champion who much later became an Icelandic citizen.  Quale (talk) 16:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comprehensive answer which I find convincing. However, in German-language Wikipedia (where I'm mainly active), Gereon K. added Bobby Fischer in 2009 to a navigation template for Icelandic grandmasters with this edit, giving as reason that Fischer was a member of the Icelandic Chess Federation from 2005 ("War ab 2005 Mitglied des isländischen Schachbundes"). This seems to contradict your statement "Had Fischer ever been affiliated with the Icelandic Chess Federation then this would be strong evidence that he could be called an Icelandic GM, but Fischer remained affiliated with the US Chess Federation his entire career until his death." So, I wonder who of you two might be right about this? Gereon K. has written an enormous amount of articles about chess players in German (see his profile in German Wikipedia) and I think he's very knowledgeable in this subject area, too. Gestumblindi (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * He was passive member of the Icelandic Chess Federation since 2005, but apparently that was inofficial. In fact he never changed federation according to FIDE. Thus adding him to the Icelandic GM template was wrong. I apologize. Having read that he received a membership in Iceland led me to my edit in 2009 and I didn't read further. --Gereon K. (talk) 20:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I wrote something really dumb when I asked, "Can someone be called an Icelandic GM if they never played a competitive game of chess when in Iceland...?" Of course Fischer played quite a few significant games of chess in Reykjavik in 1972, and he had played in a tournament in Reykjavik earlier as well.  Adding this correction just in case someone wonders what the heck I was talking about.  I'm afraid the insanity and tragedy of Fischer's chess career after 1972 sometimes overshadows what came before.  Quale (talk) 22:27, 31 May 2020 (UTC)