No I don't. As a matter of fact I responded to it.. You can get those valuable performance points by beating lower rated opponents - as I put it in the previous post, you don't play enough highly skilled opponents though and therefore it doesn't matter.. The requirement by FIDE to play against at least 3 GM's in order to get the norm (or did that rule change, I didn't check recently..) is created to avoid all sort of ridiculous situations where one could get a norm by simply beating lower rated opponents and I don't see a need for any exemptions for cases like you mentioned. The fact that you NEED to play a GM in last round and you CAN lose and you will still get a title is NOT FIDE's problem, can't you see that?

I'm kind of with PyramidScheme on this one. If you're in a position where if you play a third GM in the final round and lose, then you get your norm, but if you play an IM in the final round and win, you don't, it seems pretty silly to me.

It's one thing if you have to beat or draw that GM, but you aren't proving ANYTHING extra by losing to him. It should definitely be about more than *just* performance, and who you play should matter, but if your performance is SO good, that all you need is a loss, I don't see why it shouldn't be considered norm-worthy. If you had played a GM in the final round, you would have been guaranteed a norm. There isn't anything else you have to prove over the board at that point. All you need to prove is that you're capable of... getting paired with a GM? I really don't see how that rule makes sense.

Of course it is still the rule, and everyone has to live with it. I'm not saying you can count it as a norm, or anything like that. I mean yeah, play by the rules, and deal. But it does seem like a stupid rule to me.

The question is - do you deserve a norm if you build your massive performance by beating 2200-2300 players? In my opinion, you don't. Imagine that you play in a huge swiss tournament where you are one of the highest players with some 2500ELO, yet you are an IM. You manage to have a score of 8/8 after beating six 2100-2200-2300 players and then two GM's, http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=4100263 (plays at around 2100 level now, no kidding) and http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=500020. Your performance will be some 3000+ , but I mean do you really deserve a GM norm for that?

I'd like to know what technicality kept him from the norm. While it's easy as hell to meet the foreign player requirement in Europe, it's a LOT more difficult here in the U.S. Especially the "no more than six from the same federation" clause. I can understand that FIDE initially wanted to avoid insular areas from mass producing weak "GM's" by generating norm after norm against the same, closed group of players. They presumably wanted to standardize the norm requirement. However, since a huge chunk of titled US players gained their titles under other federations, that problem seems really unlikely here. There are a lot of ways you could alter that particular clause that would allow burgeoning Americans or Australians or whomever, who cannot afford to play in Europe, to have a shot at norms.

Yeah, I wonder if the "technicalities" were really random soul-crushing details which he learned about weeks after thinking he had earned the final norm, or just the usual requirements. I'm curious if anyone knows the details...

In either case, the kid's 18, so I cut him some slack. Perhaps he'll regret some of the things he's said.

Regarding some of the norm questions asked above, I was under the impression that if one would earn a norm by sitting out the final round, then playing and losing the final round wouldn't invalidate the effort. Is that correct?

that is correct, but the reverse isn't true.

incidentally the foreign players requirement used to be a huge deal in Russia, before the breakup of the Soviet Union very few players were able to travel overseas and there were few truly international tournaments held there, so there were quite a few 2400-2550 players who had never got the IM title, never mind GM.

really what Pyramid/Bob are suggesting is impossible just because it isn't sufficient to "lose to a Grandmaster". You have to have a rating performance of X against players of a minimum average rating of Y and play Z GMs. It matters hugely whether you lose to a 2250 GM in the last round or a 2850 GM (who isn't playing in your tournament anyway), there is no such thing as a situation where "if you played a GM in the last round and lost you would get the norm".

Disagree completely, say in a different trial of the same tournament you played the same opposition except you started the tournament with the GM(s) and then ended on a heater vs the non-GMs and ended on the same score and same results (not that the latter matters). How can this be treated differently to the scenario you mentioned?

or if you played 9 players and got a really good score, but they were the last 5 games of one tournament and the first 4 of another?

It's definitely possible. You'd have to play well enough that if you lost to the lowest rated GM (in the world) in the last round, then you would get a norm. i.e. A loss to any opponent rated >2000 (or whatever the lowest rated GM's rating is) would still give you a 2600 performance rating.

Well apparently what Im saying wasn't possible anyway if RT is right so I can rest easy. The people that are disagree with me are tilting me insanely. I think my point is as clear as calling the sun hot. I don't understand how anyone could not agree than needing a LOSS vs a GM is stupid. Youknowwho keeps talking about performance. Dude losing is bad. Anyone can lose to a GM. It proves nothing and should never be needed! Maybe you aren't understanding my question, I'll try it one more time. Read below!!!

Lets say the norm requirement is you play 3 GM's and you get need 2 pts against them, as well as a 2700 peformance rating for the tournament or whatever. (IDK what the actual requirements are but lets say its that). Player A plays TWO GM's but BEATS them both AND has achieved the performance rating. He has clinched his required performance vs GM's but has done it in LESS than the games alloted. He has actually done better than needed. (Will anyone argue that 2/2 vs 2 GMs is not better than 2/3 vs 3 GM's) If he actually needed to play a 3rd GM to get the norm, that would be the most ridiculous thing in the history of ridiculousness. (According to RT this can never happen anyway, so why are so many people arguing that it SHOULD be OK???)

Also for the people saying (but wait his performance rating could drop when losing to this hypothetical GM!!! Lets say its a case where his PR is so high that even losing to a 2400 GM would secure him the norm. You all REALLY? think this should be necessary)

It is kinda sad for Shankland that he has so much trouble obtaining the title. The real shame about it is that the title is so much devalued these days and he still can't get it. This is the real insult about it. Elo inflation boosted all ratings up around 100 points over the last 40 years, but you still (only) need 2500 to become GM.

Back in the old days when Fischer had 2785, there were like 3 other players above 2600. Back then 2500 was pretty strong, so the GM title was a real archievement. Nowadays you have 3 guys over 2800, 34 guys with 2700 and countless 2600 players. If we are honest, then 2500 is not even mediocre anymore. In comparison to top chess these guys are patzers, so why call them grandmasters? The GM-norm should be raised to 2600 and this would also settle Shankland's problem for quite a while, maybe forever.

Maybe you should check what actual requirements are if it was like you wrote, you just need to play 3GM's and score two points, of course it would be pretty ridiculous if u have 2/2 and don't get it. However the actual rules are much more complex than that.. It's pretty much what Hackdeath said - you can reach the same situation in a reverse order (that is scoring some 0.5/2 against GM's in first two rounds then hitting some sick 6/6 run against IM's and lower, and needing to play a GM in last round to get the norm even if you lose) so how can you treat them differently in the rules?

part of the requirement is that you get your results against sufficiently strong players. Sure, it's possible to get it in a tournament where you play 6 2200s and 3 2700s, but they aren't going to try to encourage that.[

Actually, that tournament wouldn't qualify. You have to have a minimum opponent rating of 2380 in order for the tournament performance to qualify as a GM norm. And even if you did play 4 2200's, 2 2300's and 3 2700's, you'd still have to score 7/9 in order to get a norm there. I'm pretty comfortable with that result being sufficient for a GM norm.

Also, glanced through Shankland's tournament history and I can only find one tournament that looks like it should qualify for a GM norm. I suspect he's counting at least one tournament where he scored well against a 2377 field as a 'should have been'. I certainly cannot find any where he actually achieved the minimum PR vs a qualified field but might have lost out because of a minor clause.

I think what PS is trying to say, approximately, is:

Let's say someone goes on a ridiculous run and, through 8 rounds of a 9 round tournament, beats six 2400 rated IMs and two 2550 rated GMs. I don't know what the performance rating for that would be, but it'd be extremely high. For hypothetical's sake, let's say that losing the last round to a 1000 rated player would still leave him with a tournament performance above what is required.

For the last round, the player could either be paired up against a GM (thus fulfilling the "3 GMs" rule) or some other player. The rating of that player is irrelevant, the result of the match is irrelevant... the only thing that matters (and it's totally out of the player's control) is the title of whoever his last round opponent happens to be. For the purposes of getting a GM norm, losing to a 2450 rated GM is BETTER than losing to a 2500 rated IM.

Assuming I've got the argument right, then I pretty much agree with him that it's a stupid set of rules.

How relevant that particular example might be in the real world is another question.

Edit to add: and the "order of events" argument doesn't really matter, except for how things are perceived--you could make it a first round loss to the IM vs. GM and then running the table against the same opponents. The question is "which performance is objectively better"--or it should be. The current rules are "which one happens to fit this set of criteria in every way", which, while clearly definable, seems to be an imperfect way of handing out titles.

Thank you. Thats what i was looking for. THIS WAS ME CHECKING! I repeatedly asked over and over again CAN THIS HAPPEN? I admittedly do Not KNOW THE RULES. Instead of answering my question you went on and on about how the rules aren't absurd. All I was asking was "IF the rules are such and such, then the rules would be absurd, ARE they such and such I DONT KNOW?!?!" This was the hardest question I ever had to ask in the history of asking questions.

Thank you for actually getting it. For the record I wasn't TRYING to say. I WAS saying it. People were responding to me without reading what I was saying. And, yes the question was CAN this happen in the real world, I honestly do not know. But the consensus seems to be that it CANNOT.


I don't mean to be overly aggressive and rude but it's frustrating to ask the same questions for 2 days, get responses that have nothing to do with that question, and then the forum finally does get it, I receive "You should know the rules better" LOL, that's what I'm trying to do right now. In fact, if someone could post a little diddy on the rules in regular people speak, not FIDE jargon, that would be awesome

PyramidScheme is ignorant to this stuff.

do you think you should be able to substitute a loss to a 2800 instead of any of your results? Or just in the last round?

Well I don't think I have a firm enough grasp of the norm rules to answer this one way or another.

You're asking the wrong question here, and it's (still) showing a lack of understanding of the argument PS is making.

I'll counter it with a question: If, after substituting "loss to worst-rated GM in the world" for "their best win of the tournament vs. a non-GM", a player would qualify for a GM norm, shouldn't their actual performance qualify for a GM norm?

The fact that it doesn't would seem to show that the rules for handing out GM norms and titles is a little bit screwy, at best. I guess the best thing to do would just accept that GM titles as currently constituted are nothing more than arbitrary titles and really don't mean anything in relation to a person's actual ability, OR to their actual achievements. Except, of course, that that isn't really how it works.

holy crap at Robson losing his only game of the tournament vs an FM at the bottom of the standings. And Zhao could have taken it with a win but got a draw which allowed SHANKLAND to sneak in with a 3 way tie! Playoff begins tomorrow. It would be pretty insane if Shankland wins imo.


Zatonskih got picked for a half pt in the last round allowing Krush to win the Women's Championship.

Glad you posted that, PS. I hadn't kept up with the games. Wow. Really surprised Robson went with a KID in that situation. Just doesn't make a lot of sense. Shankland's win over Holt is extremely impressive. Just smashed him. It will be completely crazy if Shankland wins then says '**** you' and walks away.

Major League Baseball, of all progressive organizations, actually has a rule along these lines. If a player doesn't have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, but has done so well over a smaller sample that adding in an artificial 0 for x to reach the minimum PAs would still leave him in first place, he wins the batting title. That actually happened in 1996.

FIDE has some rules along the same lines, but they don't have the obvious fix of "if swapping out your best game for a loss to a 2200 GM (their rating floor for GMs) of a federation that doesn't help you would still be a norm, you get a norm." So, yeah, the rules actually are dumb that way. And the foreigner rules do make it harder to norm in america (given what tournaments there actually are in the US).

FIDE has a rating floor for GMs?