"...he was someone whose career, title and passion for the game obliged him to play chess, an activity at which he was not very good."
That's a fairly ridiculous conclusion to draw. Suradiradja was regularly a 2100 to 2300 ELO rated player. This is not a grandmaster, and he should never have been awarded that title, but he was in fact a very good Chess player by any reasonable standard. If you, me, or almost any strong amateur player played against him we would be absolutely demolished.
To make an analogy that a fan of team sports might get, Suradiradja was the equivalent of a journeyman role-player on a professional team. Entirely solid by professional standards and truly elite by normal human standards. Unfortunately, he was declared to be an All-Star when he really wasn't quite that good.
Just a reminder than even mediocre professional athletes are still better than 99.99% of the people in the world who play their sport.
As a mere class-player, I once had the opportunity to play an IM. I reached the middle game without any blunders, even material, no immediate threats, and was beginning to wonder if I could actually survive into an endgame. As I evaluated my next move, I realized this was all illusion. I suddenly realized every candidate move led to catastrophe, as if by some magic I suddenly found myself in a straight-jacket.
Statistically, it might be more on the order of unarmed man standing up to a tank, but it felt more like being mugged by a trans-dimensional alien.
Yeah and it's incredible to think that the 2300s will almost always be crushed by the 2500s, and yet there's a tiny group of superGMs, 2700+, who can crush GMs like beginners.
Yeah, calling him "not very good" is funny. If this was programming, he'd have been something like an L6 at a FAANG. At the same time, as someone who reached ~2170 USCF, I get it. When you get to that level, because of the way chess tournaments are structured, most of the high-stakes games you play are gonna be against people who are either about as good as you or better than you. And at that point, you are close enough to the real "pro circuit" that you're judging yourself by those standards. And by those standards you are pretty shit
Also, if he really was driven and committed, this Ermenkov was a shit coach. Anyone who wants it enough to dedicate their life to it can become a legit GM, I am sure
I really doubt anyone can do it. Nobody who started in adulthood has done it. Even if we talk of those starting as kids - plenty have tried hard and 'only' reached Master level.
I still don't understand how he got the title. Earning the GM title requires earning a certain number of GM norms and having achieved (however briefly) a rating of at least a certain value.
You earn a GM norm by playing in a tournament that meets certain criteria for the strength and titles of your opponents and having a strong performance. In the '70s when he got his norms "strong performance" meant I believe a 2551 performance rating.
The rating requirement was 2450 in the '70s.
(Nowadays, you need a 2600 performance to earn a norm, and the rating requirement is 2500).
The article describes how he got the GM norms.
But I don't see how he met the rating requirement. I haven't been able to find complete FIDE rating lists from back then, but he was 2330 on the January 1978 list, and 2340 on January 1979, which was shortly after he got the title. I've not been able to find any published rating above 2380 for him.
For title purposes they do use instantaneous ratings, so for example if someone who was close to meeting the rating requirement were to play a double round-robin tournament with 8 other players and win their first 8 games and then lose their next 8 games, and that was their only activity in the month, then although their published rating would not change if their instantaneous rating after game 8 met the threshold then it would count.
All his published ratings I've found [1] are far enough below 2450 it seems unlikely that he would have that big a difference between an instantaneous rating and an end of month rating.
This article is pretty heavy on nasty accusations and pretty light on evidence. Besides, even if all that stuff about norm-farm tournaments is true, it sounds in the same ballpark as the stuff that bigshots like Firouzja do to get their records
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 37.0 ms ] threadThat's a fairly ridiculous conclusion to draw. Suradiradja was regularly a 2100 to 2300 ELO rated player. This is not a grandmaster, and he should never have been awarded that title, but he was in fact a very good Chess player by any reasonable standard. If you, me, or almost any strong amateur player played against him we would be absolutely demolished.
To make an analogy that a fan of team sports might get, Suradiradja was the equivalent of a journeyman role-player on a professional team. Entirely solid by professional standards and truly elite by normal human standards. Unfortunately, he was declared to be an All-Star when he really wasn't quite that good.
Just a reminder than even mediocre professional athletes are still better than 99.99% of the people in the world who play their sport.
That figure is quite understated. In USCF, 2300 ELO is better than 99.59% of _rated chess players_.
As a mere class-player, I once had the opportunity to play an IM. I reached the middle game without any blunders, even material, no immediate threats, and was beginning to wonder if I could actually survive into an endgame. As I evaluated my next move, I realized this was all illusion. I suddenly realized every candidate move led to catastrophe, as if by some magic I suddenly found myself in a straight-jacket.
Statistically, it might be more on the order of unarmed man standing up to a tank, but it felt more like being mugged by a trans-dimensional alien.
Anyone with a title is an extraordinary player.
Also, if he really was driven and committed, this Ermenkov was a shit coach. Anyone who wants it enough to dedicate their life to it can become a legit GM, I am sure
You earn a GM norm by playing in a tournament that meets certain criteria for the strength and titles of your opponents and having a strong performance. In the '70s when he got his norms "strong performance" meant I believe a 2551 performance rating.
The rating requirement was 2450 in the '70s.
(Nowadays, you need a 2600 performance to earn a norm, and the rating requirement is 2500).
The article describes how he got the GM norms.
But I don't see how he met the rating requirement. I haven't been able to find complete FIDE rating lists from back then, but he was 2330 on the January 1978 list, and 2340 on January 1979, which was shortly after he got the title. I've not been able to find any published rating above 2380 for him.
For title purposes they do use instantaneous ratings, so for example if someone who was close to meeting the rating requirement were to play a double round-robin tournament with 8 other players and win their first 8 games and then lose their next 8 games, and that was their only activity in the month, then although their published rating would not change if their instantaneous rating after game 8 met the threshold then it would count.
All his published ratings I've found [1] are far enough below 2450 it seems unlikely that he would have that big a difference between an instantaneous rating and an end of month rating.
[1] https://www.olimpbase.org/Elo/player/Suradiradja,%20Herman.h...