Open to anyone, any rating, any FIDE federation – just be a male born in 1952 or earlier.
All you have to do is win (1st place) the FIDE World Senior Chess Championship in Greece beginning November 12, 2012.
The winner of the 11-round tournament will automatically be awarded the FIDE GM title!
Skip the years (how many do you have left anyway?) of climbing all those qualifying steps of FM, IM, GM.
If you win, I’ll put you on my Perfect Olympiad Team.
Why do you have to be a male?
Alex Relyea
The women have a separate tournament and must have been born in 1962 or earlier. Don’t know if winner gets WGM title.
So FIDE still doesn’t allow women to hold the main-line GM title? 
Bill Smythe
Of course women can be GMs. The criteria to earn it are different than those to become a WGM.
World Women’s Champ Hou holds both the WGM and GM titles, according to her bio put out for the Unive tournament.
It’s not an easy task to win that tournament, though.
GM Larry Kaufman won his GM title at the 2008 World Senior Championships, where he won 7 games and drew 4, including scoring 3 1/2 - 1/2 against the GMs he faced.
Does/would the USCF provide any financial support to our top senior players (non-GMs) to attend this tournament to give them to get a shot at the GM title?
I think Larry was the US Senior Champion that year and received some support, but I don’t know how much.
Given that past winners have included Smyslov, Geller, Taimanov, Vasiukov, Suetin, Bagirov, Spassov, Kortchnoi, Cebalo, Suba and Vaisser (all GMs long before the senior tournament) I wouldn’t expect many to miss ‘all those qualifying steps of FM, IM, GM.’ (Which is factually incorrect, anyway - as players can skip the FM/IM ‘qualifying steps’ and go straight to GM if they get the necessary results)
That said, there are at least a few IMs who have gotten their title this way, including the US player Larry Kaufman and last year’s champion Vladimir Ohotnik. Still, if you’re not already an IM I seriously doubt you would have much chance of getting your GM title this way.
I would note that the same applies to the winner of the World Junior Championship - obviously with a much different age requirement.
I’m addressing all the old guys like myself who have played chess for 30 or 40 years and never made it past expert or master. After all, hope springs eternal in the hearts of duffers. We can dream if we wanna. So stop raining on our parade. I like to think that I’m only 11 games away from chess stardom.
In that case, the question –
– remains without a satisfactory answer.
Are the criteria for a woman to become a GM the same as for a man to become a GM?
- If so, could a senior woman elect to play in the “male” section of this senior tournament?
[list][]If not, why not?
[/:m][]If not, why not?[/:m][/list:u]_____________________________________________________________________
(I hope the nested structure above makes it clear what my questions are.)
Bill Smythe
There are usually a few women in the World Senior Championship, check the crosstables.
You don’t. The World senior is an open tournament.
The World Senior Women’s is a separate event and in that event the age cutoff is 10 years younger.
The FIDE website wording in English is not particularly clear.
Don’t let me rain on your parade, but bring an umbrella in any event. That said, an expert once won the World Open (granted, not an 11 round tournament), and people do win the lottery (when I was state budget director I loved the lottery but also said that it is basically a tax on people who are bad at math).
How about a nice game of quadratic equations?
Jude Acers of New Orleans has played in the World Senior several times and is suppose to play again in 2012.
Randy Bauer asked: “How about a nice game of quadratic equations?”
Randy, very strange that you mention quadratic equations! I was just reading the Shulba Sutras in the original Sanskrit over breakfast this morning! I’ll be more than happy to explain it to you in easy understandable language.
Q? Is your fire-altar constructed in the form of a tortoise, a falcon, or a rhombus?
I think Mike Schemm got some money to go to the one in Italy a couple years ago. He snagged quite a few rating points and returned with something like a 2180 FIDE.
[quote=“dwl1945”]
Randy Bauer asked: “How about a nice game of quadratic equations?”
Randy, very strange that you mention quadratic equations! I was just reading the Shulba Sutras in the original Sanskrit over breakfast this morning! I’ll be more than happy to explain it to you in easy understandable language.
[quote]
It’s all Greek to me.