Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded to chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain. Once achieved, the title is held for life, though exceptionally it has been revoked for cheating.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
Yasser Seirawan is a Syrian-born American chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion. He won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1979. Seirawan is also a published chess author and commentator.
Duncan Suttles is a Grandmaster of chess who was the strongest Canadian player between the eras of Abe Yanofsky and Kevin Spraggett. He is one of the few over-the-board grandmasters who also holds the title of Grandmaster of International Correspondence Chess. Suttles has been inactive in over-the-board play since the mid-1980s. He currently serves with the software firm Magnetar Games, as president and chief technologist.
Mark Bluvshtein is a Soviet-born Canadian chess player. He became the youngest Canadian ever to achieve the title of Grandmaster in 2004, at the age of 16. He previously achieved the title International Master at the age of 13.
Kevin Spraggett is a Canadian chess grandmaster. He was the fourth Canadian to earn the grandmaster title, after Abe Yanofsky, Duncan Suttles and Peter Biyiasas. Spraggett is the only Canadian to have qualified for the Candidates' level, having done so in 1985 and 1988. He has won a total of eight Canadian Open Chess Championships, seven Closed Canadian Chess Championships, and has represented Canada eight times in Olympiad play. Spraggett has also written for Canadian chess publications.
Alexandre Le Siège, also known as Alexandre Lesiège, is a Canadian chess player who holds the FIDE title of Grandmaster. He has won three Canadian championships and represented Canada in World Championship qualifying events and Olympiads.
Pascal Charbonneau is a Canadian Grandmaster of chess, and a financial analyst. He has won two Closed Canadian Chess Championships, in 2002 and 2004, and has represented Canada in five Chess Olympiads: 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Jean Hébert is a Canadian chess player, writer, journalist, and commentator who holds the ICCF title of Correspondence Chess Grandmaster and the FIDE title of International Master. He is the 2009 Canadian chess champion, a title he first won in 1978. He tied for this title in 2007 as well, but lost in playoffs. He represented Canada at the 1979 Interzonal tournament, as well as seven times in chess Olympiads. He took part in the Chess World Cup 2009 and was knocked out by Peter Svidler in the first round.
A chess title is a title regulated by a chess governing body and bestowed upon players based on their performance and rank. Such titles are usually granted for life. The international chess governing body FIDE grants several titles, the most prestigious of which is Grandmaster; many national chess federations also grant titles such as "National Master". More broadly, the term "master" can refer to any highly skilled chess player.
A chess rating system is a system used in chess to estimate the strength of a player, based on their performance versus other players. They are used by organizations such as FIDE, the US Chess Federation, International Correspondence Chess Federation, and the English Chess Federation. Most of the systems are used to recalculate ratings after a tournament or match but some are used to recalculate ratings after individual games. Popular online chess sites such as chess.com, Lichess, and Internet Chess Club also implement rating systems. In almost all systems a higher number indicates a stronger player. In general, players' ratings go up if they perform better than expected and down if they perform worse than expected. The magnitude of the change depends on the rating of their opponents. The Elo rating system is currently the most widely used.
Performance rating in chess is the level a player performed in a tournament or match based on the number of games played, their total score in those games, and the Elo ratings of their opponents. It is the Elo rating a player would have if their actual score was the expected score they would get against their opponents based on their opponent's individual ratings. Due to the difficulty of computing performance rating in this manner, however, the linear method and FIDE method for calculating performance rating are in much more widespread use. With these simpler methods, only the average rating factors into the calculation instead of the ratings of each individual opponent. Regardless of the method, only the total score is used to determine performance rating instead of individual game results. FIDE performance ratings are also used to determine if a player has achieved a norm for FIDE titles such as Grandmaster (GM).
The Women's World Chess Championship 2012 was a knockout tournament, to decide the women's world champion. The title was won by Anna Ushenina of Ukraine for the first time. Defending champion Hou Yifan went out in the second round.
Eric Hansen is a Canadian chess player and Twitch streamer. FIDE awarded him the title of Grandmaster in 2013. He competed in the FIDE World Cup in 2011 and 2013. Hansen has represented Canada in the Chess Olympiad since 2012.
Richard Wang is a chess international master from Canada. Wang became the second youngest International Master in Canadian history at the age of 13 at the 2012 Canadian Closed Chess Championships (Zonal) held in Montreal, Canada. Other notable achievements include winning two bronze medals at the World Youth Chess Championship: the first in 2009 in the U12 Boys section and the second in 2012 in the U14 Boys section. He is one of the few Canadians to win more than one medal at the WYCC.
The Women's World Chess Championship was held from 16 March to 7 April 2015 in Sochi, Russia. It was a 64-player knockout tournament. It was originally scheduled from 11 to 31 October 2014 but problems in finding a sponsor and host city eventually forced international chess organisation FIDE to announce the postponement of the Championship on 24 September 2014, scheduling it for early 2015 in Sochi. The unclear state of the tournament was highly criticised by the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP).
Oliver Barbosa is a Filipino chess grandmaster. He earned his International Master title in 2008 and his grandmaster title in 2011. Barbosa won the 10th Parsvnath International Grandmasters Tournament in New Delhi, with 9.5/11 and an astounding Tournament Performance Rating (TPR) of 2710. By winning the said tournament, he also raised his ELO Live Rating from 2573 to 2627 as he gained 53.8 ELO rating points to become the Philippines 3rd Super GM. He earned his first GM norm in the Asian Individual in Mashad, Iran and his second norm in the Philippines National Championships. In 2014, he tied for 1st–2nd with Francisco Vallejo Pons in the Thailand Open Chess Championship.
Erik Andrew Kislik is an American chess International Master from Hillsborough, California. He achieved his first FIDE chess rating at age 20 and the International Master title at age 24. His peak FIDE rating is 2415.
Vasily Viktorovich Papin is a Russian chess Grandmaster.
Razvan Preotu is a Canadian chess player who holds the FIDE title of Grandmaster.
