March 3 2025 - Job Titles

 

Job titles - these are interesting things.  Boris Spassky's obituary in the Globe and Mail listed him as Grand Master. I think there are other places where Grand Master occurs - fraternal orders like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows.  Maybe the Knights of Columbus.  It is "a title of the supreme head of various orders, including chivalric orders such as military and dynastic orders of knighthood." How interesting that the Chess World chose such a title.  Supposedly it was used initially to describe a player who was better than "just a master".   So then Grand Master became the highest title/ranking that a chess player could achieve.   Go check out chess ranking systems and it is much more complicated.  There's lots of history here.  It got particularly active around the 1950s.   There's the Ingo system, started in 1948 and then the Harkness system in 1950.  The Elo rating system is the one with Grandmaster (GM) then International Masters, then FIDE Masters, Candidate Masters, Experts, and then Class A, category 1 through to Class E, category 5.  And at the bottom are Novices.  There are scores for each level. And then there are complicated calculations for where a person fits into the rankings.   The new world champion will be determined in 2026 - the defending champion is Gukesh Dommaraju.  He won in 2024.    I found a site with chess jokes that can be voted up or down.  I decided this one was worth repeating: Should I call 911 because of my constant chess pains? .

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