(292) The Road Back To 2500
On the morning of January 23rd 2020 I was running a couple of kilometres along the sea front near my house. This was a part of my training for several things and specifically for my health.
I had decided, in the days still left, to hone my concerns down to just eight or so. e.g. Spanish, keyboard skills, etc, and several of these were far from "all or nothing" commitments but just "trimming" things to a level of respectability. The eighth and least important was getting my formal ELO rating back to 2500. It had peaked, in 2000, at 2529.
The Road Back to 2500
I thought that he might be referring to a rating at an on line web site or his USCF rating, as each of those was always quite a bit higher than an International ELO. I also thought he might be styling himself "GM" in some equally non-recognised manner.
Yet it transpired that he was an authentic American GM who had acquired the title in 2007 - the first American to reach that status since Tal Shaked a decade earlier. But, although I knew many American GMs, his name was unknown to me.
He told me that he had only put up the Post of The Road Back to 2500 the previous day: Jan 22nd 2020.
Like me he was a GM of mature years whose ELO rating had slipped down (to 2436) and now he too was aiming to restore it to the very same level of respectability upon which I had just decided.
And, like me, he was now making that amendment known (I had let my wife in on my new "trimmed" ambition, too.) And I also had made the commitment on The Road Back to ...
...my home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Kraai
I had decided, in the days still left, to hone my concerns down to just eight or so. e.g. Spanish, keyboard skills, etc, and several of these were far from "all or nothing" commitments but just "trimming" things to a level of respectability. The eighth and least important was getting my formal ELO rating back to 2500. It had peaked, in 2000, at 2529.
I myself had won the British Championship in 1990 ahead of a world class field, achieved a world ranking of 100th in the 1980s and had plus scores against two players who had been ranked in the world top ten and against two others who played matches for the world championship. I had even received accolades of "genius" for one of my games: a victory over Miles. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1097818&kpage=3#kibitzing
But imagination, flair, risk and "genius" may not always be reflected in the ELO rating. And indeed whilst running I thought on how the ranking system for this ´mind sport´ is unfortunate in that one may attain a very high ELO by not tryng to win. In my 1988 book Playing To Win I quoted GM Vlastimil Hort that it did not seem entirely right to him that Ulf Andersson should have so high an ELO (he had been ranked about third in the world in the early 1980s) "for purely defensive play".
I still had ELO of over 2500 on both the Blitz and Rapids lists, but those were much less important than the International ELO which had taken some progressive hits over the previous year and thus rendered me very much wish to restore it to the almost formal level of respectability: 2500. I had entertained and sometimes actually voiced greater ambition than that. But on the training run I thought that I ought now to be accepting that the years were taking their toll and content myself with getting 2500 back as realistic.Although of my eight goals which I had set for myself, this was by far the least important.
When I got home, circa noon, I turned on Twitter and one of the first things I saw was a reTweeted post from someone whom I did not follow and indeed of whom I had never heard: Grandmaster Jesse Kraai. It was headedBut imagination, flair, risk and "genius" may not always be reflected in the ELO rating. And indeed whilst running I thought on how the ranking system for this ´mind sport´ is unfortunate in that one may attain a very high ELO by not tryng to win. In my 1988 book Playing To Win I quoted GM Vlastimil Hort that it did not seem entirely right to him that Ulf Andersson should have so high an ELO (he had been ranked about third in the world in the early 1980s) "for purely defensive play".
I still had ELO of over 2500 on both the Blitz and Rapids lists, but those were much less important than the International ELO which had taken some progressive hits over the previous year and thus rendered me very much wish to restore it to the almost formal level of respectability: 2500. I had entertained and sometimes actually voiced greater ambition than that. But on the training run I thought that I ought now to be accepting that the years were taking their toll and content myself with getting 2500 back as realistic.Although of my eight goals which I had set for myself, this was by far the least important.
The Road Back to 2500
I thought that he might be referring to a rating at an on line web site or his USCF rating, as each of those was always quite a bit higher than an International ELO. I also thought he might be styling himself "GM" in some equally non-recognised manner.
Yet it transpired that he was an authentic American GM who had acquired the title in 2007 - the first American to reach that status since Tal Shaked a decade earlier. But, although I knew many American GMs, his name was unknown to me.
He told me that he had only put up the Post of The Road Back to 2500 the previous day: Jan 22nd 2020.
Like me he was a GM of mature years whose ELO rating had slipped down (to 2436) and now he too was aiming to restore it to the very same level of respectability upon which I had just decided.
And, like me, he was now making that amendment known (I had let my wife in on my new "trimmed" ambition, too.) And I also had made the commitment on The Road Back to ...
...my home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Kraai
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