India's newest GM got there by farming 1500s India's…
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India's newest GM got there by farming 1500s
India's newest Grandmaster, Rathanvel V S https://radarchess.com/players/25002112-v-s-rathanvel , already had five GM norms. The only thing left was the 2500 rating requirement, and he was stuck at 2492, just 8 points short.
I read the ChessBase India article yesterday ( https://chessbase.in/news/rathanvel-is-indias-99th-gm ) and dug in when I hit this line: "He had a unique approach towards this where he skipped a few rounds playing against players below the Elo of 1600."
So, I pulled his games from the two rated opens he entered back-to-back in Assam. He won all 11, and every rated opponent sat between 1451 and 1625 (average about 1504):
|Round|Opponent|Rating|Result|Elo|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Ayodhana R1|Baibhav Baruah|1463|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R3|Akanksha Kalita|1461|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R5|Vivaan Jhakariya|unrated|Win|\+0.0|
|Ayodhana R6|Hiranya Das|1533|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R8|Angshuman Tamuli Phukan|1540|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R9|Ras Lal Upadhaya|1555|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R1|Bidipto Saud Dihingia|1468|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R2|Mahendra Bora|1625|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R5|Ankit Nandi|1467|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R7|Shantanu Choudhury|1451|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R8|Rajorshi Pramanik|1482|Win|\+0.8|
Each rated win was worth only +0.8. But 10 of them added up to the +8 he needed, taking him from 2492 to exactly 2500. The one unrated opponent added nothing (games against unrated players usually don't count toward your rating).
The byes are the clever part. In a Swiss, if you keep winning you get paired up against the other leaders. By taking zero-point byes in a few rounds, he kept his tournament score low, so the pairings kept feeding him 1400 to 1600 players instead of floating him up to the titled players on the top boards.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter how you reach 2500 to get the title - 1500 rated opposition gets you there just as well as beating GMs, and a lot more reliably. This is no knock on Rathanvel, he's beaten some good players in the past like Quang Liem Le, David Navara, and Amin Bassem. Doing what he did is completely within the rules (don't hate the player, hate the game). But reminds me of the Hikaru and Alireza situations to get into the candidates, which each got a lot of backlash.
Should other players adopt this strategy as well? There are many players who have the norms and not the rating. I built a norm tracker on my site here https://radarchess.com/normsthat let me find players like Kamran Shirazi https://radarchess.com/players/2000733-kamran-shirazi , a 74-year-old IM from France who still plays and has his 3 GM norms but is currently rated only 2199 (peak of 2486). I wonder how feasible it could be to start joining opens and farming lower rated players to get to 2500 as well.
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India's newest Grandmaster, Rathanvel V S https://radarchess.com/players/25002112-v-s-rathanvel , already had five GM norms. The only thing left was the 2500 rating requirement, and he was stuck at 2492, just 8 points short.
I read the ChessBase India article yesterday ( https://chessbase.in/news/rathanvel-is-indias-99th-gm ) and dug in when I hit this line: "He had a unique approach towards this where he skipped a few rounds playing against players below the Elo of 1600."
So, I pulled his games from the two rated opens he entered back-to-back in Assam. He won all 11, and every rated opponent sat between 1451 and 1625 (average about 1504):
|Round|Opponent|Rating|Result|Elo|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Ayodhana R1|Baibhav Baruah|1463|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R3|Akanksha Kalita|1461|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R5|Vivaan Jhakariya|unrated|Win|\+0.0|
|Ayodhana R6|Hiranya Das|1533|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R8|Angshuman Tamuli Phukan|1540|Win|\+0.8|
|Ayodhana R9|Ras Lal Upadhaya|1555|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R1|Bidipto Saud Dihingia|1468|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R2|Mahendra Bora|1625|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R5|Ankit Nandi|1467|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R7|Shantanu Choudhury|1451|Win|\+0.8|
|Guwahati R8|Rajorshi Pramanik|1482|Win|\+0.8|
Each rated win was worth only +0.8. But 10 of them added up to the +8 he needed, taking him from 2492 to exactly 2500. The one unrated opponent added nothing (games against unrated players usually don't count toward your rating).
The byes are the clever part. In a Swiss, if you keep winning you get paired up against the other leaders. By taking zero-point byes in a few rounds, he kept his tournament score low, so the pairings kept feeding him 1400 to 1600 players instead of floating him up to the titled players on the top boards.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter how you reach 2500 to get the title - 1500 rated opposition gets you there just as well as beating GMs, and a lot more reliably. This is no knock on Rathanvel, he's beaten some good players in the past like Quang Liem Le, David Navara, and Amin Bassem. Doing what he did is completely within the rules (don't hate the player, hate the game). But reminds me of the Hikaru and Alireza situations to get into the candidates, which each got a lot of backlash.
Should other players adopt this strategy as well? There are many players who have the norms and not the rating. I built a norm tracker on my site here https://radarchess.com/normsthat let me find players like Kamran Shirazi https://radarchess.com/players/2000733-kamran-shirazi , a 74-year-old IM from France who still plays and has his 3 GM norms but is currently rated only 2199 (peak of 2486). I wonder how feasible it could be to start joining opens and farming lower rated players to get to 2500 as well.
#games
source
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