Sorry I’ve been away for a couple days… I went to an undisclosed top-secret location, where they’ve just had 19 inches of snow, and began the process of turning into a Borg. See?
Resistance is futile.
Anyway, when I got home I read in my Facebook feed that Mike Zaloznyy just got his Life Master certificate, and I congratulate him on that. He also posted a picture of it, and I’m glad to see that there is no longer any asterisk on it.
Long-time readers of this blog might remember my post called Maris’d, which had a photo of my brand-new-at-the-time Life Master certificate, which had a huge qualifier: “Under the USCF norm system.” To me, that’s the equivalent of an asterisk. Mike’s does not have any such qualifier: it just says Life Master.
It occurred to me recently, though, that I have a pretty unique distinction. With a rating of 2199, I am one of the few Life Masters rated under 2200. Of course, the Original Life Master title (achieved by playing 300 games with a rating of 2200+) carries with it a rating floor of 2200, and quite a few Life Masters are at their rating floors. Only the bearers of the highly coveted Life-Master-With-An-Asterisk title can see their ratings drop below 2200.
So, in fact, there are 386 Life Masters who are listed as “Currently Active” on the USCF website. Out of those 386 Life Masters, 368 of them have ratings of 2200 or above. I’m number 369.
Incidentally, I was flabbergasted to see that I actually know the guy who is at the bottom of the list (and by quite a large margin). There is only one active Life Master in the country rated under 2100. His name is Michael Buaiz, and his rating is all the way down at 2001.
Well, there’s a story here. Back in the late 1980s, when I lived in North Carolina, Michael was an upcoming raw talent. I first played him in 1986, when I think he was a B player. Within two years he had shot up to 2200 and gotten his National Master title.
But there was one thing about Michael that, I believe, limited his growth as a chess player. He was a rapid and intuitive player, and I think he liked blitz more than regular time control chess. Certainly his member page at the USCF bears this out — a large proportion of the tournaments he played in were quick chess. Like a lot of quick players, he could be very dangerous and it could be psychologically difficult to go up against him, but he would make mistakes if you were patient enough.
According to his member page, he got his rating as high as 2298, and in the process accumulated his five Life Master norms (which, of course, did not even exist back then — all of this has been worked out years later by the USCF computers). Then his rating crashed.
Even so, Michael is very unlucky to be on the bottom of this list. His last regular-speed tournament was in 2006. He did very badly and dropped all the way to 2001, just one point above his rating floor. He hasn’t played since then. Except that last year, for some reason, he played in one more blitz tournament, which didn’t even affect his regular rating, but it did take him off inactive status and put him on the list of currently active players. And that’s how he came to be the bottom-rated currently active Life Master. If only his rating had peaked at 2300 instead of 2298 back in his heyday, his rating floor would be 2100 and he would never be worse than tied for the bottom.
By the way, if I should be lucky enough to gain two rating points in my next tournament, and go from 2199 to 2201, I would pass 27 people. That’s how many Life Masters are currently “floored” at 2200. They include some very well known names. Probably the most famous is Grandmaster Arthur Bisguier. “How is this possible?” you ask. “He’s a Grandmaster, not a Life Master.” Well, in the USCF norm-based life title system, the only title higher than Life Master is Life Senior Master, which of course requires five Senior Master norms. If you look at Bisguier’s whole career, of course he has gotten them. But if you only look at the years since 1991, which is what the USCF computer covers, I guess he has not accumulated enough. Kind of sad.
Other well-known Life Masters who are stuck at 2200 include prolific author Eric Schiller, multiple-time Washington state champion Viktors Pupols, frequent California chess organizer Richard Koepcke, Georgia hotshot Brian McCarthy, and Maryland master Denis Strenzwilk. I have played all of these guys, and the only one I beat was McCarthy. They’ve all been around a long time and had many great triumphs. So there is definitely no disgrace in being a “floored master.” Still, I am really looking forward to assimilating… er, moving past them on the list.
