Time for another reader poll! You guys helped me decide to play in the U.S. Senior Open instead of the U.S. Open, and now maybe you can help me make another decision.
While I was researching the rules about National Master titles for an earlier post, I came upon a fact that I didn’t know before. Did you know that there is an official FIDE title called Candidate Master (CM)? To qualify for the Candidate Master title, all you need to do is achieve a FIDE rating of 2200. It’s analogous to the FIDE Master (FM) title, for which you only need to achieve a rating of 2300. Neither title requires you to achieve a norm of any kind; the rating is all that matters.
A long time ago, January of 1996 to be precise, I actually did reach a FIDE rating of 2200. I don’t think the CM title even existed then. A couple weeks ago I sent an inquiry to the U.S. Chess Federation asking if I could qualify for the CM title with a rating from 13 years ago. They answered that they could put in the application for me, and I would need to pay an application fee of $75 to FIDE.
WHOA! Seventy-five dollars just for the privilege of adding two letters in front of my name? When I heard that, this Candidate Master title started sounding a little bit more like a money-making gimmick than a bona fide title. So I sent an e-mail to Michael Aigner, aka fpawn, to see what he thought. Why did I ask him? Well, he just seems to know about everything. 😎
Michael’s reply was very interesting. He agreed with me that FIDE is probably doing this to make money. Of course there are many players in the U.S. who are eligible for it, but he said you could probably count the number of actual CM’s on the fingers of two hands. Maybe you might need some toes, too, but the point is it’s a very small number. I think that if most people saw “CM Dana Mackenzie” on a pairing chart, they would say, “Huh? What’s that?”
Another thing that I don’t like about this CM title is that it frankly doesn’t sound impressive. To me, the term Candidate Master means that you are not a master. National Master (NM) sounds better, even though it’s not. (The requirements are similar: a 2200 USCF rating qualifies you for the NM title. However, it’s generally considered harder to get a 2200 FIDE rating than a 2200 USCF rating.)
On the positive side, Michael said that achieving a 2200 FIDE rating is a significant accomplishment, and the CM title recognizes that. Also, even though the CM title is unfamiliar to most people now, so was the FM title when that got started. Now it is pretty well accepted.
So, what do you think? Should I pay $75 for two letters? Or should I save the money and spend it on a new copy of ChessBase instead?
P.S. If you vote for ChessBase … Does anyone have any opinions on the relative merit of ChessBase 2009 Light (50 Euros, or about $72) versus ChessBase 10 Starter Edition ($188)? Is there any reason to pay all that extra money just to have the data base on your own computer, instead of out there on the Internet somewhere?
