Humpy elated at rare feat
V.V. Subrahmanyam
HYDERABAD: For 20-year-old Koneru Humpy, becoming a super Grandmaster is a high point of her career which should only spur her in future.
She became the second woman after Judith Polgar to do so in women’s section.
Speaking to The Hindu on her return from the Dubai international tournament, the former World junior champion said that after a shaky start where she won just 2.5 points from the first five rounds, she never thought of achieving any thing special.
“Especially after the loss to Tejas Bakre I was terribly disappointed. But later things moved dramatically in my favour and a win over top seed GM Miroshnichenko Evgenij of Ukraine helped me in winning those crucial ELO points which gave me this rare privilege,” Humpy, the first Indian woman to achieve this feat, said.
How significant is this achievement in the long-term perspective of her career? “Now obviously, it is difficult to sustain this high-level of rating. I have to be consistently brilliant. If you consider the fact that after V. Anand and K. Sasikiran, I am the only other Indian to achieve this feat, you can understand the pressure on me,” she said.
“Honestly, I never thought I would become a Super GM in the Dubai event itself and I dedicate this to my parents — Ashok and Lata,” she said.
Here is the full story.
Nice job Humpy!
What is a Super Grandmaster?
I would assume it means that she will , on the next rating list, break 2600.
If it only takes 2600 to be a “super grandmaster” then we need another pseudo-title for the 2700+ crowd, like “ultra grandmaster” and another one for the 2750+ crowd, like “superultra grandmaster”. It has become ridiculous. The title of grandmaster use to mean those few grandmasters in the same strength class as the world champion; other strong players had to be content to be “masters”, which is a powerful enough word in itself. When the term was first used, there were a total of five grandmasters in the world, including the world champion himself. The chess world needs to restore the dignity of its titles. We shouldn’t have to invent ludicrous unofficial titles. And the linked article referred to Miroshnichenko and gave his ELO as 2761, which is clearly an error, so I also have my doubts about their use of the term “super GM”.
I think in Humpy’s case it means a Super WGM
http://www.fide.com/ratings/card.phtml?event=5008123 …
Currently on ELO 2572 and expecting to go to 2598.8 … plus.
So it’s a reasonable assumption that she is going over 2600. No indication that this is women-specific rating in a women-only community.
By comparison, Judit Polgar is at 2707, Susan Polgar is at 2577 and Viswanathan Anand is at 2792.
Is Humpy 2700+ !?!?! 😮
i cannot believe she is there yet!!!
SuperGM is 2700+
She’s forgetting Pentala Harikrishna (2664).
Yeah, it’s another of those bizarre stories that doesn’t bother to tell you what it’s talking about. Super Grandmaster isn’t an official title, and if it were, it would probably mean 2700+. “You don’t need to know what she did, but trust us, it’s something good.”
Totally nuts.
Super GM? Is this a title? I understand it’s been an unofficial moniker for GMs rated over 2700 for some time, but come on. Pretty soon anyone who knows the moves a knight can make on the board will be a Grandmaster. I agree with a previous poster. Let’s restore the dignity to the Grandmaster title. Why are there thousands of Grandmasters? There should be maybe 100 or so. Then it would mean something. We could probably train a monkey to be a GM these days. I don’t mean to diminish the Grandmasters that earned it the right way, but it certainly is a very slippery slope with hundreds of people becoming Grandmasters every year it seems.
I’m curious to know how many Grandmasters in the world there were when Susan and Judit EARNED their titles. Without even looking I would venture to guess that maybe in the neighborhood of 200-250 people in the world were Grandmasters when Susan earned her title. Now she’s just one of the masses of chess players rated over 2500 because of non-existant tournaments and mystery scores by chess players previously unknown.
It’s a terrible shame to the real chess players that a title like Chess Grandmaster can be bought with a few thousand dollars these days.
Humpy is a good player and has earned all her elo points the hard way by winning games. I think she deserves a lot of praise. However, I also thought that Super GM is for the 2700 level. My take is that the reporter just misunderstood.
Anon of 4.08 cites the ELOs of Judit Polgar, Susan Polgar and Anand.
Part of the reason there are lots of GMs now is that you never lose the title once you have it. Susan P hasn’t played a rated game since 2004 and here GM rating is of historical value only.
A more extreme case is that of Raymond Keene, aka R.D.Kobe, chess writer but inactive in ELO terms. He is ELO’d at 2455 and a ‘GM’ but hasn’t played this century.
whatever is the meaning of it, the thing is its an achievment to cross 2600 by a woman player, don’t you guys think its great!!!
and I do not agree about the diminishing value of GM title. It is still very difficult to become GM, ask Vinay Bhatt for example how difficult was for him.
Susan Polgar isn’t 2nd
rated women in world¨any more?!
Hehe
It’s certainly an achievement to reach 2600 ELO, but I doubt if it is any more of an achievement for a woman than a man.
A GM title might at most be saying that you played at GM level once: it says nothing about how you play now unless you are active.
I would ‘decay’ ELO figures for inactivity: that might encourage people to play more.