21 August 2017

Masters Emeritus in the 1950s

In the previous post on early U.S. chess ratings, Master Ratings and Master Titles, I quoted an editorial in the July 1951 issue of Chess Life (CL).

CHESS LIFE will further propose that the list of recognized Masters Emeriti be published in connection with the semi-annual printing of the National Ratings.

The first list was published in the 5 March 1952 issue of CL, and included 12 names.

The introduction said,

Master Emeritus have been conferred by the U.S. Chess Federation upon the following players who have compiled outstanding records in American chess competition, in many cases even prior to the initial year (1921) covered by the National Rating System, and whose present ratings do not reflect their outstanding past performances. Some have retired from active tournament play and some still indulge in competitive events, but all have reflected glory upon the practice of chess in the United States.

Eight more names would be added in the 1950s (see USCF Rating Lists in the 1950s for details). The 20 names are shown below along with year-month of first mention on the list and state of residence. I've also added links to relevant pages on Chessgames.com, Wikipedia.org, Tartajubow.blogspot.com, and other sites; these are not exhaustive.

Generally speaking, these players had their most notable chess successes in the decades before the introduction of U.S. ratings.

Posted by Mark Weeks at 8/21/2017 05:16:00 PM

Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)