2024.gada 2.decembrī Nīderlandes spēlētājam Antonam Van Berkelam piešķirts starptautiskā lielmeistara GMI tituls. Tas noticis tik klusi, ka bija palicis nepamanīts, jo FMJD reitingu sarakstos tas neparādījās. Tikai tagad, spēlējot Nīderlandes pusfinālā, redzams šis tituls. Tātad par vienu GMI vairāk.

Šeit Antons Van Berkels apraksta kā viņš kļuva par starptautisko lielmeistaru (angļu val.):

To become MF (FMDJ Master, FMDJ stands for Fédération Mondiale du Jeu de Dames, French for draughts, ed. ), MI (International Master) or GMI (International Grandmaster) you have to score norms during tournaments. For GMI the requirements for a norm are quite high, since you have no influence on which opponents you get, apart from a possible guided draw in the last round if the tournament situation allows it (for example I can’t be linked to a GMI if he has more match points than I do and there are still a number of players between the GMI and me).

The conditions: 3 GMIs as opponents. Only GMIs with a rating of 2300 or higher count. A number of GMIs that often play have a rating just above 2300, then just below 2300. So one time they count as GMI and the next tournament they don’t. In a tournament with a limited number of rounds, three GMIs is a lot, especially with seven rounds. Three MIs with a rating of 2250 or higher can be exchanged for one GMI, and three MFs for one MI, but that is theoretical, because you don’t get that many against you in a small tournament of 7, 9 or 10 games (this is the usual number of rounds). Then you also have to have a number of foreign opponents.

And based on the average rating of your opponents, you have to score a number of match points. The lower the average, the more match points are needed. In practice, it roughly comes down to this: against everyone who is GMI, you can play a draw and the rest you have to win. Your own rating is also included in that average. You could have had exactly the same players and then one player has a norm and the other does not. But if you are unlucky enough to draw a player with a very low rating in a round, for example because he won the first round, then you have to score a full match point more.

Also lower rated GMIs are not good for the average rating, so you actually need some super GMIs (that title does not exist, but you can imagine it: top 10 to 20 of the world) for a good average. But the disadvantage of that is that they play well and that you do not draw against them 1-2-3. You also need to have played at least one round tournament: that is counted as a tough category because there are hardly any weak opponents.

And then there is the psychological pressure: If I draw this game, the norm is (almost) in. I have already survived three ex-world champions, now only this super-GMI. And that failed in two tournaments for me: I lost. If I had been sick on the last day, I would have had the GMI norm in one case, but it is against my moral standards to call in sick because of that. How many norms you need depends on the number of rounds in the tournaments in which you score a norm. In total you need 40 games for the GMI title, 30 for MI. A tournament with x rounds counts as a norm for x games. For years I had 13+9 (or 10) +9 = 31 games and therefore needed two norms of 7 games or 1 of 9 or more. By the way, that round tournament counted as 10 games for me, as 9 for someone else. Very vague.

That’s the theory, now the practice. In 1997 I got a call from Theo Dijkstra; someone who had taken it upon himself to monitor the standards. Nobody really paid attention to that. Even now, that hasn’t improved much. Unfortunately, that gentleman has passed away: he wasn’t a strong player, but he did have good mental insights and was the coach of the Dutch team at my 1990 Junior World Championship in Rotterdam. I had a draw against a Surinamese player. I didn’t achieve much against him. Mr. Dijkstra explained to me that I was thinking wrong: I saw all kinds of possibilities for the opponent, assumed the best moves. He indicated that such an opponent looked up to me, wanted to avoid problems and dreaded complications. Such a player would then automatically play weaker moves to avoid the difficulties. Plus, he wouldn’t always see the best move. In practice, that turns out to be true: how often do you win a draw because the inferior player misses something due to fatigue or carelessness or incompetence? This also happens in chess.

Anyway, Mr. Dijkstra called me. I still needed 1 MI norm for the MI title, because norms existed for five years at the time and then expired. I had achieved 1 GMI norm during the 1992 National Championships and I think two MI norms. One in any case achieved during the 1992 Olympiad in Mori, where in retrospect I could have gone for a GMI norm but little was known about norms at the time. I started with white against a Mongolian and a win against the Senegalese GMI Samb (then still MI I think, but already one of the strongest players in Africa), but also played the rest for the win and lost.

According to Theo, I still needed a tournament in a heavy category for the MI title. However, standards expired after 5 years and the GMI standard dated from the 1992 National Championship. So I went to a tournament in Tallinn. There were eight players and that was two too few for a heavy tournament so, among other things, a GMI had to be persuaded to participate. And I had to pay for the costs. But anyway, I really wanted that standard and I allowed it. I played better than expected there and after 7 out of 9 rounds I already had the MI standard and I was immediately an International Master (I have never been an MF). But after 8 rounds it turned out that I could achieve a GMI standard with a draw and I had to play against a moderate opponent. But I realized: don’t try to win for a good tournament result and cherish the GMI standard in a heavy tournament. And I achieved that standard!

The 1992 GMI norm was dropped, and eventually the 1997 one as well. I tried seriously to achieve GMI norms, but failed. Once because I buckled under pressure: I started with four wins including a MI (Provost), rounds 5 through 7 draws against three super GMIs (Ndjofang, Valneris and another player), but lost to a super MI (Ndonzi) and then drew against a super GMI (Yuri Anikeev, the current world champion). In case you ever need this on a quiz for a very high money question, you now know the world champion. The margin I had by winning the MI I lost because of the loss, but in the second round I had a win against a player with a very low rating and that depressed the average.

Once the standard didn’t work because I happened to draw against a player with a lower rating who was playing the tournament of his life. That’s why I didn’t win. Not that he’s a bad player: he’s been world champion in Italian draughts several times (in which you’re not allowed to capture backwards, a king can only move one square at a time and, like a checker, captures forwards and backwards, and a checker can’t capture a king). I think he was/is also world champion in checkers. And he’s still world champion in one or two of these disciplines. We played the very first World Championship for aspirants together.

I had given up hope of the GMI title when both GMI norms had expired. Then came the good news: norms would no longer expire and old norms counted again. So I had two again. In 2010 I became Open Dutch champion and there was my third norm. Still need 1 or 2 norms. And then it never works out. That is mainly because I don’t play many tournaments: I am not a professional and a tournament costs me vacation days. So I didn’t get further than 1 or 2 tournaments a year.

There was another important change in the meantime: you were allowed to drop a winning game. That could be beneficial if it increased the average opponent rating to such an extent that you would have enough match points without that game. For me it did not lead to an extra standard.

Then came Amersfoort. I beat Alexander Schwartzman and later I won the tournament. Someone on the internet wondered if I had a norm. I already knew that I didn’t because I had had too few GMIs. Domchev had a rating of 2297 and that was too few. And so I didn’t ask for GMI Ndjofang in the last round. But someone else also delved into the rules and discovered that only 27 games are needed these days. MI apparently went to 25 games. And I had had those 27 games for years. I don’t know when that change was implemented, but it apparently happened years ago. And nobody from the world draughts association noticed that, while they should have only checked how many games they had for the players who already had norms. Nobody from the Dutch draughts association checked that either.

But well, the GMI title was applied for and honored. Wieger Wesselink – who had achieved a GMI norm in the same tournament mentioned above in Tallinn – also became GMI in this way.

Anton van Berkel