Candidate master title

There are some CMs that get automatic titles from events and are not 2200 rated players. Mostly youth players and/or those from countries without a lot of chess where the players did well in something like a continental championship.

I can't say that's true of all the CMs you have seen but at least some. There are some lower rated FMs for similar reason.

Obviously yes. What are you trying to say? It is a FIDE title, but not a master title.

A presidential candidate is not a president, a candidate for the world championship is not a world champion, a CM is not a master.

Then NM is also not a master because I believe that getting to 2200 FIDE is actually harder than getting to 2200 Uscf until and unless you find weaker tournaments and play those to gain rating.

National master titles around the world are way older than FIDE's. FIDE was founded in 1924, started awarding titles in 1950. Meanwhile, regional and national federations awarded master titles a hundred years before that, or more.

While they are just Candidate Masters, most consider the title a master title and it's roughly equivalent to the US Chess NM title in strength.

Roughly equivalent? I did say probably even better!

2200 US Chess rating is often lower in strength than 2200 FIDE. Not by a bunch and not in all cases, but in general.

It used to be that there was no lower rating limit for such direct titles. The Queen of Katwe was a movie about Phiona Mutesi who went 50% in the 40th Olympiad and received the WCM direct title. WCM normally requires 2000 and now even a direct title requires reaching 1800 at some time (before or after achieving the direct title requirement) but Phiona did it prior to that direct title lower limit being required and is thus a WCM that never exceeded 1686 (nor went below 1597).

In general FIDE 2200 equates to 2250-2275 USCF so NM in the US is given as much respect as CM is given elsewhere. FIDE charges for titles so many US players skip the CM title because they are NMs by then. For standard norm events there is a requirement of participation by enough titled players, but only GM/WGM, IM/WIM and FM/WFM are considered titles that meet that requirement. CM and WCM are often considered mere vanity titles because they cost money and don't have any noticeable benefit.

Because of the size of the US, the existence of norm events gives an incentive to titled immigrants to maintain their original FIDE country even if they become US citizens. Such players are cheaper to get for norm events (much smaller travel expense) and are fluent in the English language, making them attractive to organizers (some give free entries to GMs/WGMs and non-USA-flagged IMs/WIMs).

For foreign players in a US Chess event that have FIDE ratings but no US Chess rating, the tournament rules recommend setting the player's rating to higher than the FIDE rating.

Three options

• FIDE + 50
• 0.895 (FIDE) + 367
• FIDE + 100

On average, a FIDE rating is going to be somewhat stronger than a US Chess rating at the same value.

FIDE + 50 is supposed to give a US equivalent that, on average, will half the time be low and half the time be high. FIDE + 100 is supposed to be high only 10% of the time (used to protect the rest of the field from an underrated player winning a class prize).

That's correct but the direct implication is that US Chess ratings are lower in strength, on average, than the similar rating for FIDE.

Arrgh. I will correct my mis-typing.

They are still close enough that NM is considered as highly as CM and, since NM doesn't have an additional charge, people that pay for CM (instead of waiting to reach FM) are considered by many to be vanity purchasers. The US has only 79 CM (2 over 2300 and 56 under 2200 with 23 of those 56 being under 2000 and another 17 under 2100) and 58 WCM players (WCM is only FIDE 2000 so a player eligible for that is more likely to not be an NM anyway and thus it is a more likely title to purchase) compared to 388 FM (146 still over 2300) and 49 WFM players. Worldwide there are 2344 CM (16 over 2300 and 1911 under 2200 with 801 of that 1911 under 2000 and another 485 under 2100) and 8971 FM players (2579 still over 2300). There are about 5 US FMs per CM and only 4 non-US FMs per non-US CM with more than half of the US CMs being under 2100 and thus weaker than the 2200 USCF minimum for NM.

One thing I find interesting is that almost 1/3 of the US CMs are still 2200+ while that is true of only almost 1/5 of the non-US CMs. About 1/3 of the US CMs and non-US CMs are under 2000.

For CMs under 2200, many may never have been 2200.

And those CMs that received it as a direct title (currently only needing a 2000 rating <or 1800 for WCM> and originally not having any minimum rating) would be more likely to take the title (I am not sure if a direct title still requires payment). China only has 11 CMs and 25 FMs so China players are even more unlikely to pay than US players. Russia has 48 CMs and 1220 FMs (more than 25 FMs per CM - if the US and Russia are removed from the numbers then there are about 3.4 FMs per CM).

Playing in US or Canada may boost your rating slightly, but if you really want to see results, play in jail!

For anyone who doesn't know this one already... Claude Bloodgood! Got to #2 in America with a 2789 rating. His secret? He killed his Mom and only played opponents in jail.

That was a closed group ratings anomaly. He lost to new players, giving them very high USCF provisional ratings while he only lost a few points, and then started beating them. Doing that with a few groups meant that his rating went high enough to qualify for the US Championship (his request for a temporary release from jail to participate in the tournament was declined).