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March 15

Posthumous chess grandmasters

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Has anyone ever become a GM posthumously in the normal fashion (i.e. not the honorary GM titles like Sultan Khan's)? It might theoretically be possible in the case of a GM-elect who attained the norms, but died between the title application and the next FIDE council meeting. Double sharp (talk) 10:19, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this may never have happened. Per Grandmaster (chess), there are about 2000 GMs. Like anyone else, they are mere mortals. Guessing 30 to be the average age of newly created GMs, they last for about 50 years, so to keep the number steady each year some 40 new GMs are created, so in total something like

N

= 2800 since 1950. Creation events are quarterly, so the time between application and creation is on the average something like 1/8th of a year. The mortality rate for applicants may be estimated as being

μ

= 0.001 (see the graph at Late-life mortality deceleration). The expected number of posthumous GMs is then 1⁄8

μN

= 0.35. Assuming a Poisson distribution (applicants not all taking the same flight), the probability of no events since 1950 is about 70%. At this rate, it will take another 70 years or so for the probability of at least one event to rise above 50%. ‑‑Lambiam 10:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having just taken the time to look through list of chess grandmasters, I can now answer my own question: no, this has never happened. The closest it came to happening appears to be the case of Igor Ivanov (1947–2005), who attained the title in the year of his death on the basis of norms actually achieved in the 1990s. Double sharp (talk) 16:55, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]