Arpad Elo Creator of the international system for calculating individual ratings of chess players. Date of Birth: 25.08.1903 Country: USA

Biography of Arpad Elo

Arpad Imre Elo was born on August 25, 1903, in Hungary, into a peasant family. At the age of ten, he emigrated to the United States with his parents, where he developed a passion for chess. After finishing school, Elo attended the University of Chicago and graduated in 1935, becoming a professor of physics and astronomy at Marquette Catholic University.

In the same year, Elo took over as the head of the American Chess Federation, a position he held until its merger with the National Chess Federation in 1939 to form the United States Chess Federation. Elo continued his work as an organizer in various positions until 1976. He also actively participated in chess competitions as a strong amateur player. Notably, he had two draws against Reuben Fine in the 1948 World Chess Championship Candidates Tournament. In 1957, Elo played against a 14-year-old Robert Fischer in the Western States Championship, which ended in Fischer's victory.

In 1959, at the request of Jerry Spann, the then-president of the US Chess Federation, Professor Elo joined a commission tasked with revising and improving the system of individual ratings used to assess the relative strength of players. The existing system had significant flaws, such as allowing a player who lost all their games to increase their rating and sometimes leading to a decrease in the rating of a player who achieved a perfect score. Elo's ideas formed the basis of a new, statistically more accurate system, which calculated the expected result based on the relative strength of the participants in a competition.

The Elo system was adopted by the United States Chess Federation in 1960 and by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in 1970. The system was simple enough to allow calculations without the need for computers, which were not yet advanced at that time. However, Elo later started using pocket calculators to calculate ratings. For fifteen years, Elo led the FIDE Qualification Commission. He emphasized that the ratings should not be overvalued, stating that they only provide a comparison of successes. Elo compared the determination of an individual player's rating to the positioning of a bobber bobbing on the waves, attached to a fishing line swaying in the wind, in an article he wrote for Chess Life in 1962.

Robert Fischer held the top rating according to the Elo system for a long time, with a coefficient of 2780. He maintained this leadership for 17 years after his departure from chess until Garry Kasparov surpassed him in 1985. In July 1999, Kasparov reached an Elo rating of 2851, which remains the highest rating achieved to date. In 1988, Professor Arpad Elo was inducted into the United States Chess Federation Hall of Fame. He passed away on November 5, 1992, in Wisconsin.