Who are the worlds weakest GM, IM, and FM?

and how did they get there? (Got a norm in a weak feild etc..)

Im interested :)

Bobby Fischer. He's so weak he can't even make it to the board. 

 OMFG i know right?

 But seriouslly.. what is the lowest Rated GM living right now?

They could get there simply by getting old!

For instance, you don´t expect GM Andor Lilienthal (2385) still plays top tournments at the age of 98, do you?!...

Also, some developing countries sometimes have low rated titled players because they organize some closed tournaments inviting forgein players, in which, with some talent and some convenient draws, is possible to get a few FM norms or even MI norms.

http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=13600125

As mentioned before, most likely a player who is aging. 

How did he become GM?

Well, I have the definitive answer for this: the romanian Alexandru Crisan is the weakest GM ever. His playing strength is for sure not too much above 2000, yet he obtained the GM title by rating manipulation and cheating.

He was the owner of a factory in some city. Well, suddenly, all the workers in that factory became interested in chess, got a rating, and in the end played against the boss. Of course, they lost. In addition, Crisan also payed other players to organize some tourneys where the winner was known beforehand. Looks incredible, but this cheater made it to the top 50 in the FIDE rating list and stayed there for almost an year. Yep, he became GM without playing any game with any of the top Romanian players.

After an year or so FIDE withdrew his IM and GM titles. Do you know what was the reaction of the Romanian minister of sports? To appoint Crisan as president of the Romanian chess federation.

Who said that USA is the country where everything is possible? That's wrong, in my wonderful country everything is possible!

The same for Dake. To be fair, considering the much greater difficulty in gaining the title 50+ years ago compared to now, granting some of the old IMs the GM title isn't such a reach.

Dake, for example, beat Alekhine in a tournament at a time (1932) when he just wasn't losing many games at all. Dake also had a good Olympic record blah blah blah. He actually had tremendous talent but was one of those impatient types who wanted to play by intuition and tended to use up little time on his clock.

Denker's credentials by today's standard are ok. National champion and finished respectably in international tournaments.

It's hard to compare eras of course but we can at least make some arguments.

Bisguier, btw,  is only a little above 2200 USCF. He's not feebly old and so may compete for weak GM.

Crisan did get the titles through usual procedures, things are quite recent (1999-2001). Only that he falsified tourney reports and "arranged" games. People were talking that he played a game, while his official rating was 2600+ where he showed that a simple opposition in a K vs. P ending might be something very hard to understand for a strong GM!

I think the lowest rated GM at the moment is probably Valery Grechihin.  He was born in 1937, which would make him 72 years old.  He is now rated 2216.

GM Arthur Bisguier is still on the FIDE rating list at 2228.  The former Women's world champion GM Nona Gaprindashvili weighs in 2349. GM Valeriane Gaprindashvili has a current rating of 2431; GM Raymond Keene, 2455, and GM Alexandru Crisan, 2588.

According to Olimpbase, GM Evgenij Ermenkov's rating fell to 2420 in 1984 and 1986, but he is no longer rated.  GMs Arthur Dake and Arthur Denker have both passed away in 2000 and 2005 respectively.  Dake hit a low of 2325 in 1989-90.  Denker fell to a low of 2250 in 1995, but it is hard to compare ratings from different eras because of the uncertainty about how much inflation there has been since.

Looking on chessgames.com I see that Crisan has some games against relatively weak opponents before 1989 and suddenly, in 2001, he appears with a 2635 rating. Amazing! How come this did not look suspect at all to FIDE officials: a player achieves GM norms without playing any serious tournament.

If you want to laugh, look at this game and especially at move 57:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1172342

Danish GM Bent Larsen (born 1935) has a current rating of 2415, and he is still active.. but he has been sick recently so that may have resulted in some bad results! I don't know if he is the one who has taken the biggest plunge though - from playing all the great ones Spasski, Fischer, Tal, Botvinnik to a rating of 2415 ...

Karpov

Nice to see that they send him to us. Georg Mohr is IM, but he is called VM (=velemojster - grandmaster) here. Maybe he went over 2500, got national GM title, then dropped below 2500 before he managed to get international one. Looking at that games, they probably all knew what was going on and had a laugh. But I've heard that Crisan did beat some GMs in one other tournament that he organized himself, they were most likely bribed though.

Claude Frizzel Bloodgood

Bloodgood was neither GM IM nor FM. Right?

i am weak a duckling?! - aurel

I think he receive an  IM title through Correspondence play, but it's been reported he may have tricked the ratings system.

batgirl notes in #116 of http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/greatest-chess-photos?page=6

"Claude Frizzel Bloodgood


. . . a petty thief who killed is own mother and managed to attain a USCF chess rating of 2702 due to the closed prison pool along with possible rating manipulations. His high rating and US championship eligibility pushed the USCF to re-vamp their rating system."

I remember seeing this high rating from this unknown player in Chess Life, then finding out the real story behind it.

Bloodgood didn't play in enough ICCF or FIDE events to receive a title of any sort.  His high rating is a natural consequence of a large number of games he played with a closed pool of players.  He had warned the USCF about the problem early on.  The same thing happened to FIDE ratings in Myanmar a few years ago.  How did USCF change its rating system?