Chess has titles, the highest being Grandmaster. Having the title means you achieved a certain level of understanding and deserve respect. However, the route to that achievement is not the same for everyone. Out there, a considerable percentage of titled players earned their titles through questionable means, using events known as “norm factories.”
In these events, players come together to stage what looks like a real tournament, but the games are pre-decided. Fun fact: often the norm earner doesn’t even attend. The organizers fake the scoresheets.

Here’s how it works: let’s say I’m the seller. I tell the organizer he can take 50 rating points from me for $20 each, totaling $1,000. The organizer charges the buyer $30 per point and pockets the difference. He designs the event to satisfy these arrangements. After each event, the future fake title holders gain rating and norms.

You shouldn’t be surprised when I say there are significantly more fake IMs and FMs than GMs. Since becoming a GM puts you directly in the spotlight, many fraudulent title holders avoided it, like many frauds in the real world. Nevertheless, some shameless ones did it, didn’t get caught, and that motivated others. For simplicity, I’ll focus on fake GMs here, but everything applies to other titles too.

Some of you may not understand why anyone would want to be a fake GM. I can think of 3 main reasons:
1. Satisfying their ego and getting recognition
2. Getting better conditions at events
3. Getting ahead in the coaching industry, since having a title carries weight

There are also 4 types of fake GMs:
1. No proper chess knowledge at all, everything from factories
2. Got all norms and a big chunk of rating from factories
3. Got some norms and a big chunk of rating from factories
4. Got only norms or rating from factories

As you’d assume, the higher the category, the harder it is to detect. I haven’t personally noticed any GM from the first category, but the other three exist and most professionals know it.

So how do you recognize a fake titled player? Red flags:
1. Check their norm applications and you see unestablished events. Alushta was the most famous, but there have been others, and they often don’t run continuously.
2. A meteoric rise to GM, like gaining 20-30 points from each round robin event.
3. Slow and steady rise but not from established events.
4. Stops playing as soon as they gain the title.
5. Rating drops back close to where the rise started after getting the title.

If someone has more than one red flag, you might want to scrutinize that title holder more.

These fake title holders devalued the meaning of titles by their very existence. But they also inflated the number of title holders, since some of those frauds didn’t stop playing and started “donating” their rating back. Some of them became sellers themselves. And that’s how we got here.