Chess players' fame versus their merit

TL;DR

This study examines the relationship between chess players' fame and their merit, measured by Elo ratings, revealing that fame tends to grow exponentially with merit, with a moderate correlation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis linking fame and merit in chess players, quantifying their relationship and showing exponential growth of fame relative to merit.

Findings

Correlation between fame and merit is 0.38

Correlation between log fame and merit is 0.61

Fame grows exponentially with merit

Abstract

We investigate a pool of international chess title holders born between 1901 and 1943. Using Elo ratings we compute for every player his expected score in a game with a randomly selected player from the pool. We use this figure as player's merit. We measure players' fame as the number of Google hits. The correlation between fame and merit is 0.38. At the same time the correlation between the logarithm of fame and merit is 0.61. This suggests that fame grows exponentially with merit.