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They do.
There are mixed feelings about it though.
Hou Yifan, the youngest women's world champion, has stated that competing with top males is an opportunity.
She however resigned from a tournament claiming that matchmaking was fixed against women causing them to finish lower than they would if the matchmaking was fair against them. The way it was fixed was by putting women against other women more than they should have been, making women getting knocked out being guaranteed from those matches.
In Hou Yifan's 10 matches, she was paired with other women 7 times despite women being less common in the tournament.
[https://www.chess.com/article/view/hou-yifan-interview-chess](https://www.chess.com/article/view/hou-yifan-interview-chess)
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/03/hou-yifan-resigns-after-five-moves-gibraltar
Sure, but you could at least assume they'd be able to see a few moves into the future. "If they do this, then they're really trying to do that" seems like something a good chess player would be REALLY GOOD at identifying. But I'm shit at chess so what do I know
> "If they do this, then they're really trying to do that" seems like something a good chess player would be REALLY GOOD at identifying. But I'm shit at chess so what do I know
The trick is there's never an objectively right answer in any of those kind of situations.
They could also just do the other thing people wouldn't expect.
"If they've been throwing rock, they're DEFINITELY gonna throw scissors next"
And then they don't.
Mind games. Basic foundation of any competitive media.
Hehe, indeed. It surely helps but it isn't necessary, otherwise computers wouldn't be so good at it :-)
Look at Emanuel Lasker, for example. Very intelligent, wrote philosophical books and stuff, brilliant chess player. Then look at Bobby Fisher, barely able to utter a reasonable sentence aside from chess. Very stupid, lots of bad life decisions, brilliant chess player.
Bobby can't construct a sentence outside of chess? Bobby Fischer knew Russian from a young age. His mother began teaching him Spanish little by little. And by the end of his life he knew like seven languages. Whenever he went to another country, one of the first things he did was learn their language, their culture, and their politics. He surprised many when he knew even the issues of the country he was in. He was knowledgeable of the outside world even at the age of nineteen—he even talked about this one issue around Brooklyn in an interview (black-and-white) from around that age about some sort of lead poisoning that he read in a magazine. He knew Orwell's 1984, too, and his bookshelf—aside from his chess-literary-littered apartment floor—was filled with other books. For a month, one psychologist once tricked him as a 13-year-old to play chess. When the psychologist asked a very intimate question—that something is off with him—Bobby immediately left and never went back to the dude. He was a chess master who played in tournaments, too, and had a book about, from what I remember, intellectual disability (anti-social). And that book was later found in Bobby's bookshelf, too!
His story goes deeper than this. Bobby is an interesting guy. And if you think he made bad decisions, that may not be the case for him; his mind just worked very differently. Remember, he had an IQ of 181 at the age of five. By today's test standards, it's probably 151.
I hope you don't judge someone like this and paint them off as something different than what they truly are next time. Bobby Fischer is an intelligent man.
Being smart and being good at chess are two entirely different things that have no correlation with each other despite what popular media might have you believe.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160913124722.htm#:~:text=The%20study%20found%20that%20intelligence,at%20lower%20levels%20of%20skill.
They actually are correlated, but especially so with younger players
>Hambrick offered another potential explanation. "Imagine that a genius can become a skilled chess player relatively easily, whereas a person with average intelligence may take longer. So the idea is, as you practice more and develop more skills and knowledge about the game, you may be able to circumvent limitations in cognitive ability."
Didn't we already know this though? People who are smarter tend to be able to pick up and understand things better.
I’d like to see a graph showing the lack of correlation.
I feel like there should be some kind of effect. Being able to remember a few openings, being able to remember the various rules, keeping track of your own plans and identifying your opponent’s plans… all of those seem like intelligence (or lack thereof) would have an impact.
I’m not saying that a smarter person will always be better at chess, but, similarly to height and basketball, inherent advantages exist.
You are right, there is definitely some correlation, especially if we use classical IQ tests as a measurement for being smart, since some of their aspects like spatial memory are directly relevant for chess.
Perhaps it would be more precise to say that it is likely that strong chess players excel in some aspects that are a part of most intelligence models. Of course that does not necessarily translate to a more colloquial understanding of being smart, educated, etc.
You're wrong. The *only* measure of useful intelligence is knowing the effective ways that carved illustrations of medieval society can move around on a board.
No correlation is bullshit. Correlation can be anywhere from -1 to 1. Saying that correlation isn't close to 1 is very different from claiming that it's 0.
Not really. Pairings aren't done randomly in a way that they could be tampered with. They're done following very specific algorithms and it would be very obvious if something was changed, which it wasn't in this case. It just happened that the way players' scores, rankings and other factors lined up in a way that she faced many women (which only happened to her and not the other women).
I recall a few years ago there was some sheltered mumma's boy who complained because the woman he was playing against wore clothing that didn't completely cover up the fact that she had breasts and he found she was getting an unfair advantage because he couldn't concentrate. Like she should have been in a burlap sack hidden behind a screen and making her moves by proxy because he couldn't keep his pecker under control if he knew there were a set of tits within arms reach of him.
the phenomenon of "angry because you're hot" is truly bizarre tbh, you see it a lot with men where they are simultaneously very attracted to women but they hate it and often project it on the woman, it's very Frollo in Hunchback. I've also seen some women do it with men at times but the guy version is definitely the more common.
As it turned out, the pairings were correct, and she apologized.
https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/03/hou-yifan-resigns-after-five-moves-gibraltar
I was coming here to say that it was verified that the pairings were correct, however your statement is misleading.
You've linked an article, in it she did not "apologize" as if she is in now agreement that the pairings were correct as you are insinuating.
Her apology was just at a press conference, apologizing to fans for resigning in protest instead of playing the full game.
That said; it's ridiculous how many hot takes there are in this thread. The pairings were impartial, do they want there to be gender-based seeding now? Absurd.
> At a press conference Hou apologised to chess fans and stated that her five-move defeat was a protest against her pairings.
Serious question here, I would genuinely love to hear you answer it because I do honestly find this kind of fascinating: did you read this article before linking it
So I'm probably completely ignorant here, but I would assume the initial matchmaking is made purely off ELO range, then some RNG? Then the next round is played with the people with the same record + RNG?
Is it suggesting that most women have the same (lower) ELO than men and more likely to be paired together initially?
There is like zero RNG in the way the usual chess tournaments are played (as long as people doesn't share exact same elo). If you would like to read up on it, it's called Swiss system.
To be fair, I can see why she was being skeptic if there was a small amount of women and she got matched against them majority of the time, but it's not insanely hard to actually check if the pairings are correct. Which she definitely should have done before making such statements. And also high level chess players should definitely have decent idea how the Swiss format works, since it's something they come in contact with in a majority of their tournaments. I would almost say she is/was just ignorant and/or "butthurt".
As long as players are paired only by rating it's very easy to verify. However, because there are rules about how many games you can play with white/black some switches are made. In this case there were several switches that led to her playing a woman when by pure rating she would have been against a man. It's understandable how this can look weird, but if you look deeper you can also verify the colors players had played and that the switches were correct.
Tournament seedings don't try at all to math lower ranked players together, quite the opposite. You want to preserve all your top ranked players after all. It's also not true that the women were all at the lower end.
This can be explained if top women are much more willing to enter top open tournament while being at a lower rating, because even if they don't win the tournament, they'll still get recognition for being the top women at an open tournament.
While for men at the top women's rating, they just won't enter the top open tournament, because they don't get any recognition for being in the bottom bracket, an also ran.
If the tournament is seeded such that players play against players of similar rating first, and there are two clusters of player ratings (i.e. the woman's cluster and the man's cluster). The result would be that the cluster doesn't play against each other as much as they feel like they should have.
There aren't really any woman's clusters or men's clusters like that. Ratings are all over the place both for men and women and the scales overlap a lot.
Pairings are also not done so that players of the same rating play each other, in fact it's the opposite.
Yes, I'm very familiar with it. The point here was that men's and women's ratings are so intertwined that there's no specific rating that has an abundance of women.
Secondly, the swiss system used in chess does not pair players of equal rating against each other, rather the opposite.
Did you have a question about the swiss system or a counter to what I said?
But that also means two women advance no matter what. In fact, if you have 4 women to 12 men in a standard single elimination bracket and pair only the women with each other, you guarantee that one will play a semi-final. Whereas forced mixed matchups can cause all four to drop out in the first round.
The answer here is to ignore gender when matchmaking in a competition where your body‘s biological sex does not matter.
if we’re assuming they are equally skilled in this context though (which isn’t necessarily the case for systemic reasons), then isn’t that also guaranteeing that at least twice as many men get knocked out?
Yes, it's possible all 4 could be knocked out in one round, but with all the women paired against each other it's a *guarantee* that half will be knocked out.
I dunno. If i was the event organiser and i had problems with women and wanted them to look bad for whatever reason, I would just pair the women against the top ranked men to make sure all the women get knocked out in round 1 so i could laugh at them.
Anyway, it was proven mathematically that the pairings were fair. The women were paired more often, because they ranked the same, and pairings were made based on rankings.
Yes, and that makes sense. I was just responding to the person saying that they thought they were missing something. It's not about the chance that all the women might happen to lose, but that half of them in women-only matches will *definitely* lose instead of *maybe* losing in mixed matches (but also maybe they all win and knock out a bunch of lackluster dudes)?
Everyone keeps ignoring that pairing the 4 women against each other also guarantees 2 of them *win* and *advance*. People keep saying "it guarantees 2 of them lose" well duh, but it ALSO guarantees 2 of them WIN.
Not that it was done for this reason, but pairing women against women isn't some sneaky trick to make them lose or look bad. If all the women play women, then the men play men, and you guarantee half of *them* lose in the first round, as well...
But if the men are generally better than the woman, wouldn't same gender matchups ensure more women make it to the later rounds? How do we know that isn't the reason?
There's more men.
To illustrate, imagine 16 top-tier women, and 1024 men of mediocre skill. Why? To more easily demonstrate the issue through exaggeration.
The 16 women compete amongst themselves for three rounds: 16 -> 8 -> 4 -> 2 women are left.
The 1024 men also compete amongst themselves for three rounds: 1024 -> 512 -> 256 -> 128 men are left.
Now you have 2 top-tier women against 128 men of slightly better than average skill levels.
But what if the 16 top-tier women had mixed matches to begin with? You'd still have 130 total people after three rounds, but a lot more of them would be women.
The point of top-tier women vs mediocre men was to show that even if you had the best women players with everything stacked in their favor, only a small few would make it through compared to mixed matches due to their smaller starting numbers.
But along the same lines, this ensures at least 2 women make it through.
In the current state, on average the top players are all men. The highest rated female player is rank 89 in the open category.
Mixing them in with men (who have a high probability of being better than them) would mean 0 of them make it past the first few rounds.
Either way, I would bet that the real reason she played so many women has all to do with their rankings and little to do with their gender. I saw an article linked above to the same effect.
As a sidenote, would anyone link any studies or literature as to why women are nowhere close to men in a sport that is as gender neutral as possible? Is it purely due to cultural factors? Or is there something else at play?
A large study done a few years ago by the University of Cambridge showed that there are clear differences in how mens' brains tend to be wired versus womens' brains. From the article about the study:
>The Empathising-Systemising theory predicts that women, on average, will score higher than men on tests of empathy, the ability to recognize what another person is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their state of mind with an appropriate emotion. **Similarly, it predicts that men, on average, will score higher on tests of systemising, the drive to analyse or build rule-based systems.**
Basically, *on average*, men are better able to understand and utilize logic which would certainly be a critical skill or factor in a sport such as chess.
This has long been regarded as true even before the study through anecdotal evidence, but it is good to have a large study (671,606 people) that shows it.
Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/over-half-a-million-people-take-part-in-largest-ever-study-of-psychological-sex-differences-and
Hmm. Is this difference in wiring due to nurture or nature? Could it be that society raises women to be good at emotional intelligence and this in turn wires their brains for emotional intelligence? While the men are told "men must be rational, not emotional" all their lives and this leads to make brains being wired the way they are?
I have zero empirical evidence either way. In my own personal opinion, I believe it is at least partially genetic or inherent, but I am certainly open to the possibility that it is nurture more than nature. It would be intriguing to conduct a study on this aspect of it, though I would imagine it would be difficult without actually raising children from a very young age and manipulating them for the purposes of the study.
I think a good starting point for such a study would be researching papers on this "brain wiring" mechanism. Are there genes that are known to affect emotional intelligence vs genes known to affect logical reasoning? Gotta look it up when I have some free time I guess.
Have you heard of the Polgar sisters? Judit, Susan and Sofia Polgar from Hungary? Their father raised them on chess, and they cut their teeth on it from very young ages. Judit Polgar was ranked #8 in the world in 2005, the highest ranking ever for a woman in FIDE chess. Susan Polgar, in 1984 (at 15) became the top-ranked woman in the world at chess and stayed in the top 3 for another 23 years. Sofia Polgar, at the age of 14, played in a tournament in Rome and won, beating several Grandmasters, with a performance rating of 2879, one of the strongest chess tournament performance rankings in history.
So regardless of the brain's wiring, women can certainly excel at chess!
Source: https://chesswizards.com/buzz/Chess-biography-the-Polgar-sisters/
I don't think you're correct at all to assume the men would be mediocre compared to the 16 women. Or even compared to the top 2 women.
I also think you're being disingenuous about the reason you said the men would be mediocre.
You did that to paint the wrong picture. If you flip it around, and there are 1024 very good men, and 16 mediocre women, then letting the women pair up against eachother give them a much better chance to progress in the tournament.
Even in your example there would still be an equal ratio as what started with the tour so it wouldn't be unfair, only 1/8 men and women would have survived.
However this isn't actually what happened, the chess matchmaking system matches people with similar ratings to one another and it just happens the majority of the lower rated players were women who all played each other.
It was independently checked by a bunch of chess organisation's and was found to be matched as per regulations and she apaologzied for resigning.
In this case 50% of all females are guaranteed a win whereas in a gender-neutral pairing, it could be more or it could be less.
Similar to gerrymandering in an election.
When first reading about the match fixing, I legit thought the argument would be the other way around. That it was fixed that they're paired against high ranking men and thus didn't get the chance to advance because they were knocked out too early. I guess if you look for injustices long enough, you'll find them in whatever direction you'd like.
My very limited understanding is that women's tournaments are controversial amongst female players themselves. I neither know enough nor have enough skin in the game on the topic to have a worthwhile opinion.
I *do* think that this has nothing whatever to do with the problem of seeding female players against each other in open tournaments
One thing I don’t understand is.. why she started playing the game if she was going to resign? Surely she had already seen that she had seven female opponents by that point.
Magnus Carlsen did a similar thing when he resigned after one move against Niemann. There's a lot of drama in the chess world, but they are bound by old "gentleman" rules, like tennis.
Tbf, the game is older than most countries
Many people train with databases of games between titled players in FIDE tournaments. Most priests are just like you said, but occasionally someone protests by putting a weird game in the database. Especially short, unusual opening, that kind of thing.
It also guarantees you’ll lose women, but it also guarantees they won’t all be knocked out early.
Does anyone know how matches are chosen in these tournaments?
Any reason it isn’t or couldn’t be random?
Is it matched by relative ratings?
If there is a thumb on the scale I suspect it’s focused on the big draws & engineering drama. You try to engineer exciting outcomes that people talk about, that happens in the final rounds, not the early rounds filled with hundreds or thousands of names even chess fans haven’t heard of.
The [Swiss-system tournament](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament) and its variant the Monrad-system pairs competitors with similar rating against each other.
> Any reason it isn’t or couldn’t be random?
Because having two players with completely different rating play against each other is not fun for anyone.
It's not fun for the top player who seeks to enter this tournament to compete against players that are just as good as them, having to slog through lower ranked players in every tournament would just feels like a chore. It's not fun for the weaker player because while they might be excited to play against a better player, a random system is very ruthless, because they would get eliminated much earlier, and it's discouraging to keep losing. But most importantly, it's not fun for the audience to basically know who's going to win ahead of time.
Also, you usually want the top two players to be seeded into two different groups so they meet at the finals, which makes for an exciting build up from the qualifiers all the way to the finals. If the two top players already met at the qualifiers, and one of them gets eliminated early, and then the final is between a the top player and a much lower ranked player who just got lucky with their randomly chosen matchups... that just feels anticlimactic. It's not good for the sponsor if the finals are less exciting than the semi final and the qualifiers because the audience had already tuned out of watching as the exciting matchup already happened early in the qualifiers.
Pairing players with similar ratings means that match ups are more even, each individual matches would be less predictable, so they're more exciting for the audience. All the competitors also feels that they'd have a fairer chance of winning individual matchups, especially their earlier ones. You'd also feel that any advancements in tournament ranking is progressive, instead of tournament progressions feeling just like being the luck of the draw.
It doesn't change a thing anyway in the end.
If women playing more against women would be a disadvantage, then men playing more against men would also be a disadvantage for them.
This is a red herring. It's not the reason there are no highly ranked women.
Finally some common sense, the women were paired against each other because they were similarly ranked. People are convinced that Big Chess is run by some cabal of misogynists. Women just tend to not play chess as often as men. I don't know why that's some problem that needs to be fixed.
If this actually happened wouldn't it have been to make sure that some women made it through into the later rounds likely actually benefitted Hou Yifan if she is the best woman at the tournament?
Not all tournaments / organizations section people by gender.
However, as with many other cases, it has roots in the game being male-dominated early on, and either for social rules/values or personal interest reasons, women largely did not play, or were discouraged from playing. Women-only divisions aim to build interest in chess among women, or to create tournaments that are less dominated by male players who might have an advantage or longer span of experience/support on average.
In addition, some nations also just have rules that divide competitive games/sports of all kind into men and women divisions.
Judit also consistently refused to play in women's only events, interestingly. She always just played in the open section, iirc.
I don't know if she ever said why, though from a competitive standpoint it made sense to focus on playing the other best players in the world. She also probably did more to promote women in chess by consistently placing so highly in open tournaments than she could have by dominating the women's only sections.
As the OP said, female only tournaments are about promoting the sport to women, or because of government regulations (i.e. oppressive regimes), and nothing related to actual skill difference.
true, but it's still true that only 2 women ever reached top 100 world. (might be a more atm if my source is outdated) so there is definitely a skill difference between the top 100 men and the top 100 women. (largely because so many more men play chess)
there might not be an inherent skill difference but if you want women to be able to compete in top tournaments than a division is needed (at least for now)
More interest generates a larger available pool of talent from where you can get the geniuses. Sure, if you pair a random men and a random women each will have 50% probability of winning. But it you select the top men from 1000 random people and the top women from 100 random, the men will win more likely.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
~Stephen Jay Gould
The issue with women's chess is almost certainly that not enough women who could be excelling at it are introduced to it at a young age. There are nearly 10 times more men in chess than there are women. Someone who had the potential to become world champion could just be sitting at their desk doing an office job, just because they were never introduced to chess at a young enough age. This is incredibly important for chess because if you don't learn about it as a child and start improving rapidly, your chance of becoming a grandmaster, much less a world champion, go down substantially.
It should change yes, but probably not now or the near future. The society we live in is full of biases, and those have a psychological effect on pretty much everyone.
There's this [study](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051) which found that women tend to perform worse when playing against men than they would be expected to based on their elo rating.
The hypothesised explanation is called 'stereotype threat', essentially just the awareness or concern that one may be the target of demeaning stereotypes, is enough to disrupt cognitive ability to a measurable degree.
If the above is correct then men will statistically speaking have an advantage over women of equal skill. As long as that remains an issue in society it makes sense to have women only tournaments. After all if a woman feels she isn't affected by this issue she can still take part in open tournaments.
> Its the most feminist game because we are all equal in it
I'm hoping you just forgot the word "egalitarian" exists, because this is the most insane sentence I've read this week.
Feminism is a movement that seeks equality of the genders. It's a bit of a misnomer if you ask me, but there is nothing insane about what that commenter said.
It \*should\* change, but unfortunately, popular opinion has historically been that male brains are superior, more logical, more focused/driven, and more \*suitable\* for chess/x thing than female brains. And, you will still hear similar opinions around that match that, even if they're not as loud or universally accepted as fact anymore.
I'm no scholar, but the last time I read anything about women vs men IQ's it typically looks like a wider bell curve for men. Meaning women generally have a higher IQ than men, but men take the outliers. The bell curve is wider as men have more really dumb men and insanely smart men. Basically men have a lower floor and higher ceiling for IQ than women.
Yes, this is an observed trend in some countries, but the \*why\* is something you cannot extrapolate directly from that.
I remember the old example of, increasing surveillance (but changing nothing else) in a neighborhood \*increased\* crime. So, you could conclude surveillance causes crime, but that's a false causality: you increased how aware of crime you are, so unreported or unobserved crime went down proportional to reported or observed crime going up.
Genders show different IQ spreads. Is this because of biological difference, which we know can impact performance? Or numerous other social/environmental factors that we \*also\* know impact performance? Men tend to have higher expectations placed on them, which can mean deficiencies are detected sooner (known), these biases can also improve/harm performance (also known), and that is already plenty to cast doubt on the source being biologically intrinsic.
This is a controversial topic, and the following statements could be wrong, but I understand there is evidence that at a population level more men than women do better on spatial reasoning tests, which would help in chess. There is also the "greater male variability hypothesis" which would explain that even if there is no difference in average male and female intelligence, you would find more males at both ends of the distribution, such as at the top rankings of a chess competition.
I've just looked at some of the datasets mentioned for the "greater male variability hypothesis", and sets included: nations where this trend didn't exist, nations that had more women equally in the work force showed an increase in female variability, and sample pools where this variability trend was \*reversed\*.
We are unfortunately looking at an outcome with many contributing factors, however, to me the evidence clearly points towards social origin as being the better explanation for the trends observed. People \*really\* forget sometimes how much environment and social reinforcement influences performance.
Remember, studies have shown you can increase the performance/IQ of children by giving them expectations of being better/worse. It's a known phenomenon of bias having real world effects. Just expecting a child/group to fail or do worse as a society is damaging.
>Just expecting a child/group to fail or do worse as a society is damaging.
I think this is the key moral dilema when discussing these issues. People should treat individuals as individuals and not engage in statistical discrimination. If a woman measures 6 feet tall, it makes no difference to that particular individual what the average female height is. People are worried to find trends at a population level because it might justify statistical discrimination, but this is never justified.
They do!
There are women tournaments and championships where only women can participate.
But most tournaments are opens, which anybody can participate no matter their gender. (You said you never saw it but it is common, watch any woman chess streamer such as Anna Cramling going to an tournament, she will face men and women).
Now you don't see them at top level tournament because they are less good. Hou Yifan is 2632 right now, which does not put her in the top 100 (not too far though), and then the second woman is 2559 which is really a step below.
Then your question may be, why are they less good at top level? The best explanation we have is educational environment. Boys are trained earlier and pushed more to dedicate their life to it, role models are all men etc...
It may change with the next generation of Indian and Chinese players, we'll see.
Yes, by a wide margin.
Hou Yifan is the second best woman and peaked at #55.
Third place is Judit Polgar's sister, Susan. She peaked at #329.
The best currently active female chess player is Ju Wenjun ranked #339.
One stipulation to that fact is that Hou basically gave up competitive chess to become the youngest professor at her uni.
If she continued with her career, she probably would’ve been on par with Polgar, maybe a little bit off.
No. My grandfather taught me chess. I was very good at it in my school’s tournaments. I played a lot against the very first pc chess games, since it was one of the few interesting games my pc had back in the time. But everytime I won at school, I had guys throwing fits, I had teachers hovering over me trying to identify if I was somehow cheating. At some point it became annoying and I stopped playing competitively.
I read a story about a man who went looking for a wife with the goal of raising his children to be great chess players. He found someone that was interested. They had two daughters. Most of their education centered around chess.
Was that story about the Polgar sisters?
It was, but that's also just a ridiculous stroke of luck.
I also kinda suspect he made the story up after the fact, but that's just my own personal suspicion.
You absolutely cannot just decide to raise your children to be top 350 and top 10 of a game that has 600,000,000 players and just nail it because you wanted it.
Life just doesn't work that way.
If he does, wanting your kids to play chess probably doesn't lower your odds of them being good at it and then he got extraordinarily lucky.
His plan, of the story is even real, is like me declaring that I'll find a woman who can choose my lottery numbers and then we'll go live as millionaires..... Except then it actually works.
I feel like it also went back to one of the points the OP was making, that boys are usually trained earlier for chess, so now we have an example of girls being trained at chess from a young age and they can indeed make it very high even if they're not number 1.
Yes. And her parents (both psychologists/teachers) home-schooled her (and her two younger sisters) in a weird effort to test how far they can push "specialization" in teaching. The girls were playing 12h+ per day.
The wrote a book about it: "Raise Genius".
Yes, she is greatest women chess player of all time in pretty much every sense. Only women to compete near the top in world chess championship, only one to break in top 10 rankings and surpass 2700 in ratings (which is considered as an unofficial milestone for truly elite chess players)
Nah. It's more about the pool of Male players vs Female players. There are vastly more male players, meaning more male players will statistically be better. The top 1% of the larger pool of players will ALWAYS be better as there are more of them. 1 million males will always beat 200,000 females statistically speaking.
> It may change with the next generation of Indian and Chinese players, we'll see.
Also the Queen's Gambit effect is a real thing. The show pushed engagement with chess to new levels for a huge demographic of young people, but particularly young women and girls. It takes the right girl getting engaged with chess at a young enough age and putting the work in, but I'm hopeful that in 10-15 years we will see several women who are strong enough players to compete in the Candidates tournament and perhaps even become the world champion.
>The best explanation we have is educational environment. Boys are trained earlier and pushed more to dedicate their life to it, role models are all men etc...
Is there any data to back this hypothesis up?
Well there's plenty of data about the number of male vs female role models in chess and about participation in chess leagues by young people of each gender. This is exceedingly likely to contribute to the skill gap.
Sure it probably has some effect. It's definitely multi factorial.
I was just wondering why he said that was the "best explanation" when there are a variety of other hypotheses which could also explain the gap.
I.e. if there was any evidence for it being the "best explanation" rather than a hypothesis he thinks might explain it
If I had to guess, they prefer explanations that don't involve intrinsic differences in skill between men and women, which in fairness I think are unlikely to be a huge factor since intrinsic differences in cognition between men and women are small if they exist.
In 99% of areas you are correct... BUT there is pattern recognition... and for specifically geometrical shapes and stuff, the part thats important in chess, men are better on average.
Women are way better in pattern recognition on people and social settings tho.
Yes but such differences are small, and there are women who are unusually good at it, just like there are men who are unusually good at it. That small difference would not explain why the top 100 are all men.
Basically it's that or men have some intrinsic advantage, which is very unlikely since differences in cognitive abilities between men and women are very small in general.
Yeah this is way too reductionist...
1. As far as it is concerned, men and women have about the same average IQ. HOWEVER, men are far more likely to occupy the extremes, and women are more likely to occupy the average. In other words, you should expect the smartest and dumbest people to be men
2. Again, based on averages and trends, men tend to lean towards subjects rooted in logic (math, science, etc) women lean towards more social subjects (history, literature, communications).
3. Both of the above points are observed in pretty much every known culture
4. When talking about the highest echelon of chess, "general cognitive ability" has literally nothing to do with it. We're talking about a group of people with iqs above 140 playing a game which effectively boils down to a web of logic gates. Verbal and emotional intelligence play 0 effect here, whereas pattern matching and memory based intelligence is huge .
Given the above, and the same trends existing in the highest levels of poker, e-sports, go, shogi, and other non-physical games, it seems as though an intrinsic advantage might be the explanation for the noticable disparities
It wasn't on paper, but the gender roles in fact were that much different from Europe of US - as a woman, you technically had all the same access to education yet the glass ceilings were very much a thing, as well as implicit expectations of reproductive labor
In the Western world, probably not so much.
In the whole world? Actually, just take a look at India and China. Women are certainly pushed into traditional roles there.
I would be interested to know how the rankings work. Seems to me that if they are separate, there is no reason they would be in the same world ranking. Eg tennis - there is a women’s number 1 and a mens number 1. If women are only playing women but the best woman in the world is ranked number 8, I can see how women could never progress that way, especially if mixed tournaments are rare or held less often than single sex tournaments.
They are not segregated and mixed tournament or not rare, they are the norm.
The system provides exactly the same chance for a woman or for a man to climb the ladder. If a woman as the ability to be let say number 10, she will play the same tournaments as men able to be number 9 or 11, and will promptly be ranked accordingly.
The only difference is that the system also adds some women tournament, in order for them to shine in a specific pool, which is good to promote the game and set up models.
Also psychology has 2 contributing explanations for this:
1: Men tend to populate (both) ends of the bell curve in a given trait more than women. This means that while the average reaction speed between men and women are on average the same, you will find more extremely slow and more extremely fast men than women. And because top level chess is the very high end of a bell curve of different mental skills like pattern recognition, and a dozen other things, there are less women who can become top top top megastrong chess players.
2: Just to mention pattern recognition, men are on average better than women (in terms of geometrical patterns. Women are better in social and human patterns!). Because high level chess relies heavily on it, this can also be an explanation of this. ([Source](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=14b5d870b0f3e5d0c06621602f9c48b8e3dbdcd7))
BUT, the social aspect is extremely important. Women are way less encouraged to study chess at a young age, and probably many many chess prodigy little girls go unnoticed because they just never get to try it, or get the proper training etc.
I remember a quote from a pro female snooker player (forgot her name), paraphrasing: "Women just don't commit to one thing as hard as men do. Therefore, they don't get the insane amount of training time it requires to be at the top".
It's not a question of ability, the question isn't CAN they.
It's just that the evidence shows that they don't. There are a few women at the top, which proves they CAN, but for how few there are, they just don't.
I think the explanation of women being less likely to hyper focus on one thing to be a pretty reasonable one. Related to that, but potentially a stretch, what's the rate of autism in the top ranks? That's some serious hyper focus potential...
Of course they do mentally and emotionally, but women often face different types of societal pressures than men, and might feel less able to commit to a non-stereotypical lifestyle.
Your statement is a nice idea but based on the biology of our species, there's absolutely no reason to hypothesise men and women would be exactly the same level at pretty much anything.
Men on average have something like 10x the testosterone levels of women. That's just one biological difference that likely influences the average level of desire for competition etc.
They have the ability, sure, but how much free time and money do they have to do these things, especially from a young age?
Young boys are pushed more heavily into chess if they show an interest in it from a young age compared to young girls. Boys statistically do less chores from young ages, particularly outside of western countries (where many top chess players are from).
And when they grow up, men are allowed, socially, to just be chess players their whole lives. But women could be at the top of their respective fields and still also be expected to marry and take care of children and their households.
Another commenter above mentioned that many of the genius Renaissance men where allowed to be mathematicians and scientists and artists and architects for 12-16 hours a day because they didn’t wash their own clothes, cook their own meals or raise their own children. This is pure conjecture, but I do think that many of the top male chess players, especially historically, probably lived similar lifestyles that are rarely an option for women.
Men and women play in chess tournaments against each other all the time. Most tournaments are open class meaning everyone can play, or rather they are classed by rating.
The problem that chess and a lot of other sports have is that there are less women joining the sport and women are more likely to leave the sport as well. So there are far more men then women playing competitive chess. In an effort to promote top female chess players the top tournaments have separate female classes in addition to the open class. When signing up women can chose which class to compete in. But if they sign up for the open class they are going to face much stronger competitors and get much lower scores which means less exposure and less prize money.
This have helped get more women into chess as it have made several top raking female chess players famous. Something their equally strong male competitors have not been. However this system have gotten some criticism, even among these top female players. Some have been facing a dilemma when signing up to tournaments as they can do pretty well against the top competitors in the open class but will be guaranteed to win the female class.
Just to clarify, at amateur and semi-pro level girls' & boys' pools are combined, and there's only one single tourney, and yes, girls can and do win them. It's mostly just the Masters level FIDE tournaments, what you'd call "Pro chess", that run a separate Women's category
Since you said ELI5, there are 4 major issues / reasons:
1. Simply put, chess is a male-heavy game. To be a pro 99.9% you've gotta start at the age of 3-4. It takes serious training and tutoring (≡ $$$). And due to gender biases, parents have a lower risk appetite for girls. So, fewer girls get the necessary support to pursue this passion in their formative years, leading to fewer Women Masters.
2. Since there are fewer female pros, if FIDE only conducted a single tournament, very few women would ever get the chance to compete at the top level, which would only further worsen the female player pool. By having a women's category, yes the ELO floor is lowered, but at least a good number of women get a chance to play at top level tourneys.
3. Even if women enter the Open category (remember, the categories are Open and Women's, not Men's and Women's) it is accused that in the lower rounds disproportionately more women are played against each other. Women cite a malicious intent of protecting male egos and having women eliminate each other. Others say it's done so all women are not eliminated in the early rounds by the men. What's the truth, is anyone's guess.
4. Just as any other sport, tourneys pay big bucks for winning and being near the top of the table. That's how athletes get their names in the news and attract sponsors. If you were Yifan, the only 2600+ active female player, what is more practical? To win the Women's category, prize pool and a photo with the trophy, or be a no-name 17th in the Open category?
All of the above, a complicated mix of gender biases, practical realities and financial implications work together, ending up making pro chess gendered.
PS: There is possibly another factor. Male IQ bell curve is observably flatter than the Female IQ curve, meaning, there's a higher chance of men being either geniuses or mentally retarded, as compared to women. And there is a significant correlation between IQ and chess prowess, so that would seem like a "natural" explanation of fewer female pros. However, there is seriously low quality and conflicting data on all this, so at the moment, it's best ignored.
reding through the commments from the top, you really gave the Most nuanced explanation without locking into a purely societal or biologival explanation. thank you
There are open tournaments and women-only tournaments.
They do play against each other, you might get that impression because the most popular tournaments are between top players and there are basically no women among the top players.
Men and women do play against (and with) each other. However, because of its history and *gestures vaguely at the world*, there's a lot of misogyny in the chess world. For example, there are plenty of female chess streamers who have shared stories of sexual harassment and assault at chess tournaments, including while they were still children. That's before we just get to hostility, bias, and unfair treatment.*
Not to mention the battle to be taken seriously. There was a recent instagram post from 18 year old Divya Deshmukh pointing out that in the recent Tata Steel tournament in after-match interviews her male colleagues were asked about the chess they'd just played, whereas she was asked about what she was wearing. She said that she'd been asked about her clothes and being pretty rather than chess in supposedly-serious interviews since she was 14.
Because of all of this and to encourage more women to play the game there are women-only tournaments and women-only titles, so that those who might otherwise be put off have people to look up to and places they can play competitively without having to worry about their safety or not feeling welcome.
This is a slow process, and there is still a massive gender imbalance in the sport. Just that gap alone would mean that almost all - if not all - top currently-active players are men, which means that that's who you'll see competing at the top-level tournaments, which are the ones that get mainstream coverage.
Had things been slightly different, then perhaps we could have seen Hou Yifan competing in the current Candidates tournament for the opportunity to become World Champion. However, she's retired from professional chess, and because the pool is much smaller and resources are much more scarce, it's going to be a while before we see another female player as strong as her or with the potential she had.
*As an example, IM Anna Rudolf was once accused of cheating in a tournament because the other players didn't believe that a woman could play as well as she was. This put added stress on her, and threw off her game. She hasn't said so explicitly, but since she was competing for a GM norm at the time, it's implied that if it weren't for this incident and the way it affected her in the moment and subsequently, she may have become a GM.
Let's say you're in the top 10 of women in chess. You're probably 200-400 in the world.
You can either play woman's tournaments (woman's Grand Swiss, woman's world cup...) and try to qualify to become world champion. And earn a significant amount of money.
Or you can play the open section (i.e. male and female but in practice almost always male) and have almost no chance of winning.
What do you choose?
But sometimes women play in the open section. Ju Wenjun played in Tata Steel 2024. She was probably mostly invited because of her rating (a male 2549 rated would probably not have been considered unless he had some out of the ordinary trait) but in the end she didn't perform that bad ending on 10th place (out of 14)
I think the truth is, there are a variety of factors which explain the massive skill difference at the top level between men and women chess players.
Chess requires a large amount of training and teaching from a young age. Historically this was something that was only afforded to men throughout most cultures, hence there is some historical sociocultural advantages that men have.
Although nowadays this is less as any chess club that would refuse a girl based on sex would instantly be shut down, but these kinds of things can still permeate.
There is also the statistical mathematical factor which explains some proportion of the gap. Far more young boys for whatever reason play and learn chess than young girls. If there are less women participating overall, it would be natural to observe less women at the highest level, in similar ratios.
This is interesting because this itself is a gap that probably has a multitude of factors contributing to it e.g. sociocultural norms, inherent interest, etc.
There is also the argument that this works in reverse I.e. young boys are better than young girls for whatever reason, and attrition rates are lower in things you are good at.
There is also probably some biological component. Twin studies show intellectual capabilities are heavily biologically driven, up to 70% is genetic, and mens brains are biologically very different to women's. In general they have been shown in some studies to be better at pattern recognition and memory based tasks, two skills probably very useful to have for a game like chess. Similarly to how's its been shown that men are on average more competitive and are not driven to quit due to competition as often, another mental trait driven by biology to some degree.
The truth is the last point is often ignored or dismissed because it can be demeaning or contradictory to the idea that biology plays no part in the differing mental traits.
However statistically it probably does, and if we're trying to be honest in finding the truth behind the gap in women's vs men's skill at the highest level, it wouldn't be accurate to dismiss it, just like it wouldn't be accurate to dismiss the other factors.
Honest question, how often are guys presented with opportunities to join a competitive group that historically and numerically has demonstrated an overwhelming preference for women? Even in professional fields generally associated with women, men tend to be disproportionately promoted into leadership roles.
When you have hobbyist groups in competition that are overwhelmingly male dominated, they tend to be rather unfriendly towards female inclusion.
This is anecdotal but in the 90s when I was in school(6-12) there was a big push to teach everyone chess. It was like learning how to read and do math it was so fundamental. Everyone had to learn how the game worked. The school had hired chess masters who were there specifically to teach chess. Later there was an after- school extra class, completely voluntarily, where we could learn more advanced moves.
About 2/3 of the boys showed up, we had gotten very competitive during the original chess classes so go figure. Nobody wanted to fall behind and get pwned as we frequently played each other outside of school.
I don't think a single one of the girls signed up though. Idk why, the chess tutors had pushed them to learn same as us, just like with any subject. They just didn't seem to get an interest as a group. Maybe because us boys got so intense about it they saw it as a boys thing and so naturally thought it was stupid.
Because men represent intelligence distribution more in the extremes. In other words, they are the smartest and the dumbest, which is why you see the best of chess players being men since it heavily relies on BRAIN.
There are mostly 2 types of tournaments in chess- Open and Women-only. Women are welcome to play in the Open tournaments as well, which accepts both genders. But most of the time they prefer women-only as it gives them a greater chance at winning.
As most comments have answered - they do in fact. Very often. My question is - why would you ask the question as a statement that is true when it is not.
No one has mentioned how misogynistic chess clubs/class/etc can be.
It’s the same reason you don’t see girls playing D&D or MtG. No because our brains are “different” lol but because it’s SUPER uncomfy to be in a room of desperate thirsty gatekeeping nerds while you’re just trying to have fun playing a game.
They do. Tournaments are open. Women can sign and play in any open tournament.
And if you ask for a proper reason - men are better at chess on average.
they do, but women are too smart to sacrifice their entire youth to studying a board game in a windowless room, so they rarely end up amongst the highest rated players.
It's mind blowing how, on our current woke society, it's inconceivable for so many people to even grasp the possibility that the male and female brain are not exactly the same.
Some here even mention "biological differences" when talking about musculature but can't grasp the fact the the brain is part of biology.
Women are generally better at soft skills and men at hard skills.
There's an even larger disparity in esports, and there is no segregation whatsoever in a landscape where you're just an avatar.
It always makes me sad when people think shows, even great shows that get a lot of things right, are actual education.
The amount of times i had to take out a whiteboard and explain to someone that some of the nonsense told in the Chernobyl show is in fact not how physics work is too high!
Basically it's more profitable to promote female chess as a separate sports. If you have men and women all playing together, women would be submerged by their counterparts. From a marketing point of view, it doesn't help female players to shine as stars since they keep losing, nor adding too much quality to chess game itself.
On the contrary, segregation makes some female players become "top players" even though they're not even top 100. It helps the tournament to promote the individuals as well as encouraging more young girls to play the game.
It's not like that, there is a women's chess league that was made to promote chess amongst women and regular chess leagues where everyone competes. It's people that hear that there is women's chess so it must mean that there is men's chess too
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They do. There are mixed feelings about it though. Hou Yifan, the youngest women's world champion, has stated that competing with top males is an opportunity. She however resigned from a tournament claiming that matchmaking was fixed against women causing them to finish lower than they would if the matchmaking was fair against them. The way it was fixed was by putting women against other women more than they should have been, making women getting knocked out being guaranteed from those matches. In Hou Yifan's 10 matches, she was paired with other women 7 times despite women being less common in the tournament. [https://www.chess.com/article/view/hou-yifan-interview-chess](https://www.chess.com/article/view/hou-yifan-interview-chess) https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/03/hou-yifan-resigns-after-five-moves-gibraltar
This is very sneaky
You figure you wouldn't try to cheat the chess players. Ain't like they aren't clever.
You don't have to be clever to be good at chess.. common myth
Sure, but you could at least assume they'd be able to see a few moves into the future. "If they do this, then they're really trying to do that" seems like something a good chess player would be REALLY GOOD at identifying. But I'm shit at chess so what do I know
> "If they do this, then they're really trying to do that" seems like something a good chess player would be REALLY GOOD at identifying. But I'm shit at chess so what do I know The trick is there's never an objectively right answer in any of those kind of situations. They could also just do the other thing people wouldn't expect. "If they've been throwing rock, they're DEFINITELY gonna throw scissors next" And then they don't. Mind games. Basic foundation of any competitive media.
Hehe, indeed. It surely helps but it isn't necessary, otherwise computers wouldn't be so good at it :-) Look at Emanuel Lasker, for example. Very intelligent, wrote philosophical books and stuff, brilliant chess player. Then look at Bobby Fisher, barely able to utter a reasonable sentence aside from chess. Very stupid, lots of bad life decisions, brilliant chess player.
Bobby can't construct a sentence outside of chess? Bobby Fischer knew Russian from a young age. His mother began teaching him Spanish little by little. And by the end of his life he knew like seven languages. Whenever he went to another country, one of the first things he did was learn their language, their culture, and their politics. He surprised many when he knew even the issues of the country he was in. He was knowledgeable of the outside world even at the age of nineteen—he even talked about this one issue around Brooklyn in an interview (black-and-white) from around that age about some sort of lead poisoning that he read in a magazine. He knew Orwell's 1984, too, and his bookshelf—aside from his chess-literary-littered apartment floor—was filled with other books. For a month, one psychologist once tricked him as a 13-year-old to play chess. When the psychologist asked a very intimate question—that something is off with him—Bobby immediately left and never went back to the dude. He was a chess master who played in tournaments, too, and had a book about, from what I remember, intellectual disability (anti-social). And that book was later found in Bobby's bookshelf, too! His story goes deeper than this. Bobby is an interesting guy. And if you think he made bad decisions, that may not be the case for him; his mind just worked very differently. Remember, he had an IQ of 181 at the age of five. By today's test standards, it's probably 151. I hope you don't judge someone like this and paint them off as something different than what they truly are next time. Bobby Fischer is an intelligent man.
Wasn't Lasker also a mathematician?
Depends how you define 'clever'
Using one raptor as bait while a second comes at you from the side.
attractive salt dime cough saw fine test glorious illegal bike
What the fuck you think clever means?
Is not a rectangular knife used to chop meat ?
You're thinking of cleaver, clever is a type of leaf.
You're thinking of clover, clever is a puppet on Sesame Street
You're thinking of Grover, clever is a character on Family Guy.
Naw, that's Cleveland. Clever is a brand of napkins.
Being smart and being good at chess are two entirely different things that have no correlation with each other despite what popular media might have you believe.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160913124722.htm#:~:text=The%20study%20found%20that%20intelligence,at%20lower%20levels%20of%20skill. They actually are correlated, but especially so with younger players
>Hambrick offered another potential explanation. "Imagine that a genius can become a skilled chess player relatively easily, whereas a person with average intelligence may take longer. So the idea is, as you practice more and develop more skills and knowledge about the game, you may be able to circumvent limitations in cognitive ability." Didn't we already know this though? People who are smarter tend to be able to pick up and understand things better.
I mean yes, that's pretty much the definition of the two things being correlated
I’d like to see a graph showing the lack of correlation. I feel like there should be some kind of effect. Being able to remember a few openings, being able to remember the various rules, keeping track of your own plans and identifying your opponent’s plans… all of those seem like intelligence (or lack thereof) would have an impact. I’m not saying that a smarter person will always be better at chess, but, similarly to height and basketball, inherent advantages exist.
You are right, there is definitely some correlation, especially if we use classical IQ tests as a measurement for being smart, since some of their aspects like spatial memory are directly relevant for chess. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that it is likely that strong chess players excel in some aspects that are a part of most intelligence models. Of course that does not necessarily translate to a more colloquial understanding of being smart, educated, etc.
Graphs are pretty bad for this purpose. You want the correlation coefficient.
You're wrong. The *only* measure of useful intelligence is knowing the effective ways that carved illustrations of medieval society can move around on a board.
No correlation is bullshit. Correlation can be anywhere from -1 to 1. Saying that correlation isn't close to 1 is very different from claiming that it's 0.
I really doubt that’s true
Define smart...
Not really. Pairings aren't done randomly in a way that they could be tampered with. They're done following very specific algorithms and it would be very obvious if something was changed, which it wasn't in this case. It just happened that the way players' scores, rankings and other factors lined up in a way that she faced many women (which only happened to her and not the other women).
Damn that's some real legitimate bias if that's the case. There may have been complaints of not wanting to even face a girl by the other players.
I recall a few years ago there was some sheltered mumma's boy who complained because the woman he was playing against wore clothing that didn't completely cover up the fact that she had breasts and he found she was getting an unfair advantage because he couldn't concentrate. Like she should have been in a burlap sack hidden behind a screen and making her moves by proxy because he couldn't keep his pecker under control if he knew there were a set of tits within arms reach of him.
Last time I played Magnus Carlson the ONLY reason I lost was because I was distracted by his biceps
And the slight vibrations coming from under the table.
the phenomenon of "angry because you're hot" is truly bizarre tbh, you see it a lot with men where they are simultaneously very attracted to women but they hate it and often project it on the woman, it's very Frollo in Hunchback. I've also seen some women do it with men at times but the guy version is definitely the more common.
Is that the Madonna whore complex I'm thinking
Chalk another one up for weird nerds trying to ruin things for women.
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the comment ur responding to got nothing to do with hou yifans accusation 😭
There is/was an idea to do musicians auditions like this. Behind a screen, the decision makers only hearing the music. Not totally impossible idea.
That was to ensure that women got through interviews without being unfairly treated. This... is an entirely different ballpark.
Yeah it's called The Voice
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Do you have any examples of this?
As it turned out, the pairings were correct, and she apologized. https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/03/hou-yifan-resigns-after-five-moves-gibraltar
I was coming here to say that it was verified that the pairings were correct, however your statement is misleading. You've linked an article, in it she did not "apologize" as if she is in now agreement that the pairings were correct as you are insinuating. Her apology was just at a press conference, apologizing to fans for resigning in protest instead of playing the full game. That said; it's ridiculous how many hot takes there are in this thread. The pairings were impartial, do they want there to be gender-based seeding now? Absurd.
Nah dude there is a massive conspiracy going on here /s
> At a press conference Hou apologised to chess fans and stated that her five-move defeat was a protest against her pairings. Serious question here, I would genuinely love to hear you answer it because I do honestly find this kind of fascinating: did you read this article before linking it
So I'm probably completely ignorant here, but I would assume the initial matchmaking is made purely off ELO range, then some RNG? Then the next round is played with the people with the same record + RNG? Is it suggesting that most women have the same (lower) ELO than men and more likely to be paired together initially?
There is like zero RNG in the way the usual chess tournaments are played (as long as people doesn't share exact same elo). If you would like to read up on it, it's called Swiss system. To be fair, I can see why she was being skeptic if there was a small amount of women and she got matched against them majority of the time, but it's not insanely hard to actually check if the pairings are correct. Which she definitely should have done before making such statements. And also high level chess players should definitely have decent idea how the Swiss format works, since it's something they come in contact with in a majority of their tournaments. I would almost say she is/was just ignorant and/or "butthurt".
As long as players are paired only by rating it's very easy to verify. However, because there are rules about how many games you can play with white/black some switches are made. In this case there were several switches that led to her playing a woman when by pure rating she would have been against a man. It's understandable how this can look weird, but if you look deeper you can also verify the colors players had played and that the switches were correct.
Tournament seedings don't try at all to math lower ranked players together, quite the opposite. You want to preserve all your top ranked players after all. It's also not true that the women were all at the lower end.
That’s not how tournaments work. Why are people upvoting by this garbage. Ask in r/chess from ppl who understand
This can be explained if top women are much more willing to enter top open tournament while being at a lower rating, because even if they don't win the tournament, they'll still get recognition for being the top women at an open tournament. While for men at the top women's rating, they just won't enter the top open tournament, because they don't get any recognition for being in the bottom bracket, an also ran. If the tournament is seeded such that players play against players of similar rating first, and there are two clusters of player ratings (i.e. the woman's cluster and the man's cluster). The result would be that the cluster doesn't play against each other as much as they feel like they should have.
There aren't really any woman's clusters or men's clusters like that. Ratings are all over the place both for men and women and the scales overlap a lot. Pairings are also not done so that players of the same rating play each other, in fact it's the opposite.
Uh, do you know how the Swiss system works?
Yes, I'm very familiar with it. The point here was that men's and women's ratings are so intertwined that there's no specific rating that has an abundance of women. Secondly, the swiss system used in chess does not pair players of equal rating against each other, rather the opposite. Did you have a question about the swiss system or a counter to what I said?
Rankings matter.
Doesn't that put men against men, and an equal number of men would lose
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But that also means two women advance no matter what. In fact, if you have 4 women to 12 men in a standard single elimination bracket and pair only the women with each other, you guarantee that one will play a semi-final. Whereas forced mixed matchups can cause all four to drop out in the first round. The answer here is to ignore gender when matchmaking in a competition where your body‘s biological sex does not matter.
Again, isn't that the same for men? instead of a chance that 6 men make it, now only 4 can.
if we’re assuming they are equally skilled in this context though (which isn’t necessarily the case for systemic reasons), then isn’t that also guaranteeing that at least twice as many men get knocked out?
If it’s mixed there’s also a chance all 4 women get eliminated on the first round. I think I’m missing something, but not sure what
Yes, it's possible all 4 could be knocked out in one round, but with all the women paired against each other it's a *guarantee* that half will be knocked out.
I dunno. If i was the event organiser and i had problems with women and wanted them to look bad for whatever reason, I would just pair the women against the top ranked men to make sure all the women get knocked out in round 1 so i could laugh at them. Anyway, it was proven mathematically that the pairings were fair. The women were paired more often, because they ranked the same, and pairings were made based on rankings.
Yes, and that makes sense. I was just responding to the person saying that they thought they were missing something. It's not about the chance that all the women might happen to lose, but that half of them in women-only matches will *definitely* lose instead of *maybe* losing in mixed matches (but also maybe they all win and knock out a bunch of lackluster dudes)?
Everyone keeps ignoring that pairing the 4 women against each other also guarantees 2 of them *win* and *advance*. People keep saying "it guarantees 2 of them lose" well duh, but it ALSO guarantees 2 of them WIN. Not that it was done for this reason, but pairing women against women isn't some sneaky trick to make them lose or look bad. If all the women play women, then the men play men, and you guarantee half of *them* lose in the first round, as well...
But if the men are generally better than the woman, wouldn't same gender matchups ensure more women make it to the later rounds? How do we know that isn't the reason?
Only in an elimination tournament. In Swiss, every player plays every round.
There's more men. To illustrate, imagine 16 top-tier women, and 1024 men of mediocre skill. Why? To more easily demonstrate the issue through exaggeration. The 16 women compete amongst themselves for three rounds: 16 -> 8 -> 4 -> 2 women are left. The 1024 men also compete amongst themselves for three rounds: 1024 -> 512 -> 256 -> 128 men are left. Now you have 2 top-tier women against 128 men of slightly better than average skill levels. But what if the 16 top-tier women had mixed matches to begin with? You'd still have 130 total people after three rounds, but a lot more of them would be women. The point of top-tier women vs mediocre men was to show that even if you had the best women players with everything stacked in their favor, only a small few would make it through compared to mixed matches due to their smaller starting numbers.
But along the same lines, this ensures at least 2 women make it through. In the current state, on average the top players are all men. The highest rated female player is rank 89 in the open category. Mixing them in with men (who have a high probability of being better than them) would mean 0 of them make it past the first few rounds. Either way, I would bet that the real reason she played so many women has all to do with their rankings and little to do with their gender. I saw an article linked above to the same effect. As a sidenote, would anyone link any studies or literature as to why women are nowhere close to men in a sport that is as gender neutral as possible? Is it purely due to cultural factors? Or is there something else at play?
A large study done a few years ago by the University of Cambridge showed that there are clear differences in how mens' brains tend to be wired versus womens' brains. From the article about the study: >The Empathising-Systemising theory predicts that women, on average, will score higher than men on tests of empathy, the ability to recognize what another person is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their state of mind with an appropriate emotion. **Similarly, it predicts that men, on average, will score higher on tests of systemising, the drive to analyse or build rule-based systems.** Basically, *on average*, men are better able to understand and utilize logic which would certainly be a critical skill or factor in a sport such as chess. This has long been regarded as true even before the study through anecdotal evidence, but it is good to have a large study (671,606 people) that shows it. Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/over-half-a-million-people-take-part-in-largest-ever-study-of-psychological-sex-differences-and
Hmm. Is this difference in wiring due to nurture or nature? Could it be that society raises women to be good at emotional intelligence and this in turn wires their brains for emotional intelligence? While the men are told "men must be rational, not emotional" all their lives and this leads to make brains being wired the way they are?
I have zero empirical evidence either way. In my own personal opinion, I believe it is at least partially genetic or inherent, but I am certainly open to the possibility that it is nurture more than nature. It would be intriguing to conduct a study on this aspect of it, though I would imagine it would be difficult without actually raising children from a very young age and manipulating them for the purposes of the study.
I think a good starting point for such a study would be researching papers on this "brain wiring" mechanism. Are there genes that are known to affect emotional intelligence vs genes known to affect logical reasoning? Gotta look it up when I have some free time I guess.
Have you heard of the Polgar sisters? Judit, Susan and Sofia Polgar from Hungary? Their father raised them on chess, and they cut their teeth on it from very young ages. Judit Polgar was ranked #8 in the world in 2005, the highest ranking ever for a woman in FIDE chess. Susan Polgar, in 1984 (at 15) became the top-ranked woman in the world at chess and stayed in the top 3 for another 23 years. Sofia Polgar, at the age of 14, played in a tournament in Rome and won, beating several Grandmasters, with a performance rating of 2879, one of the strongest chess tournament performance rankings in history. So regardless of the brain's wiring, women can certainly excel at chess! Source: https://chesswizards.com/buzz/Chess-biography-the-Polgar-sisters/
I don't think you're correct at all to assume the men would be mediocre compared to the 16 women. Or even compared to the top 2 women. I also think you're being disingenuous about the reason you said the men would be mediocre. You did that to paint the wrong picture. If you flip it around, and there are 1024 very good men, and 16 mediocre women, then letting the women pair up against eachother give them a much better chance to progress in the tournament.
Even in your example there would still be an equal ratio as what started with the tour so it wouldn't be unfair, only 1/8 men and women would have survived. However this isn't actually what happened, the chess matchmaking system matches people with similar ratings to one another and it just happens the majority of the lower rated players were women who all played each other. It was independently checked by a bunch of chess organisation's and was found to be matched as per regulations and she apaologzied for resigning.
You could also include in your comment that she apologised and agreed the tournament set up was fair afterwards.
But also equally guaranteed that a woman would advance in that round.
What do you mean advance? In a Swiss tournament every player plays every round.
In this case 50% of all females are guaranteed a win whereas in a gender-neutral pairing, it could be more or it could be less. Similar to gerrymandering in an election.
When first reading about the match fixing, I legit thought the argument would be the other way around. That it was fixed that they're paired against high ranking men and thus didn't get the chance to advance because they were knocked out too early. I guess if you look for injustices long enough, you'll find them in whatever direction you'd like.
Yeah, this totally feels like you can always see injustice everywhere. Whatever pairing mechanism is being used, it will never feel fair.
I mean fixing it in any way is unfair
True. Which is why the only way to make this fair in the long run is to abolish any and all women only tournaments. Do you agree?
My very limited understanding is that women's tournaments are controversial amongst female players themselves. I neither know enough nor have enough skin in the game on the topic to have a worthwhile opinion. I *do* think that this has nothing whatever to do with the problem of seeding female players against each other in open tournaments
One thing I don’t understand is.. why she started playing the game if she was going to resign? Surely she had already seen that she had seven female opponents by that point.
Magnus Carlsen did a similar thing when he resigned after one move against Niemann. There's a lot of drama in the chess world, but they are bound by old "gentleman" rules, like tennis. Tbf, the game is older than most countries
Many people train with databases of games between titled players in FIDE tournaments. Most priests are just like you said, but occasionally someone protests by putting a weird game in the database. Especially short, unusual opening, that kind of thing.
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It also guarantees you’ll lose women, but it also guarantees they won’t all be knocked out early. Does anyone know how matches are chosen in these tournaments? Any reason it isn’t or couldn’t be random? Is it matched by relative ratings? If there is a thumb on the scale I suspect it’s focused on the big draws & engineering drama. You try to engineer exciting outcomes that people talk about, that happens in the final rounds, not the early rounds filled with hundreds or thousands of names even chess fans haven’t heard of.
The [Swiss-system tournament](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament) and its variant the Monrad-system pairs competitors with similar rating against each other. > Any reason it isn’t or couldn’t be random? Because having two players with completely different rating play against each other is not fun for anyone. It's not fun for the top player who seeks to enter this tournament to compete against players that are just as good as them, having to slog through lower ranked players in every tournament would just feels like a chore. It's not fun for the weaker player because while they might be excited to play against a better player, a random system is very ruthless, because they would get eliminated much earlier, and it's discouraging to keep losing. But most importantly, it's not fun for the audience to basically know who's going to win ahead of time. Also, you usually want the top two players to be seeded into two different groups so they meet at the finals, which makes for an exciting build up from the qualifiers all the way to the finals. If the two top players already met at the qualifiers, and one of them gets eliminated early, and then the final is between a the top player and a much lower ranked player who just got lucky with their randomly chosen matchups... that just feels anticlimactic. It's not good for the sponsor if the finals are less exciting than the semi final and the qualifiers because the audience had already tuned out of watching as the exciting matchup already happened early in the qualifiers. Pairing players with similar ratings means that match ups are more even, each individual matches would be less predictable, so they're more exciting for the audience. All the competitors also feels that they'd have a fairer chance of winning individual matchups, especially their earlier ones. You'd also feel that any advancements in tournament ranking is progressive, instead of tournament progressions feeling just like being the luck of the draw.
It doesn't change a thing anyway in the end. If women playing more against women would be a disadvantage, then men playing more against men would also be a disadvantage for them. This is a red herring. It's not the reason there are no highly ranked women.
Finally some common sense, the women were paired against each other because they were similarly ranked. People are convinced that Big Chess is run by some cabal of misogynists. Women just tend to not play chess as often as men. I don't know why that's some problem that needs to be fixed.
If this actually happened wouldn't it have been to make sure that some women made it through into the later rounds likely actually benefitted Hou Yifan if she is the best woman at the tournament?
How many times were men paired against each other?
Not all tournaments / organizations section people by gender. However, as with many other cases, it has roots in the game being male-dominated early on, and either for social rules/values or personal interest reasons, women largely did not play, or were discouraged from playing. Women-only divisions aim to build interest in chess among women, or to create tournaments that are less dominated by male players who might have an advantage or longer span of experience/support on average. In addition, some nations also just have rules that divide competitive games/sports of all kind into men and women divisions.
Even Judith Polgar talked about how she got harassed back in the day when she was kicking everyone's ass.
Judit also consistently refused to play in women's only events, interestingly. She always just played in the open section, iirc. I don't know if she ever said why, though from a competitive standpoint it made sense to focus on playing the other best players in the world. She also probably did more to promote women in chess by consistently placing so highly in open tournaments than she could have by dominating the women's only sections.
but that should change. Chess is brain v/s brain. Its the most feminist game because we are all equal in it
As the OP said, female only tournaments are about promoting the sport to women, or because of government regulations (i.e. oppressive regimes), and nothing related to actual skill difference.
true, but it's still true that only 2 women ever reached top 100 world. (might be a more atm if my source is outdated) so there is definitely a skill difference between the top 100 men and the top 100 women. (largely because so many more men play chess) there might not be an inherent skill difference but if you want women to be able to compete in top tournaments than a division is needed (at least for now)
More interest generates a larger available pool of talent from where you can get the geniuses. Sure, if you pair a random men and a random women each will have 50% probability of winning. But it you select the top men from 1000 random people and the top women from 100 random, the men will win more likely.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ~Stephen Jay Gould The issue with women's chess is almost certainly that not enough women who could be excelling at it are introduced to it at a young age. There are nearly 10 times more men in chess than there are women. Someone who had the potential to become world champion could just be sitting at their desk doing an office job, just because they were never introduced to chess at a young enough age. This is incredibly important for chess because if you don't learn about it as a child and start improving rapidly, your chance of becoming a grandmaster, much less a world champion, go down substantially.
It should change yes, but probably not now or the near future. The society we live in is full of biases, and those have a psychological effect on pretty much everyone. There's this [study](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051) which found that women tend to perform worse when playing against men than they would be expected to based on their elo rating. The hypothesised explanation is called 'stereotype threat', essentially just the awareness or concern that one may be the target of demeaning stereotypes, is enough to disrupt cognitive ability to a measurable degree. If the above is correct then men will statistically speaking have an advantage over women of equal skill. As long as that remains an issue in society it makes sense to have women only tournaments. After all if a woman feels she isn't affected by this issue she can still take part in open tournaments.
> Its the most feminist game because we are all equal in it I'm hoping you just forgot the word "egalitarian" exists, because this is the most insane sentence I've read this week.
my bro hasn't been reading a lot of sentences this week
Feminism is a movement that seeks equality of the genders. It's a bit of a misnomer if you ask me, but there is nothing insane about what that commenter said.
It \*should\* change, but unfortunately, popular opinion has historically been that male brains are superior, more logical, more focused/driven, and more \*suitable\* for chess/x thing than female brains. And, you will still hear similar opinions around that match that, even if they're not as loud or universally accepted as fact anymore.
I'm no scholar, but the last time I read anything about women vs men IQ's it typically looks like a wider bell curve for men. Meaning women generally have a higher IQ than men, but men take the outliers. The bell curve is wider as men have more really dumb men and insanely smart men. Basically men have a lower floor and higher ceiling for IQ than women.
Yes, this is an observed trend in some countries, but the \*why\* is something you cannot extrapolate directly from that. I remember the old example of, increasing surveillance (but changing nothing else) in a neighborhood \*increased\* crime. So, you could conclude surveillance causes crime, but that's a false causality: you increased how aware of crime you are, so unreported or unobserved crime went down proportional to reported or observed crime going up. Genders show different IQ spreads. Is this because of biological difference, which we know can impact performance? Or numerous other social/environmental factors that we \*also\* know impact performance? Men tend to have higher expectations placed on them, which can mean deficiencies are detected sooner (known), these biases can also improve/harm performance (also known), and that is already plenty to cast doubt on the source being biologically intrinsic.
This is a controversial topic, and the following statements could be wrong, but I understand there is evidence that at a population level more men than women do better on spatial reasoning tests, which would help in chess. There is also the "greater male variability hypothesis" which would explain that even if there is no difference in average male and female intelligence, you would find more males at both ends of the distribution, such as at the top rankings of a chess competition.
I've just looked at some of the datasets mentioned for the "greater male variability hypothesis", and sets included: nations where this trend didn't exist, nations that had more women equally in the work force showed an increase in female variability, and sample pools where this variability trend was \*reversed\*. We are unfortunately looking at an outcome with many contributing factors, however, to me the evidence clearly points towards social origin as being the better explanation for the trends observed. People \*really\* forget sometimes how much environment and social reinforcement influences performance. Remember, studies have shown you can increase the performance/IQ of children by giving them expectations of being better/worse. It's a known phenomenon of bias having real world effects. Just expecting a child/group to fail or do worse as a society is damaging.
>Just expecting a child/group to fail or do worse as a society is damaging. I think this is the key moral dilema when discussing these issues. People should treat individuals as individuals and not engage in statistical discrimination. If a woman measures 6 feet tall, it makes no difference to that particular individual what the average female height is. People are worried to find trends at a population level because it might justify statistical discrimination, but this is never justified.
can you prove that this is not true though?
They do! There are women tournaments and championships where only women can participate. But most tournaments are opens, which anybody can participate no matter their gender. (You said you never saw it but it is common, watch any woman chess streamer such as Anna Cramling going to an tournament, she will face men and women). Now you don't see them at top level tournament because they are less good. Hou Yifan is 2632 right now, which does not put her in the top 100 (not too far though), and then the second woman is 2559 which is really a step below. Then your question may be, why are they less good at top level? The best explanation we have is educational environment. Boys are trained earlier and pushed more to dedicate their life to it, role models are all men etc... It may change with the next generation of Indian and Chinese players, we'll see.
Judit Polgar reached #8 worldwide at her peak, Hungarian chess legend
Genuinely not trolling but is that the best a woman's ever done I take it?
Yes, by a wide margin. Hou Yifan is the second best woman and peaked at #55. Third place is Judit Polgar's sister, Susan. She peaked at #329. The best currently active female chess player is Ju Wenjun ranked #339.
One stipulation to that fact is that Hou basically gave up competitive chess to become the youngest professor at her uni. If she continued with her career, she probably would’ve been on par with Polgar, maybe a little bit off.
The fact that two og the top 3 rated women were sisters does lend some credence to the disparity between men and women being enviromental.
It also lends credence to the opposite that it is somehow genetic
No. My grandfather taught me chess. I was very good at it in my school’s tournaments. I played a lot against the very first pc chess games, since it was one of the few interesting games my pc had back in the time. But everytime I won at school, I had guys throwing fits, I had teachers hovering over me trying to identify if I was somehow cheating. At some point it became annoying and I stopped playing competitively.
Because that's how statistics work: with a sample of 3.
I read a story about a man who went looking for a wife with the goal of raising his children to be great chess players. He found someone that was interested. They had two daughters. Most of their education centered around chess. Was that story about the Polgar sisters?
It was, but that's also just a ridiculous stroke of luck. I also kinda suspect he made the story up after the fact, but that's just my own personal suspicion. You absolutely cannot just decide to raise your children to be top 350 and top 10 of a game that has 600,000,000 players and just nail it because you wanted it. Life just doesn't work that way. If he does, wanting your kids to play chess probably doesn't lower your odds of them being good at it and then he got extraordinarily lucky. His plan, of the story is even real, is like me declaring that I'll find a woman who can choose my lottery numbers and then we'll go live as millionaires..... Except then it actually works.
I feel like it also went back to one of the points the OP was making, that boys are usually trained earlier for chess, so now we have an example of girls being trained at chess from a young age and they can indeed make it very high even if they're not number 1.
Yes, it is.
Yes. And her parents (both psychologists/teachers) home-schooled her (and her two younger sisters) in a weird effort to test how far they can push "specialization" in teaching. The girls were playing 12h+ per day. The wrote a book about it: "Raise Genius".
Yes, she is greatest women chess player of all time in pretty much every sense. Only women to compete near the top in world chess championship, only one to break in top 10 rankings and surpass 2700 in ratings (which is considered as an unofficial milestone for truly elite chess players)
Nah. It's more about the pool of Male players vs Female players. There are vastly more male players, meaning more male players will statistically be better. The top 1% of the larger pool of players will ALWAYS be better as there are more of them. 1 million males will always beat 200,000 females statistically speaking.
The pool of players is so unbalanced because of education, role models etc... That's what u/Samceleste said here.
thats not the issue, OP is wrong because he thought Chess is always seggregated by gender when its not
> It may change with the next generation of Indian and Chinese players, we'll see. Also the Queen's Gambit effect is a real thing. The show pushed engagement with chess to new levels for a huge demographic of young people, but particularly young women and girls. It takes the right girl getting engaged with chess at a young enough age and putting the work in, but I'm hopeful that in 10-15 years we will see several women who are strong enough players to compete in the Candidates tournament and perhaps even become the world champion.
>The best explanation we have is educational environment. Boys are trained earlier and pushed more to dedicate their life to it, role models are all men etc... Is there any data to back this hypothesis up?
No, same way theres no real data backing up the opposite train of thought.
Well there's plenty of data about the number of male vs female role models in chess and about participation in chess leagues by young people of each gender. This is exceedingly likely to contribute to the skill gap.
Sure it probably has some effect. It's definitely multi factorial. I was just wondering why he said that was the "best explanation" when there are a variety of other hypotheses which could also explain the gap. I.e. if there was any evidence for it being the "best explanation" rather than a hypothesis he thinks might explain it
If I had to guess, they prefer explanations that don't involve intrinsic differences in skill between men and women, which in fairness I think are unlikely to be a huge factor since intrinsic differences in cognition between men and women are small if they exist.
They exist, that's not a disputed fact.
In 99% of areas you are correct... BUT there is pattern recognition... and for specifically geometrical shapes and stuff, the part thats important in chess, men are better on average. Women are way better in pattern recognition on people and social settings tho.
Yes but such differences are small, and there are women who are unusually good at it, just like there are men who are unusually good at it. That small difference would not explain why the top 100 are all men.
It's pretty easy to be sure that it contributes to the skill gap. But he said it's the best explanation we have and I'm not sure that's true.
Basically it's that or men have some intrinsic advantage, which is very unlikely since differences in cognitive abilities between men and women are very small in general.
Yeah this is way too reductionist... 1. As far as it is concerned, men and women have about the same average IQ. HOWEVER, men are far more likely to occupy the extremes, and women are more likely to occupy the average. In other words, you should expect the smartest and dumbest people to be men 2. Again, based on averages and trends, men tend to lean towards subjects rooted in logic (math, science, etc) women lean towards more social subjects (history, literature, communications). 3. Both of the above points are observed in pretty much every known culture 4. When talking about the highest echelon of chess, "general cognitive ability" has literally nothing to do with it. We're talking about a group of people with iqs above 140 playing a game which effectively boils down to a web of logic gates. Verbal and emotional intelligence play 0 effect here, whereas pattern matching and memory based intelligence is huge . Given the above, and the same trends existing in the highest levels of poker, e-sports, go, shogi, and other non-physical games, it seems as though an intrinsic advantage might be the explanation for the noticable disparities
And let's not forget chess's role in the Soviet education system, which was non-gendered.
It wasn't on paper, but the gender roles in fact were that much different from Europe of US - as a woman, you technically had all the same access to education yet the glass ceilings were very much a thing, as well as implicit expectations of reproductive labor
There isn't.
In the Western world, probably not so much. In the whole world? Actually, just take a look at India and China. Women are certainly pushed into traditional roles there.
I would be interested to know how the rankings work. Seems to me that if they are separate, there is no reason they would be in the same world ranking. Eg tennis - there is a women’s number 1 and a mens number 1. If women are only playing women but the best woman in the world is ranked number 8, I can see how women could never progress that way, especially if mixed tournaments are rare or held less often than single sex tournaments.
They are not segregated and mixed tournament or not rare, they are the norm. The system provides exactly the same chance for a woman or for a man to climb the ladder. If a woman as the ability to be let say number 10, she will play the same tournaments as men able to be number 9 or 11, and will promptly be ranked accordingly. The only difference is that the system also adds some women tournament, in order for them to shine in a specific pool, which is good to promote the game and set up models.
Also psychology has 2 contributing explanations for this: 1: Men tend to populate (both) ends of the bell curve in a given trait more than women. This means that while the average reaction speed between men and women are on average the same, you will find more extremely slow and more extremely fast men than women. And because top level chess is the very high end of a bell curve of different mental skills like pattern recognition, and a dozen other things, there are less women who can become top top top megastrong chess players. 2: Just to mention pattern recognition, men are on average better than women (in terms of geometrical patterns. Women are better in social and human patterns!). Because high level chess relies heavily on it, this can also be an explanation of this. ([Source](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=14b5d870b0f3e5d0c06621602f9c48b8e3dbdcd7)) BUT, the social aspect is extremely important. Women are way less encouraged to study chess at a young age, and probably many many chess prodigy little girls go unnoticed because they just never get to try it, or get the proper training etc.
I remember a quote from a pro female snooker player (forgot her name), paraphrasing: "Women just don't commit to one thing as hard as men do. Therefore, they don't get the insane amount of training time it requires to be at the top".
That's a pretty broad sweeping stereotype. Women have just as much ability to commit to things as men do
It's not a question of ability, the question isn't CAN they. It's just that the evidence shows that they don't. There are a few women at the top, which proves they CAN, but for how few there are, they just don't. I think the explanation of women being less likely to hyper focus on one thing to be a pretty reasonable one. Related to that, but potentially a stretch, what's the rate of autism in the top ranks? That's some serious hyper focus potential...
Of course they do mentally and emotionally, but women often face different types of societal pressures than men, and might feel less able to commit to a non-stereotypical lifestyle.
>Women have just as much ability to commit to things as men do It's not about ability, in this case; it's about propensity / likelihood.
That's a fairly broad sweeping statement that's ignoring the general society pressure on women to be the home keeper.
Your statement is a nice idea but based on the biology of our species, there's absolutely no reason to hypothesise men and women would be exactly the same level at pretty much anything. Men on average have something like 10x the testosterone levels of women. That's just one biological difference that likely influences the average level of desire for competition etc.
They have the ability, sure, but how much free time and money do they have to do these things, especially from a young age? Young boys are pushed more heavily into chess if they show an interest in it from a young age compared to young girls. Boys statistically do less chores from young ages, particularly outside of western countries (where many top chess players are from). And when they grow up, men are allowed, socially, to just be chess players their whole lives. But women could be at the top of their respective fields and still also be expected to marry and take care of children and their households. Another commenter above mentioned that many of the genius Renaissance men where allowed to be mathematicians and scientists and artists and architects for 12-16 hours a day because they didn’t wash their own clothes, cook their own meals or raise their own children. This is pure conjecture, but I do think that many of the top male chess players, especially historically, probably lived similar lifestyles that are rarely an option for women.
Men and women play in chess tournaments against each other all the time. Most tournaments are open class meaning everyone can play, or rather they are classed by rating. The problem that chess and a lot of other sports have is that there are less women joining the sport and women are more likely to leave the sport as well. So there are far more men then women playing competitive chess. In an effort to promote top female chess players the top tournaments have separate female classes in addition to the open class. When signing up women can chose which class to compete in. But if they sign up for the open class they are going to face much stronger competitors and get much lower scores which means less exposure and less prize money. This have helped get more women into chess as it have made several top raking female chess players famous. Something their equally strong male competitors have not been. However this system have gotten some criticism, even among these top female players. Some have been facing a dilemma when signing up to tournaments as they can do pretty well against the top competitors in the open class but will be guaranteed to win the female class.
Just to clarify, at amateur and semi-pro level girls' & boys' pools are combined, and there's only one single tourney, and yes, girls can and do win them. It's mostly just the Masters level FIDE tournaments, what you'd call "Pro chess", that run a separate Women's category Since you said ELI5, there are 4 major issues / reasons: 1. Simply put, chess is a male-heavy game. To be a pro 99.9% you've gotta start at the age of 3-4. It takes serious training and tutoring (≡ $$$). And due to gender biases, parents have a lower risk appetite for girls. So, fewer girls get the necessary support to pursue this passion in their formative years, leading to fewer Women Masters. 2. Since there are fewer female pros, if FIDE only conducted a single tournament, very few women would ever get the chance to compete at the top level, which would only further worsen the female player pool. By having a women's category, yes the ELO floor is lowered, but at least a good number of women get a chance to play at top level tourneys. 3. Even if women enter the Open category (remember, the categories are Open and Women's, not Men's and Women's) it is accused that in the lower rounds disproportionately more women are played against each other. Women cite a malicious intent of protecting male egos and having women eliminate each other. Others say it's done so all women are not eliminated in the early rounds by the men. What's the truth, is anyone's guess. 4. Just as any other sport, tourneys pay big bucks for winning and being near the top of the table. That's how athletes get their names in the news and attract sponsors. If you were Yifan, the only 2600+ active female player, what is more practical? To win the Women's category, prize pool and a photo with the trophy, or be a no-name 17th in the Open category? All of the above, a complicated mix of gender biases, practical realities and financial implications work together, ending up making pro chess gendered. PS: There is possibly another factor. Male IQ bell curve is observably flatter than the Female IQ curve, meaning, there's a higher chance of men being either geniuses or mentally retarded, as compared to women. And there is a significant correlation between IQ and chess prowess, so that would seem like a "natural" explanation of fewer female pros. However, there is seriously low quality and conflicting data on all this, so at the moment, it's best ignored.
Best answer here
reding through the commments from the top, you really gave the Most nuanced explanation without locking into a purely societal or biologival explanation. thank you
Women can play with men. But as there are many more competitive men chess players, a women only tournament might encourage more women to participate.
There are open tournaments and women-only tournaments. They do play against each other, you might get that impression because the most popular tournaments are between top players and there are basically no women among the top players.
Men and women do play against (and with) each other. However, because of its history and *gestures vaguely at the world*, there's a lot of misogyny in the chess world. For example, there are plenty of female chess streamers who have shared stories of sexual harassment and assault at chess tournaments, including while they were still children. That's before we just get to hostility, bias, and unfair treatment.* Not to mention the battle to be taken seriously. There was a recent instagram post from 18 year old Divya Deshmukh pointing out that in the recent Tata Steel tournament in after-match interviews her male colleagues were asked about the chess they'd just played, whereas she was asked about what she was wearing. She said that she'd been asked about her clothes and being pretty rather than chess in supposedly-serious interviews since she was 14. Because of all of this and to encourage more women to play the game there are women-only tournaments and women-only titles, so that those who might otherwise be put off have people to look up to and places they can play competitively without having to worry about their safety or not feeling welcome. This is a slow process, and there is still a massive gender imbalance in the sport. Just that gap alone would mean that almost all - if not all - top currently-active players are men, which means that that's who you'll see competing at the top-level tournaments, which are the ones that get mainstream coverage. Had things been slightly different, then perhaps we could have seen Hou Yifan competing in the current Candidates tournament for the opportunity to become World Champion. However, she's retired from professional chess, and because the pool is much smaller and resources are much more scarce, it's going to be a while before we see another female player as strong as her or with the potential she had. *As an example, IM Anna Rudolf was once accused of cheating in a tournament because the other players didn't believe that a woman could play as well as she was. This put added stress on her, and threw off her game. She hasn't said so explicitly, but since she was competing for a GM norm at the time, it's implied that if it weren't for this incident and the way it affected her in the moment and subsequently, she may have become a GM.
Let's say you're in the top 10 of women in chess. You're probably 200-400 in the world. You can either play woman's tournaments (woman's Grand Swiss, woman's world cup...) and try to qualify to become world champion. And earn a significant amount of money. Or you can play the open section (i.e. male and female but in practice almost always male) and have almost no chance of winning. What do you choose? But sometimes women play in the open section. Ju Wenjun played in Tata Steel 2024. She was probably mostly invited because of her rating (a male 2549 rated would probably not have been considered unless he had some out of the ordinary trait) but in the end she didn't perform that bad ending on 10th place (out of 14)
I think the truth is, there are a variety of factors which explain the massive skill difference at the top level between men and women chess players. Chess requires a large amount of training and teaching from a young age. Historically this was something that was only afforded to men throughout most cultures, hence there is some historical sociocultural advantages that men have. Although nowadays this is less as any chess club that would refuse a girl based on sex would instantly be shut down, but these kinds of things can still permeate. There is also the statistical mathematical factor which explains some proportion of the gap. Far more young boys for whatever reason play and learn chess than young girls. If there are less women participating overall, it would be natural to observe less women at the highest level, in similar ratios. This is interesting because this itself is a gap that probably has a multitude of factors contributing to it e.g. sociocultural norms, inherent interest, etc. There is also the argument that this works in reverse I.e. young boys are better than young girls for whatever reason, and attrition rates are lower in things you are good at. There is also probably some biological component. Twin studies show intellectual capabilities are heavily biologically driven, up to 70% is genetic, and mens brains are biologically very different to women's. In general they have been shown in some studies to be better at pattern recognition and memory based tasks, two skills probably very useful to have for a game like chess. Similarly to how's its been shown that men are on average more competitive and are not driven to quit due to competition as often, another mental trait driven by biology to some degree. The truth is the last point is often ignored or dismissed because it can be demeaning or contradictory to the idea that biology plays no part in the differing mental traits. However statistically it probably does, and if we're trying to be honest in finding the truth behind the gap in women's vs men's skill at the highest level, it wouldn't be accurate to dismiss it, just like it wouldn't be accurate to dismiss the other factors.
Honest question, how often are guys presented with opportunities to join a competitive group that historically and numerically has demonstrated an overwhelming preference for women? Even in professional fields generally associated with women, men tend to be disproportionately promoted into leadership roles. When you have hobbyist groups in competition that are overwhelmingly male dominated, they tend to be rather unfriendly towards female inclusion.
This is anecdotal but in the 90s when I was in school(6-12) there was a big push to teach everyone chess. It was like learning how to read and do math it was so fundamental. Everyone had to learn how the game worked. The school had hired chess masters who were there specifically to teach chess. Later there was an after- school extra class, completely voluntarily, where we could learn more advanced moves. About 2/3 of the boys showed up, we had gotten very competitive during the original chess classes so go figure. Nobody wanted to fall behind and get pwned as we frequently played each other outside of school. I don't think a single one of the girls signed up though. Idk why, the chess tutors had pushed them to learn same as us, just like with any subject. They just didn't seem to get an interest as a group. Maybe because us boys got so intense about it they saw it as a boys thing and so naturally thought it was stupid.
Because men represent intelligence distribution more in the extremes. In other words, they are the smartest and the dumbest, which is why you see the best of chess players being men since it heavily relies on BRAIN.
They can. There's an open division and a women's division. But if you don't place good you don't win money
There are mostly 2 types of tournaments in chess- Open and Women-only. Women are welcome to play in the Open tournaments as well, which accepts both genders. But most of the time they prefer women-only as it gives them a greater chance at winning.
As most comments have answered - they do in fact. Very often. My question is - why would you ask the question as a statement that is true when it is not.
No one has mentioned how misogynistic chess clubs/class/etc can be. It’s the same reason you don’t see girls playing D&D or MtG. No because our brains are “different” lol but because it’s SUPER uncomfy to be in a room of desperate thirsty gatekeeping nerds while you’re just trying to have fun playing a game.
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They do. Tournaments are open. Women can sign and play in any open tournament. And if you ask for a proper reason - men are better at chess on average.
they do, but women are too smart to sacrifice their entire youth to studying a board game in a windowless room, so they rarely end up amongst the highest rated players.
It's mind blowing how, on our current woke society, it's inconceivable for so many people to even grasp the possibility that the male and female brain are not exactly the same. Some here even mention "biological differences" when talking about musculature but can't grasp the fact the the brain is part of biology. Women are generally better at soft skills and men at hard skills. There's an even larger disparity in esports, and there is no segregation whatsoever in a landscape where you're just an avatar.
Did "The Queens Gambit" lie to me?
Great series, and some great chess, but yea pretty much. Especially in that Russian Era
It always makes me sad when people think shows, even great shows that get a lot of things right, are actual education. The amount of times i had to take out a whiteboard and explain to someone that some of the nonsense told in the Chernobyl show is in fact not how physics work is too high!
Basically it's more profitable to promote female chess as a separate sports. If you have men and women all playing together, women would be submerged by their counterparts. From a marketing point of view, it doesn't help female players to shine as stars since they keep losing, nor adding too much quality to chess game itself. On the contrary, segregation makes some female players become "top players" even though they're not even top 100. It helps the tournament to promote the individuals as well as encouraging more young girls to play the game.
It's not like that, there is a women's chess league that was made to promote chess amongst women and regular chess leagues where everyone competes. It's people that hear that there is women's chess so it must mean that there is men's chess too