A former supporter of 'hot or not'-chess see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/fashi ... ef=slogin& has this time gotten into hot water over some comments he made related to equality (can women play chess as well as men).

See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/a ... yers-women

Nigel seems to have been commenting on this old article http://en.chessbase.com/post/explaining ... e-in-chess

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North Lecale

Talking of the lack of women excelling in science/maths, I'd actually say women have done better in that than in chess. Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Ada Lovelace, Roasalind Franklin come to mind. And they faced rather higher social obstacles than women do now in chess, where Judit Polgar is the only example of a top women (and I'd say even her position in chess is way lower than Noether's in science).

Off topic, but I've always thought Emmy Noether would be an amazing choice for a biopic. Got a phd at a time when women had to get explicit permission from each professor to even attend lectures, her work was recognized by some of the biggest mathematicians of the day, taught without pay for years, and then when she finally got a professorship she got fired by the Nazis for being Jewish and had to escape to the US... maybe I am too much of a math nerd but I would see that movie.

This is actually very interesting and it seems a shame it can't be discussed without a knee-jerk backlash. I didn't know men and women had such different brain structures, or that men tend to diverge more from the norm, but I feel a strong urge to know more. I'm off to Google some neuroscience I won't understand.

Problem is that Hollywood would want to have the character played by a glamorous blonde actress who probably wouldn't even be able to "add a C". (http://www.math.utah.edu/~cherk/mathjokes.html and search for "add a constant")

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I think it is common sense that evolution must have taken this course. My wife and I, for example, think very differently on many things. (Fortunately we think alike on even more things.) That does not mean one is better than the other, just that we each have different strengths and weaknesses.

I can understand that men may have evolved with a different spatial perspective than women, but that does not make them more intelligent. It merely means that they can apply the strengths they have to different things. How this all applies to chess and go I am not sure. I personally think that it is probably more of a cultural bias which results in fewer top female players.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I think part of the problem of discussing this is we're splitting hairs about differences in the top players but people interpret it as referring to the player base as a whole. Even the question "can women play chess as well as men?" is problematic as it can be interpreted more broadly than just referring to the very top level of play.

It's common sense that there would be some differences but I didn't realise there were such pronounced differences, nor did I think I could find specific information as to which parts were different, and in what ways, that could then be combined with research in to what each of those parts does to create baseless misguided theories of my own.



I didn't interpret this as being just about the top players but rather a trend that runs throughout the entire chess community and manifests itself most clearly at the very top where there is a distinct lack of women. Of course the greater trends are irrelevant from a personal perspective as each individual could fall anywhere on the scale.

The data in the article linked was on female players with over 350 FIDE rated games played. The effect may or may not exist in more casual players. I suspect it does, but I'm not sure offhand.

Which player was female and which male, and what were their pro grades? Don't peek yet!

Fair point. I misread one of the other graphs and my online player brain didn't automatically twig to the significance of 350 rated games.

Me neither. And it seems they haven’t.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... ntist.html

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Another quote from that article states:



Couldn't this explain why chess is dominated by males? Basically, men are better at chess because they are expected to be.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

"It seems they haven't" & "Neuroscientist claims" are not a good mix. This is far from a settled question.

Except one of te Hollywood actresses of that time period was (secretly*) involved in serious science. Hedy Lammarr's "spread spectrum and frequency hopping" not only used in WW II but we still use it in our wifi's and bluetooth, etc.

Where I worked, every few years they used to bring in the late Grace Murray Hopper (admiral) for a talk. She was of course one of the female brains of that time period, cracking "Purple". Highlight of those talks being things like hearing about the first "bug" (where that term came from) or being handed a "nanosecond" (a bit or wire the length electrons would travel in that time).

* secretly, because of course considered unacceptable that a glamor "bombshell" might have a brain.

John, what title(s) did Kita Fumiko win? There isn't much on her SL page.

There were virtually no tournaments of the KO or league type then, and the main type was the win & continue. The main variety of that was gonin-nuki where the aim was to win five games in a row, whereupon you got a prize and the tournament stopped, otherwise it just went on and on. These were newspaper-sponsored events and the one Kita won was sponsored by the Kokumin Shinbun. It brought her fame, but she continued to excel and had a big plus score against men in the Hoensha.

However, she left go for ten years to bring up a family, though seemed to lose no strength and when she came back she rose to 4d, the highest ever grade for a woman at that time. She later got to 6d, which would probably qualify as a 9d today.

Her 4d was marked by a huge ceremony which included a gift of silver sake cups from Prince Fushimi with his crest in gold. Men were not favoured like this. Pure sexism!

I was curious about this before.

ez4u recommended this rating site which I like.

World Ranking
http://sports.geocities.jp/mamumamu0413/total.html
Top female player is Rui Naiwei in 193rd place.

Japanese ranking
http://sports.geocities.jp/mamumamu0413 ... rate1.html
Top female player is Xie Yimin in 119th place.

This would seem to argue with the 95% of pros, but maybe there's some skewing happening here.

One intellectual game in which women are almost without question better than men in general is contract bridge. Still, the top bridge players are mostly men.

And one woman who has not been mentioned with regard to technical brilliance, but should be, is Hedy Lamarr, the movie star. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

Edit: Oops! I see that Mike did mention her. Well, she is worth mentioning again, I reckon. And a major reason for the secrecy was that her invention was a war secret.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Wrt brain structure.

Humans are born with relatively unstructured brains. During the first several years of our lives we literally sculpt our brains by the death of a large number of neurons. This process starts in the womb.

Also, all humans share the same basic body plan. Gender differences are partly genetic, partly environmental. But again, the environmental differences start in the womb, depending upon hormones released by the mother, which affect fetal development. Nothing about gender differences is simple.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.