I think the girls are slightly weaker on average, but at the top they are close. For example Wu Yiming is a pretty strong 6D regardless of her being 11 years old. She beat last year's new pro Dong Kun 1p in the C-League in June, and Dong Kun just turned 2p in July.Tryss wrote:By the way, do we have an idea if there's a significant difference in strenght between the men and women tournament? Are the young ladies weaker than the boys, or are they closing the gap?
I believe as amateurs the young girls and boys are relatively close in strength. But once they turn pro the gender gap seems to widen. My theory is that most of amateur tournaments in China does not have separate women groups, and girls have to compete with boys in amateur tournaments and Dojo training rounds. But once they turn pro women tend to play in the women only tournaments and Women's A-League. Although most Chinese and international tournaments are open in nature some women do not participate and those do often gets knocked out in the preliminary rounds. So as a women pro you get to play a few rounds per year against men. Once you fall behind it is hard to catch up. But promising male new pros often gets absorbed into A-League clubs as "young blood" and trains with the very best on daily basis, and gets playing time as substitute (For example Tu Xiaoyu, He Yang, Yi Lingtao are all very young pros playing in A-League. They started out terrible but now they are gradually becoming a strength instead of weakness for their team). That is how the gap grows wider between male and female new pros. A secondary reason might be that as your playing level goes up you perform more stable and upsets are less likely to happen compare to amateurs. That also translates to less games with top male pros, and wider gap in appearance.
Back in the old days (70's 80's) Chinese women players were treated as men's equal and Kong Xiangming, Rui Naiwei, Yang Hui, Hua Xueming and later Zhang Xuan all had good results against men. Now China's number one women player Yu Zhiying ranks about 50 in CWA ranking. I think if some A-League club takes in Wu Yiming and trains her just like they would any promising new pro Wu could become very strong very quickly.
(but I will spare you with that). The hotel staff only let us go inside when the last game was completed.
