Life In 19x19

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

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!

John Fairbairn wrote: There are of course female pros who have won titles against men in go: Kita Fumiko and Rui Naiwei. So women can "compete" as well, and in that sense better than maybe over 95% of male pros.

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.

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.

Bill Spight wrote: 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.

The details of what she had invented of course a war secret. Not the point. What we are talking about is it having to be secret that she was a "techie" inventor.

Look, this is not just about women. Note another thread in this section is about Urschel. The idea that there is something strange/wrong about a woman with both beauty and brains is cultural and related to the something strange/wrong about a brawler with brains (would we find it quite as strange were Urschel a QB instead of an offensive lineman). That it is cultural (not innate) consider how in our culture we consider the pairing brawler/superlative fighter and poet. But not at all strange to Vikings and not at all strange for a samurai.

I remember living in Russia back many years ago. This one friend of mine beat me at chess everytime despite being many years younger. He told me that his grandmother was much better than him and competed in women's tournaments when she was younger. I really doubt I could be a match for her even now. Hmm.

lemonpie wrote:I remember living in Russia back many years ago.

(in a book lost in the fire, so I can't look up for details) Reuben Fine was playing a simultaneous at some Russian high school and he promised a bicycle if any student playing against him could beat him (or was it just draw?). Anyway, he wrote that there was this one girl, he would have given her the game, but since he didn't actually have a bike (not expecting to need to have one) he fought the game out to a difficult endgame, his strong area, and pulled the game out.

The evidence on this point is remarkably thin. Prior to Judit Polgar, there was no observational evidence that a woman could be top ten in the world in chess, and then there was. Until last year, there were no female Fields medalists, and then there was one.

Our social experiment of not suppressing women's talents is no more than two generations old (and not everyone is on board with the experiment). Give it a dozen generations, and we might be in a position to draw some positive conclusions that our talents are different.

I don't know whether being male helps your chances of being good at chess. I don't know if being young does, either, though data seems to suggest it.

I don't know if being from a "chess playing country" helps either. Maybe, maybe not. There are probably a number of correlations you could draw from the stats. But one thing I do know is that a stat doesn't define anybody.

So whatever your gender, whatever your age, wherever you are, whatever your background - follow your passion with all that you have. We have but one life, so let's not waste it worrying about what *might* not be possible.

Bill Spight wrote:One intellectual game in which women are almost without question better than men in general is contract bridge.

I did not know that. Can you elaborate?

tj86430 wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:One intellectual game in which women are almost without question better than men in general is contract bridge.

I did not know that. Can you elaborate?

I have not played bridge actively since '89, but I doubt if anything has changed in that regard. That was the general opinion when I was playing, and I shared it. OC, there is only anecdotal evidence and opinion about average players. However, even though most top level players are men, women have always been at the pinnacle of bridge. In the early 1930s the most famous bridge player in the world was Ely Culbertson, but his wife, Jo, was regarded by other experts as the better player. Also see

Helen Sobel ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sobel_Smith )

Dorothy Hayden ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hayden_Truscott )

Jacqui Mitcell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Mitchell )

Rixi Markus ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rixi_Markus )

Just because of the picture.

Margaret Hamilton, director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. Her work is said to have prevented an abort of the Apollo 11 moon landing. She also coined the term “software engineering. Here she is standing next to a stacked output of the code her team wrote for the mission.

Bill Spight wrote:

tj86430 wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:One intellectual game in which women are almost without question better than men in general is contract bridge.

I did not know that. Can you elaborate?

I have not played bridge actively since '89, but I doubt if anything has changed in that regard. That was the general opinion when I was playing, and I shared it. OC, there is only anecdotal evidence and opinion about average players. However, even though most top level players are men, women have always been at the pinnacle of bridge. In the early 1930s the most famous bridge player in the world was Ely Culbertson, but his wife, Jo, was regarded by other experts as the better player. Also see

Helen Sobel ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sobel_Smith )

Dorothy Hayden ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hayden_Truscott )

Jacqui Mitcell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Mitchell )

Rixi Markus ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rixi_Markus )

I haven't played actively since 1995, but I when I was active I didn't realize that this was a generally accepted truth. I'm familiar with the names you mention and their achievements, but I always thought the absolutely most brilliant players where the famous members of the blue team, Garozzo, Forquet, Belladonna and (much lesser known) Siniscalco (the other members, Avarelli, Chiaradia, Pabis Ticci etc were of course great players as well but I don't think they rose to the same level). During later times there have been many great male and female players, but it seems to me that the very best men have usually been hailed for greater skill than the very best women.

That of course has nothing to do with the actual skill, it may well be that top women are better that top men and/or women on average are better than men on average, but I have never known that, and in fact this conversation is the very first time I've heard about it.

Hmmm. We may be seeing a difference in cultures between the US and Europe. Even in the US, if you looked only at tournament bridge you could get the impression that men are generally better than women. And social bridge has declined considerably in the US over my lifetime. It may be that women here are not attracted to bridge like they used to be. I do not know anything about the social bridge scene in Europe.

Edit: My point in bringing up the women bridge stars was to point out that Helen Sobel in her day certainly had a claim to being the best player in the world, as did Josephine Culbertson before her, although Oswald Jacoby or Howard Schenken may have been better then. When and where I was growing up, women were more attracted to bridge than men were. And they more than held their own.