Transgender chess players

[Geoff Chandler]

I had in mind the Borna Derakhshani incident who at Gibraltar 2017 'accidentally played an Israeli, I recall the surprise that the draw was allowed to go though because the system apparently stopped Israel - Iran pairings. So was under the impression that certain pairing were avoided to keep the peace.

I had to dig this out.
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=8904&p=195729&hili ... ni#p195734

Of course that was then, if things have changed I'm not aware of it. I can see the sense of it regarding norms I'm sure a player would rather be given the chance to earn their norm than be given a 1-0 default and no norm.

Gibraltar 2017 - that was when Yifan played her five move loss as an apparent protest for being drawn against 7 female players. To borrow the phrase of another poster...it's a surreal world.

[Roger de Coverly]

I had in mind the Borna Derakhshani incident who at Gibraltar 2017 'accidentally played an Israeli, I recall the surprise that the draw was allowed to go though because the system apparently stopped Israel - Iran pairings. So was under the impression that certain pairing were avoided to keep the peace.

I believe the story was that they intended to flag Borna v Israeli players as not allowed but forgot and Borna didn't object to the pairing.

It's possible for any arbiter with chess-results pairing software to download the data and reproduce the pairings. I recall that when they did this to reproduce the Yifan pairings they found one discrepency where the Iran v Israel flag had been set. It's done at the level of individuals so it can also be used to prevent pairings amongst the same family.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Roger,

Reading posts from 6 years ago is fun. The lad played in different tournaments on the same day so he slipped though the net and did not notice the Israeli flag, then his sister got into trouble for not having her head covered and then the Yifan thing happened. Happy Days.

[Andrew Zigmond]

Getting this thread back on track; the bottom line is that as things stand you would likely struggle to find enough transgender players in the UK to form a small local league squad. If a player did want to "transition" for less than honest reasons (unlikely) they have had ample opportunity to do so in the past decade. And yet I suspect there is not one example - not one.

[Chris Goodall]

If a player did want to "transition" for less than honest reasons (unlikely) they have had ample opportunity to do so in the past decade. And yet I suspect there is not one example - not one.

You're still eliding the important distinction between actually transitioning - with all the hormones, surgery and paperwork that entails - and identifying as a woman for the duration of a tournament. This thread has shown a strong consensus in favour of allowing the Caitlyn Jenners and Blaire Whites of the world to play in women-only competitions.