Gender ability in chess

[Paul Habershon]

A well worn topic addressed astutely, I think, by Dominic Lawson in today's Sunday Times.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/db2004 ... d810975032

[Christopher Kreuzer]

An excellent read.

I liked this bit:

To put it crudely, we men provide more idiots and more geniuses. But chess skill is not a pure measure of intelligence: I have met enough chess grandmasters to know that. And I have a small personal example: my stepfather, Sir Alfred Ayer, then Wykeham professor of logic at New College, Oxford, who at the precocious age of 25 produced the seminal book Language, Truth and Logic, was an avid chess-player. But, as a dopey teenager, I would beat him every time we played.

The concluding sentences seem to say, something akin to men (in general terms) being more nerdy and obsessive than women. And this carries through to the top levels of chess, which as some of those Lawson references, is indeed extremely physically and mentally demanding (both in the short-term and the long-term).

[Geoff Chandler]

I am currently reading Donner's 'The King ' (a very grateful birthday present).
He has a few articles on women in chess. (I've not read them all yet.)
One of them is not too flattering, the term, 'He would not get away with it these days'
springs to mind and judging by his mailbox he did not get away it in them days.

I sometimes wonder... if it was not for 'them days' would 'these days' be here?

After it was published Donner tells that the response from men was aggressive with threats of violence.
Crass Language and typically male, scorns Donner.
One female wrote in saying Donner was not right in the head, sick and belonged in a mental home.
"There you have it." writes Donner, 'Men want to beat you up, but women want to take care of you."

[Jonathan Rogers]

As so often, Christopher is more generous than I would be. Every one has their own pet opinion as to why men outperform women in chess and Lawson's view is no different from anyone else. One can make a case for it, but only to an extent and in any event it hardly rules out additional explanations. In fact the full story is probably a complex combination of facts which does not lend itself readily to a Sunday newspaper column.

I was curious to learn that women comprise the majority of scrabble players (but felt able to guess that the best players are still male). It is not important in the slightest but there it is. I had probably assumed that men comprised the majority of competitors in all board games.

[Paul Habershon]

I was curious to learn that women comprise the majority of scrabble players (but felt able to guess that the best players are still male). It is not important in the slightest but there it is. I had probably assumed that men comprised the majority of competitors in all board games.

The current Association of British Scrabble Players rating list has just 558 names for active tournament players but it limits inclusion to those who have played at least 15 games overall and at least one game in the last two years. As participation hasn't fully recovered from Covid, numbers are reduced. The list includes some overseas players whose first name makes it difficult to determine gender. However, the top 100 probably include just three women, with a Maltese at 17 and the top English woman at 34. In contrast the bottom 100 has over 50 women.

For the last ten years I have occasionally competed in the lower reaches of Scrabble tournaments. These are usually divided into rated sections A, B and C, often using a Swiss pairing system which is looser than with chess. In my experience women always outnumber men in C. As with chess, there is a huge divide between the standard at the top of A and the rest. It nearly always negates the element of luck in Scrabble which scarcely exists in chess.

I expected to come across a few chess players but they seem to be rare or perhaps simply unrecognised by me. Some of you may remember R C (Bob) Lynn who is ranked a respectable 84th. He gave up chess a long time ago.

The gender explanation that resonates most with me is in an investigation which concluded that 'females are less willing to spend time on a valueless activity'. If true, I guess there could be both biological and sociological reasons for that.

[Gerard Killoran]

Here we go again...

Linlithgowshire Gazette - Friday 16 January 1959 p.10.png

[Matt Mackenzie]

I am currently reading Donner's 'The King ' (a very grateful birthday present).
He has a few articles on women in chess. (I've not read them all yet.)
One of them is not too flattering, the term, 'He would not get away with it these days'
springs to mind and judging by his mailbox he did not get away it in them days.

I sometimes wonder... if it was not for 'them days' would 'these days' be here?

After it was published Donner tells that the response from men was aggressive with threats of violence.
Crass Language and typically male, scorns Donner.
One female wrote in saying Donner was not right in the head, sick and belonged in a mental home.
"There you have it." writes Donner, 'Men want to beat you up, but women want to take care of you."

You never truly know if Donner meant a lot of his really outrageous stuff or not, in some respects he was ahead of his time and would have been very much at home in the social media age.

[Tim Spanton]

I was curious to learn that women comprise the majority of scrabble players (but felt able to guess that the best players are still male). It is not important in the slightest but there it is. I had probably assumed that men comprised the majority of competitors in all board games.

The current Association of British Scrabble Players rating list has just 558 names for active tournament players but it limits inclusion to those who have played at least 15 games overall and at least one game in the last two years. As participation hasn't fully recovered from Covid, numbers are reduced. The list includes some overseas players whose first name makes it difficult to determine gender. However, the top 100 probably include just three women, with a Maltese at 17 and the top English woman at 34. In contrast the bottom 100 has over 50 women.

For the last ten years I have occasionally competed in the lower reaches of Scrabble tournaments. These are usually divided into rated sections A, B and C, often using a Swiss pairing system which is looser than with chess. In my experience women always outnumber men in C. As with chess, there is a huge divide between the standard at the top of A and the rest. It nearly always negates the element of luck in Scrabble which scarcely exists in chess.

I expected to come across a few chess players but they seem to be rare or perhaps simply unrecognised by me. Some of you may remember R C (Bob) Lynn who is ranked a respectable 84th. He gave up chess a long time ago.

The gender explanation that resonates most with me is in an investigation which concluded that 'females are less willing to spend time on a valueless activity'. If true, I guess there could be both biological and sociological reasons for that.

In what sense is chess or Scrabble 'valueless'? Most people set great store by success, at least at chess.

[Geoff Chandler]

You never truly know if Donner meant a lot of his really outrageous stuff or not...

Hi Matt,

You do sense a devilish tongue in cheek from Donner.
Regarding this thread. The subject matter 'Women & Chess' has always been akin to playing hop-scotch in a minefield. Jumping over the fence to 'Women & Scrabble' is another minefield. Best to keep your tiles on your rack for this one and not get involved.

[Roger Lancaster]

In what sense is chess or Scrabble 'valueless'? Most people set great store by success, at least at chess.

One could debate this endlessly. Is the argument, by extension, that all sports, games and other pastimes are 'valueless' in that they don't contribute in any way (or don't meaningfully contribute) to the advancement of the human species? If so, the same argument could surely be applied to most human activity, including labour, and in that sense most of us are 'valueless'. I can see some logic in this but, in that case, most of us would find it hard to find something which had 'value'. Veering off topic and probably one for the philosophers!

[Matt Mackenzie]

You never truly know if Donner meant a lot of his really outrageous stuff or not...

Hi Matt,

You do sense a devilish tongue in cheek from Donner.

He could at times be very perceptive, he was highly prescient about how Fischer would end up for example.

[Geoff Chandler]

You do sense a devilish tongue in cheek from Donner.
...he [Donner] was highly prescient about how Fischer would end up for example.

Hi Matt,

Yes, as you know the book runs in chronological order so his 1972 piece is date stamped and was not written in hindsight.

Fischer will not keep the title; “His quirks, moods and whims will turn against him at the moment when he has reached the top. He’ll hit out hard, at nothing but thin air."

His 1974 take on the Fischer question.

“The desperate way in Edmondson defended Fischer for two weeks, his totally unjustified lashing out at the Russians already gave me the sad certainty that this was a man who knew he was fighting the cause of an unpredictable lunatic.”

But we are digressing and I for one am not too happy about sitting on this thread because I am bound to put my foot in it with a comment or a joke and upset the planet.