Thursday, September 17, 2009
WGM Salome Melia's Simul at Pi Cafe
The Quebec Chess Federation (Fédération québécoise des échecs), has a report (in French, with photographs) on WGM Salome Melia's simul at the Pi Cafe, held last night, her last night in town.
Final simul score: 8.5/9 Melia v. chess hommes :) I am sorry there were not more there to play. It looks like one or perhaps two tables paid but were not able to participate. As far as I can tell from the photographs (not publishable here), no chess femmes signed up for the simul. I would have - if I could have been there. Damn!
Melia finished in second place at the recently concluded 89th Montreal Open Chess Championship, earning the title "Female Champion of Montreal." The 89th Championnat had the highest number of players in a long long time, including many chess femmes and scholastic players! Way to go!
For the 90th Championnat, I understand the Organizing Committee is aiming for 20% chess femme participation and is looking to increase the participation of scholastic players. The combination of experienced chess hommes and younger players, with a sprinkling of chess femmes interspersed across all playing levels, from the Open to Group D, seems to have worked a great magic in the 89th Montreal Open Chess Championship, something everyone is looking to repeat in next year's Championnat.
I understand that this morning WGM Melia took a bus to Toronto to catch a flight back to Europe. Au revoir, la belle WGM. Montreal fell in love with you!
WGM/IM Melia will be competing on a team in the upcoming 14th Women's European Club Cup (October 3 - 11, 2009).
Melia will also be on the Georgian Women's Chess Team in the upcoming European Women's Team Chess Championship.
I will report on Melia's results in both of these events.
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4 comments:
I have a suggestion for Montreal organizers to reach their goal of a 20% percent of "chess femmes" in their tournament: why not just ban the participation of men? That way they would quickly get a 100% percent of "chess femmes".
If this looks too radical, some men could be allowed to play, provided they are weaker than most "chess femmes" and so the ladies get the well-deserved prizes.
BTW, what is a "chess femme"? I'm a woman but I consider myself a chessplayer.
A chess femme is the feminine version of a chess dude. It seems you find the term offensive. That's too bad, but if you don't like it, it's a free world, you are free not to read anything I post here.
Oh, not offended, just amused. I just can't see the point of those categories. In an open tournament... why is the number or the percent of dudes and femmes relevant at all?
I thought I was free to post comments and questions, but it looks like I'm not welcome here. Sorry for disturbing, then.
The number female players is important to people like me who want to see more females playing. We make up about 51% of the world population and overall, only about 7% of the registered and rated chessplayers in the world. That's a gross under-utilization of talent, although there are probably a lot more females who play chess casually and/or online. Not everyone agrees with me but there are a lot of other people who also want to see more females playing chess in tournaments, so we do what we can to encourage them to come out and play. The organizers of the Montreal Open put forth a great effort to attract more female players this year, and the goal they have set for 2010 is laudible.
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