Chicagoland Richards High School to Post All-Female Chess Team

Check ... this out: Richards boasts first all-girls chess team lineup

BY DONNA VICKROY Sun-Times Media/dvickroy@suntimes.com November 16, 2012 12:44AM

Richards High School's girls chess club includes (from left) Jessica Zavala,
Juliet Lucente,  Mady Doan, Caitlin O'Sullivan, Anne Sortino, Marial Rancel and
Aminah Garcia. | Matt Marton~Sun-Times Media

The most powerful piece on the chessboard is the lone female, the queen.

Yet when you consider the most powerful chess players throughout history, the names Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer come to mind.

Traditionally, chess has been a guy’s game, especially at the high school level. But that’s changing dramatically at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, where the best player on this year’s team is a girl.

 

Remarkable as that may be, her coach said the girl’s legacy won’t end with her impressive number of wins. Coach Manuel Montes said Aminah Garcia also has changed the face of the game, convincing girls of all ages to take up the mental challenge and to join the team.

 

The result has been amazing. The team is well on its way to its 13th state title. That won’t be determined until January, though.

 

Meanwhile, if all goes according to plan this weekend, Richards will become the first school in Illinois history to put up an all-female, eight-board chess team during a tournament at Community High School in West Chicago, according to Montes. Montes, who has taken the Richards team to 12 consecutive state titles, said he expects the girls team to play hard and do well.

 

“I know for sure they’ll have fun; the girls always have fun,” he said.

 

In some ways, the girls have more fun than the boys, he said.

 

“Guys take losing much harder,” he said. “It seems to bounce off the girls more easily. Chess just seems to be more fun for them.”

 

So why have there always been more boy players than girls? Montes said he’s not sure.

 

“This is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime thing to have this many girls on a team,” he said.

 

 

Members of Richards High School's girls chess club include (from left) Kristina Huggins,
Jessica Zavala, Juliet Lucente, Mady Doan, Caitlin O'Sullivan, Anne Sortino, Marial Rancel and
Aminah Garcia. | Matt Marton~Sun-Times Media

 

 

When Aminah joined the chess team as a freshman, she was the only female. Her older brother, also an amazing player, convinced her to give the team a try. She liked it and made a vow to convince more girls to join. Now, in her senior year, the team of 24 is split evenly along gender lines. [That is absolutely amazing - a 50/50 ratio!!!!]

 

“Most chess teams have 7 percent or less girls,” Aminah, 17, said. “No team has ever had 12 like this team.”

 

Montes said girls tend to prefer to move in more social circles, opting for activities such as drama, sports and clubs that offer a lot of social interaction. Chess is an individual’s game. Or so everyone thought. The female players at Richards have transformed the chess team into a more spirited, social club.  That attracted more girls.  Not only is Aminah one of the best players in the south suburbs, Montes said, she’s a charismatic leader.

 

“She has a great personality,” Montes said. “Other girls are drawn to her; they want to be around her.”

 

Jessica Zavala is one of those girls. The senior, a resident of Oak Lawn, will turn 18 on Saturday. Winning all her games would be the perfect birthday gift.  Jessica learned how to play from watching Aminah and her older brother, Imtiaz, now 19, face off over lunch in the cafeteria.

 

“I’d go to their table to watch them. Then I started getting into it,” Jessica said.

 

Now she loves the game.  “It’s amazing. I never get tired of it,” she said.

 

She also likes the camaraderie the girls provide each other.  “We scream and chant; the guys think it’s funny,” she said.

 

Kristina Huggins, a senior, has been on the team for two years.

 

“I’m really going to miss this when I graduate,” she said. “The team is like a family.”

 

Montes said there’s a myth that a person has to be intellectually gifted to be a good player. “That’s not true. We’ve had AP (advanced placement) kids and special-ed kids on the team, all of them successful,” he said.  More important than brains, he said, is a sense of dedication, a willingness to work hard.

 

Junior Mariel Rancel teaches grade school kids how to play on Wednesdays at the Oak Lawn Public Library.  “I see these little kids, so patient and so serious. They can play for hours,” Mariel said. “No matter who you are, there’s always an opportunity on the board.”

 

Most of the players learned the game from a family member.  When Aminah and her brother were little, their parents took them to the library and checked out a bunch of books on how to play. They’ve been playing ever since.

 

Beth Edmonds, a senior, has participated in all kinds of extracurriculars, including science club, cheerleading and Spanish club.

 

“I like being on the chess team because I think we’re cooler than the rest of the school, because we’re underdogs. There aren’t many girls playing chess these days,” she said.

 

And here these girls are, playing and winning.

A Lovely Blog by WGM Jennifer Shahade from Madrid

Madrid, Spain - first week in January, 2012. That's our Goddesschess destination!

I saved this url several days ago.  I'm sorry for not posting it earlier, I've been busy with other things, darlings!  Tonight is lovely - not quite as hot and humid as predicted.  The house is still wide open and, unlike earlier in the week (Tuesday) when it was 90 degrees F inside when I'd got home from work and I turned on the central air conditioning to cool the place down, tonight it was cool inside (I'd shut down all the windows before I left at 7:25 a.m. this morning).  I spent a good hour or more on the deck feeding nuts to the squirrels and chipmunks while sipping a long, cool glass of wine. 



Photo at pokerpages.com

 Here is Jen Shahade who, amongst other things, plays poker to earn some daily bread - a lot of bread, so I gather :)  Blogging from Madrid in mid-May, 2011 ... My notoriety in the world of chess also spread quickly, and several poker players approached me to ask which game I prefer. I arrived from Madrid directly after providing live commentary from the US Chess Championships in Saint Louis...
From pokerstarsblog.com
by Jennifer Shahade on May 31, 2011 7:34 AM

Seat draws are the curse or blessing of a traveler. My trip to Madrid began on an ominous note. On my flight from Philadelphia, I was seated next to a toucher. This man had a habit of telling me a bad joke and then accidentally brushing my leg or arm with the punch line. I couldn't sleep the entire trip. Still, soon after landing in Madrid, I immediately took to exploring the compact, energetic city.

After taking in some great art, including Picasso's Guernica at the Reina Sofia, I sat in an outdoor cafe to enjoy some anchovies, chocolate and churros (not all at once). A couple of ladies asked to sit next to me as there were no other outdoor tables open. I was scribbling in my notebook and not in the mood for company--I silently grimaced, but of course agreed. After some innocent conversation, I discovered that one of the women was the president of an art foundation, filled with the work of an artist whose sculptures were also puzzles. She was also the daughter of an alleged Portuguese princess. I couldn't have invented a more fascinating lunch mate if I tried. Poker players take note: allow some time before you judge your table draw.

Rest of article...

Check out Jen Shahade's website for an interesting weave of chess, poker, and the game of life. 

A New Award for Promising Female Chess Players in Canada

I don't often visit what's going on in the chess world of our great neighbor to the north, but invariably I find something interesting there when I to take the time to vist.  It was through visiting ChessTalk, a popular chess bulletin board in Canada, that Goddesschess first found out about the City of Montreal Chess Championships - and decided to offer a modest amount of money for separate prizes for the chess femmes playing in that event.  That was in 2009.  The rest, as the saying goes, is herstory :)

On this cold and rainy morning (my rain gutters are clogged with branches and twigs from my mini-forest in the backyard and are currently overflowing with the downpour - my own view of Niagra Falls outside my patio door.  Ahh, yes, spring in Wisconsin...) I checked in at ChessTalk and came across some very interesting news:

On March 17th (St. Paddy's Day and an excuse for all Wisconsinites but especially Milwaukeeans, who do love their beer and booze, to party hearty) it was reported by Hazel Smith that an anonymous donor has undertaken a five-year commitment to fund a $100 a year "Youth Girls Award" for a promising female junior chessplayer.  The first player selected for the Youth Girls Award is Nicole Birarov (currently 68th rated female player in Canada with an ELO of 1050). I want to make special note that as a result of winning this award, Nicole will also receive free entry to the Ontario Girls' Chess Championship, if she enters to play. 

Congratulations to Ms. Birarov! 

Every dollar received to assist with training and expenses, every entry fee that does not have to be paid, is a boon to chessplayers (female and male) in a sport/art/craft where money is always short and recognition is scant unless you're in the ranks of the elite 20 or so players in the world (and even many of them struggle to make a decent living).   

After Hazel Smith made the announcement, some interesting discussion ensued - you can check it out if you're interested.  Overall response has been positive. 

For myself, I think it's a great idea. Nope, it's not Goddesschess who is the anonymous donor - we've got our hands full funding our commitments here in the states and in Canada to give support to female chessplayers - and in most cases we want it known that we're out there funding prizes and other initiatives for chess femmes!  Yes, it's true, we're just a bunch of hopeless egomaniacs!

So, to whoever the Anonymous was who decided to fund the "Youth Girls Award" - kudos to you.  Until there is parity in the world of chess between male and female players, both in terms of numbers and relative performance, well, our audience knows how Goddesschess feels - chess femmes need what help we can give to achieve those goals!

About Hazel Smith (if you read the message board entries you will see that she is the person who first posted the news of the "Youth Girls Award" at ChessTalk on March 17) - I was not familiar with her but she posted a link to her blog so I checked it out. (You can check out a small number of Hazel Smith's chess games at Chessgames.com).
Hazel Smith earned a WFM title and my Goddess, she looks very young!   I checked at the FIDE website and learned that Ms. Smith was born in 1991 (so she's 19 or 20 years old) and has a current FIDE rating of 2037.  Ms. Smith has not played any FIDE rated games since January 2009 - has she given up active play?  Ms. Smith does not presently appear on the top Canadian female players, which I belive is restricted to "active" players.

Ms. Smith is administrator of the Elaine Howie Fund for Chess Juniors, which she established privately in honor of her aunt, Elaine Howie.  It is a new endeavor that I believe was established in late 2010.  From what I've read, I understand the Elaine Howie Fund will make annual monetary grants to promising junior chess players in Canada, not gender specific.  The separately funded "Youth Girls Award" is being administered under the auspices of the Elaine Howie Fund for Chess Juniors, but is limited to female chess players. 

I'm so happy to see these exciting private chess initiatives in Canada.  It's very inspiring!

Quah Seng Sun Hits a Grand Slam on Female Chessplayers

Thank you, Quah Seng Sun, for saying in this article what needs to be said, something long overdue.  You are a brave man!

From The Star Online, Malaysia:

Friday December 10, 2010
Women and chess
Chess
By Quah Seng Sun

Women’s chess is no longer a poor cousin to men’s chess.

MANY years ago, I was asked in a casual conversation my opinion about women’s chess. Can women really play chess as well as men, this friend of mine wanted to know. I was about to answer him but I hesitated.

It wasn’t that I was uncomfortable to give him an immediate answer but somehow, a wild thought raced through my head. Was it Bobby Fischer who once said that he could give a knight handicap in a game against any woman chess player and still win?

Fifty or 60 years ago, many people could very well have laughed with Fischer.

But not today. Anyone who dares to give even a pawn handicap against the top women chess players will be asking for a lot of unnecessary trouble.

You see, women’s chess is no longer a poor cousin to men’s chess. After all, chess as played by men or women is still the same game. Chess still uses the same grey matter “up there” for thinking and evaluation.

Besides, since the days of Pia Cramling and Judit Polgar, who started the trend of women competing in men’s or open tournaments and playing successfully in them, the myth has well been exploded.

To a large extent, the World Chess Federation has made sure that there should no longer be discrimination. A long time ago at the Chess Olympiads, women’s chess teams consisted of only two players and one reserve. Today, there are four players and either one or two reserve players, same as the men’s teams.

Where chess titles are concerned, women chess players have as many opportunities to earn the full chess grandmaster title.

In the past, the highest title they could hope to attain was the woman grandmaster title which today, is about at the same level as an international master.

There’s also the women’s equivalent of the (men’s) world chess championship and since about a week ago, the latest women’s world chess championship is currently going on in Antakya, Turkey.

But unlike the latest men’s world chess championship which was played as a match, the present women’s world chess championship is still run as a knock-out.
The event started off with a 64-player field in the first round and since then, the number of players are halved with each progressive round.

Today is the start of the third round, so there will only be 16 players left. Each of these knock-out rounds are played as a mini-match of two games at normal regulation time control and should tie-break games be required, these are played with rapid chess rules. The sixth round will pit the two final survivors together and they will then play four games to decide the new women’s world chess champion.

I know there are people who favour this type of knock-out event as they feel that it creates more excitement and the defending champion shouldn’t get a free ride to the final round but personally, I would prefer an official challenger to emerge from this knock-out event who would then go on to challenge the defending champion for the title. It makes for more prestige.

Nevertheless, these are the regulations already agreed for this current championship. Perhaps we’ll see a change for the next cycle.

As it stands, there’s always the chance that we may not have Russia’s Alexandra Kosteniuk advancing all the way to the final round.

Kosteniuk is the defending women’s world champion and is the top seed. She got through the first round but there are no results yet for the second round as I write this.

So far, except for the elimination of the eighth seed, Pia Cramling, in the first round, there have been no other surprises among the top seeds.

Also going through to the second round were notable players like India’s Humpy Koneru, China’s Hou Yifan (who lost the final to Kosteniuk in 2008), Bulgaria’s Antoaneta Stefanova (women’s world champion from 2004 to 2006), Ukraine’s Kateryna Lahno, Georgia’s Maya Chiburdanidze (women’s world champion from 1978 to 1991) and Qatar’s Zhu Chen (formerly from China and women’s world champion from 2001 to 2004).

Humpy is the second seed in the championship and Hou is the third seed.

If they proceed through successfully round after round, they should be meeting in the fifth round and one of them will be eliminated.

Want to know more about this women’s world chess championship? You can view the live games at http://wwcc2010.tsf.org.tr/ from 9pm (local time here).

****************************************************************

Given the level of play of today's top female players, there is no excuse for FIDE to continue to run the Women's World Chess Championship as a knock-out event, which has since been discarded as FIDE's preferred option for the Men's World Chess Championship. As has been shown over and over again, anything can - and does - happen over the course of two games plus rapid and blitz play-offs.  That does not necessarily mean that the best players finish at the top and compete against each other for the title.  It's time that FIDE recognize that the Women's title is just as important as the "Open" - that is, the Men's - title, and put them on an equal footing.

Big Think: Irina Krush on Chess

At Big Think, ten women talk about breaking into male-dominated areas of endeavor.

10 Top Women in Male-Dominated Fields
Max Miller on November 3, 2010, 12:00 AM

Despite the strides women have made toward equality in the past 50 years, they remain underrepresented in a variety of professions. Today we salute ten female pioneers in traditionally male-dominated fields:

1. Irina Krush (Chess Master): Unlike most competitive pursuits, chess allows women to compete alongside men, yet a woman has never won a world chess championship. In fact, only one woman, Judit Polgar, has ever cracked the Top 10 in chess's world rankings. Big Think spoke recently with Irina Krush, who at age 14 became the youngest U.S. Women's Champion, and she told us that chess requires masculine characteristics that most women don't naturally have.

"Chess is a very solitary game," she says. "I think women or girls when they were growing up were more social animals; [they] prefer to do things in groups." She also points to traits like competitiveness and analytic thinking, which are crucial for success in chess but are more commonly associated with men. "For a woman to be successful in chess, she basically has to develop in herself more masculine qualities than she would if she was involved in another profession," says Krush.



The short list of qualities that Irina started rattling off as indicative of male chess players dribbled to a stop when she realized that all of those qualities are also embodied in the female of the species, as she then graciously acknowledged. I believe it's just a matter of time and further breaking down the socialization that says females "should not" or "cannot" perform in certain areas of endeavor and we'll have hundreds of Judit Polgars. And dads will have to start taking care of the kids while mom is travelling the tournament circuit.

New Study on Gender and Chess

Most interesting! Thanks to Allen Becker of Southwest Chess Club for giving me a heads-up on this article this afternoon. European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 231–245 (2008) Published online 14 May 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.440 Checkmate? The role of gender stereotypes in the ultimate intellectual sport ANNE MAASS*, CLAUDIO D’ETTOLE AND MARA CADINU University of Padova, Italy Abstract Women are surprisingly underrepresented in the chess world, representing less that 5% of registered tournament players worldwide and only 1% of the world’s grand masters. In this paper it is argued that gender stereotypes are mainly responsible for the underperformance of women in chess. Forty-two male–female pairs, matched for ability, played two chess games via Internet. When players were unaware of the sex of opponent (control condition), females played approximately as well as males. When the gender stereotype was activated (experimental condition), women showed a drastic performance drop, but only when they were aware that they were playing against a male opponent. When they (falsely) believed to be playing against a woman, they performed as well as their male opponents. In addition, our findings suggest that women show lower chess-specific self-esteem and a weaker promotion focus, which are predictive of poorer chess performance. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Never-Ending Question...

(Image: Famous medieval chessplayer Paolo Boi and "Satan" as a seducing woman) Since the first days of Goddesschess, I've been fascinated by the eternal debate, variously phrased (usually in negative terms toward females): "Why can't women play chess as well as men?" Over time, we gathered together various articles and writings from the internet and called it "The Ever-Changing, Never-Ending Question" under Chess and Gender. Famous male chessplayers Fischer and Kasparov, among others, disparaged the chessplaying skills of females. (Both later modified their views on female chessplayers, allowing that at least some females could play as well as a man. They totally ignored the intriguing question of why all men -- as superior players -- didn't play equally well.) Chessbase has now weighed in on the subject in an article by newly-weds WGM Natalia Pogonina and Peter Zhdanov: Women and men in chess – smashing the stereotypes. It's light-hearted, but not light-weight. In particular, the couple have zeroed in on the very thing that could change the entire tenor of this never-ending discussion: how the question is framed. Personally, I think they're on to something significant by recognizing that more women than men do not play chess because women are, in general, more mature and intelligent than men. The question could thus be framed as "Why don't more men waste less time playing chess and contribute more to the betterment of society?" Yeah. I like how that sounds. The more serious question underlying this light-hearted discussion is why so many males have such a fear of recognizing females as equals; so much fear, in fact, that it has been institutionalized in patriarchal religious "laws" that give tremendous power to females as "temptresses" and "sinners" who lead poor, weak-minded, weak-spirited males astray along the path to Perdition. Geez, guys!

Chess: Top-Rated Women in the World

The No. 1 female chessplayer in the world is still GM Judit Polgar. Actions speak louder than words - and Polgar has amply demonstrated how difficult it is to maintain an elite chess rating while also trying to be a full-time mom. For the first time in a long time, Polgar has dropped below 2700 ELO on the combined ratings list (that is, men and women). In the January, 2009 FIDE reporting period, she dropped from 27th on the list (I remember as if it was yesterday when she was one of the top 10 players in the world) to 36th, and her ELO is currently 2693. Say what!?! Unbelievable. I never thought I'd see JP below 2700 or out of the top 20 players in the world. Don't get me wrong, darlings! Her rating is not mince-meat! But given her recent performances and the continued decline in her overall standing on the FIDE list relative to other players, can she still be considered an "elite" player - one of the so-called "super" GMs? Here are the other women who, in the world of female chessplayers, are the elite. To make the top 100 in the world, one needs an ELO of 2634. Of the elite female players other than Judith Polgar, only Koneru Humpy is close: 1 Polgar, Judit g HUN 2693 8 1976 2 Koneru, Humpy g IND 2621 6 1987 3 Hou, Yifan wg CHN 2571 15 1994 4 Stefanova, Antoaneta g BUL 2557 25 1979 5 Cramling, Pia g SWE 2548 15 1963 6 Muzychuk, Anna m SLO 2540 36 1990 7 Sebag, Marie g FRA 2529 15 1986 8 Dzagnidze, Nana g GEO 2518 26 1987 9 Chiburdanidze, Maia g GEO 2516 14 1961 10 Kosteniuk, Alexandra g RUS 2516 8 1984 11 Zhao, Xue g CHN 2508 16 1985 12 Arakhamia-Grant, Ketevan m SCO 2500 32 1968 13 Ushenina, Anna m UKR 2499 32 1985 14 Kosintseva, Tatiana m RUS 2497 25 1986 15 Cmilyte, Viktorija m LTU 2497 24 1983 16 Danielian, Elina m ARM 2496 18 1978 17 Ruan, Lufei wg CHN 2496 0 1987 18 Zhu, Chen g QAT 2496 0 1976 19 Zhukova, Natalia wg UKR 2490 16 1979 20 Lahno, Kateryna g UKR 2488 15 1989

More on Scientific Basis for Sex-Based Differences in Chess Performance

Physorg.com weighs in on recent study about the differential in chess performance between males and females and what accounts for it: Why Men Rank Higher than Women at Chess (It's Not Biological) January 12th, 2009 by Lisa Zyga in General Science / Other (PhysOrg.com) -- In the recorded history of chess, world champions have always been male, not female. Further, there is currently only one woman in the top 100 chess players in the world. Because chess is often considered to be the ultimate intellectual activity, male dominance at chess is often cited as an example of innate male intellectual superiority. But rather than resort to biological or cultural explanations, a recent study proposes a different explanation. A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected, given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all. Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The authors analyzed the population of about 120,000 German players as recorded by the German chess federation in April 2007. Based on more than 3,000 tournaments per year, the German chess federation measures the skill level of all competitive and most hobby players in the country (the rating correlates highly with the widely known Elo rating). The sample population included 113,386 men and 7,013 women (a ratio of 16:1). First, the researchers estimated the expected performance of the top 100 male and top 100 female players. Then, they compared the expected differences in points between these high-ranking male and female players with the actual point differences. Theoretically, the size difference between the male and female groups should correspond to the point differences between the top performers in the two groups. The results showed that the top three women had more points than expected, the next 70 or so pairs showed a small advantage for the men, and the last 20 pairs showed a small advantage for the women. Overall, men performed slightly better than expected, with an average advantage of 353 points, whereas the expected advantage was 341 points. Nevertheless, about 96% of the actual difference between genders could be explained by the statistical fact that the extreme values from a large sample are likely to be larger than those from a small one. In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self-selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial assumption, the researchers say. That is, it requires that there is an innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support it. Whether or not statistical sampling covers all the bases of explaining male superiority in chess, the researchers hope that the explanation will be considered by both experts and laypeople. In previous discussions of gender difference, there is often no mention of participation rates, although a wide range of other reasons receive attention (e.g. different interests and gatekeeper effects, etc.). In addition, the researchers question whether a statistical sampling explanation might explain the predominance of men at the top of science and engineering fields - although performance in these activities is much more difficult to measure than in objectively ranked chess populations. More information: Bilalic, Merim; Smallbone, Kieran; McLeod, Peter; and Gobet, Fernand. "Why are (the best) women so good at chess? Participation rates and gender differences in intellectual domains." Proceedings of the Royal Society B. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1576. © 2009 PhysOrg.com

As I Said Before - It's a Numbers Game

This isn't news - just further confirmation of earlier studies that I wrote about at Goddesschess some time ago. Women are NOT inferior to men when it comes to playing chess, it's just that the relative sample of women who do play is so much smaller than that for men, the statistics get skewed. Women players distribute across a classic "Bell curve" the same way that male players do, it's just that theirs is a LOT smaller. Chess isn't necessarily about testosterone or spatial perception, or even "superior" intelligence. Women do and can play as well as men, and will achieve equal levels of GMs and IMs with the guys - if we can somehow as a world manage to get to that "critical mass" of female chessplayers where the players that possess the skills required for chess reach equal levels. There is still a long way to go. So, darlings, don't be fooled by the folks who say that women can't play chess, or that women don't play chess as well as men, or whatever blah blah blah about the supposed "inferiority" of women when it comes to playing chess. It's a lot of baloney and fear on the part of the folks spewing forth these misleading statements (at best) or downright lies (at worst) about female chessplayers.

New FIDE Titles Awarded to Chess Femmes

During the last FIDE General Assembly held in Dresden during the 2008 Olympiad, the following chess femmes have been awarded titles: GM: Hou Yifan CHN Nana Dzagnidze GEO Monika Socko POL WGM: Zhang Xiaowen CHN Lara Stock CRO Yaniet Marrero Lozez CUB Soumya Swaminathan IND Iulia-Ionela Ionica ROU Mihaela Sandu ROU IM: Olga Zimina ITA Mariya Muzychuk UKR WIM: Svetland Jordanova BUL Adriana Nikolova BUL Elitsa Raeva BUL Xu Tong CHN Sona Pertlova CZE Mathilde Congiu FRA Mariam Danielia GEO Sarah Hoolt GER Zsofia Domany HUN Simona Limontaite LTU Karina Vazirova RUS Zuzana Borosova SVK Kubra Ozturk TUR Alisa Melekhina USA Iryna Zenyuk USA IM Conditional on Rating: Katerina Nemcova CZE Congratulations to all of the chess femmes for this accomplishment! Nine of the top 10 rated chess femmes in the world on the October, 2008 FIDE Women's ratings list are now GMs. IM Elina Danielian representing Armenia at 2513, holds down the #10 spot.

Could Women Save Chess?

Every day I visit a circuit of chess websites to check on the latest news. Chess fans already know that at the Dresden Chess Olympiad, the FIDE General Assembly approved changes to the current Grand Prix chess cycle in mid-cycle! This caused much consternation and frustration, and anger, but is FIDE doing business as usual. The one thing you can always rely upon is that you cannot ever ever ever rely upon FIDE to stick to a contract or keep its word. It took a few days for the truth to surface (despite some earlier hints about sponsorship problems at some chess news websites, nothing had been confirmed). Now it has been confirmed by a letter from FIDE itself. The reason for the change in the Grand Prix cycle - introducing a whole new event of 8 players which instantly reduces winning the Grand Prix and the World Cup to an "also ran" status instead of the two players (Grand Prix and World Cup) facing off against each other and the winner of the match facing off against the World Champion - is because of money. As is well known by now, the Doha sponsor of the Grand Prix event scheduled for December, 2008 withdrew, and FIDE stepped in hastily to organize the event in Elista, Khan Kirzan's home town (and presumably put up the prize money, too). Now a second Grand Prix sponsor has withdrawn (Montreux - sp?) - allegedly due to financial problems. Well, when a certain amount of prize money is to be put up for the players' purse IN ADDITION TO 20% ON TOP FOR FIDE AND 5% ON TOP FOR WORLD CHESS, one can only wonder what the hell is going on and marvel at the fact that ANY SPONSORS whatsoever were found for the Grand Prix! Okay - fast forward to tonight. I arrived home after a long had day at the office and visited Susan Polgar's blog to see that GM Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from the remainder of the Grand Prix cycle. Geez! So then I visit Michael Greengard's "Daily Dirt" chess blog at Chess Ninja to see what the regulars are saying about this latest development (under the topic "FIDE not-so-Grand-Prix") - but the news was too new, not enough opportunity for people to post about it much when I visited earlier this evening. But the conversation was interesting, and in particular, this post reverberated: irv replied to comment from guest December 4, 2008 3:22 PM Reply Guest wrote: "Chess needs to give up the idea that such rich tournaments are sustainble." That's the bottom line. The sick, never-ending quest, chimeric quest for perfect play has led to the death of chess. The first ones to go were the chess clubs. Online chess is doing bad: a few years ago you could get a game on the spot at ICC or Playchess; nowadays, you have to wait a few minutes for a game to materialize. Let's face it: chess at the top has become excruciatingly painful to watch. Too mechanical. Too dry. Too boring; hell, I wouldn't ACCEPT 50 bucks to watch Svidler-Leko, for God's sake. Less money and more daring, if imperfect chess, is the solution. Let players relax a bit. Win a bit more, lose a bit more, enjoy a lot more. Force players to play to a decisive result. What's wrong with a top player making $15.000 in a couple of weeks (all expenses paid for by the organizer) of leisure chess at 2 hours per game, one game per day? If tournament organizers could get half a dozen of the top 20 players in the world (along with 6 up-and-coming tigers) to enter a tournament that can be run with $100.000, many sponsors could be found. Bring life back to chess. Is chess "dying?" Well, I don't know about that - but I do know one way it could be jazzed up with the right promotion and some money to back it - just like some very smart people backed internet and televised Poker a few years ago... I couldn't help myself - I responded - WOMEN! Women chessplayers! I mean, come on darlings! Irv thinks "more daring, imperfect chess" is a possible solution to the slow death of chess and that really describes the chess that about 90% of the female chess pros out there on the circuit play today. It has often been noted by chess "fans" (99.4% male) that "women's chess" is more exciting than a lot of the games played between the elite players (Judit Polgar notwithstanding). Women's chess games generally are not too dry, too mechanical, too boring. Women play "fighting chess" and will battle on and on and on, long past the point where a male player will concede a draw against another male player. Just a few days ago at USCF's website I read about an 111 move head-banger that GM Jesse Kraai played against a chess femme - WFM Bayaraa Zorigt, a player who barely registered on my awareness of chess femmes. The point is obvious. Who IS this woman who played a GM to 111 moves before finally succumbing (probably due to physical and mental fatigue)??? That is a woman chessplayer worthy of notice. He may be right - and I may be crazy. Win a bit more, lose a bit more, enjoy a lot more.