what is diffrence between WGM and GM.

Fair enough. I'm certainly not convinced Ushenina is anywhere near, say, Polgar or Hou Yifan. There were even a few 1800s give or take playing in that world championship.

i don't blame them. :P

i don't know the technique either, but i haven't ever even got the opportunity to fail that in over 30k internet games across random servers. (though most of them were bullet games, admittedly)

Jeremy Silman also doesn't even bother to include it in his "Silman's Complete Endgame Course" and justifies it by saying something to the effect that it's pretty much not worth it - guess it's not a "complete endgame course" after all? :P
i think it was a good book and agree with his opinion, though.

I took the time to learn it... I haven't practiced it in a while though.

I even spent time with odds and ends like QvsR and R+B vs R.  Agree with Silman better to spend on pawn and rook+pawn endings though.  There are some relatively basic rook endings I have trouble with... no need to to learn obscure stuff... yet hehe.

What I want to know is if Silman has any clue about how to do the mate. Curiously he says he only got it once, but says nothing of the result of that game...

Honestly it's not that hard to learn... it's just whether or not you've taken the time to do it.

Hehe! This is what I get when I hover over waffle's avatar:

waffllemaster

Last Online: Vandaag

Points: 8649

Rating: 1962 (Leef Bullet)

I may need to look into c.c's "translation".

I've seen it displayed in french and spanish before (e.g., Last Online: aujourd'hui)

First of all, I can't believe the level of sexism on this thread. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that women are not as smart as men or that they are naturally inferior chess players.

I would conjecture that gender roles in traditional society act as an entry barrier for women interested in chess and that as a result, women are under-represented in chess in the same way that they are in math, science and other technical fields in which women are more than capable.

The suggestion that the WGM designation exists because women are not as smart is not in the spirit of this forum, whose aim is to provide an inclusive chess environment for all of us, regardless of gender.

I personally feel that having a women's chess competition reflects the need to provide a level playing field for an emerging generation of female players that would otherwise have to compete against their tougher male counterparts.

The reason for the gap in skill is that while men have played chess at their leisure for centuries, women have largely been culturally barred. As a result, the talent pool for women, although growing, is much smaller.

Hopefully with improvements in social quality, women will have equal access to chess in the future. When there are equal numbers of male and female chess players (similar sized talent pool), we can expect that many more strong female players will emerge and show the bigots here that girls can play too.

I tend to think it's a combination of reasons. Upbringing certainly seems to be one of them. I also think there are simply less women who are interested in chess and obsessive games in general (for example, video games). That of course may have a lot to do with the social, but I also think men and women are just generally different people a lot of times.

I don't like to talk about general groups because it is so easy to find an individual that has nothing to do with the stereotypes. We can observe average stereotypical features, but ultimately just knowing an individual's gender still doesn't really tell you much about them. And as in post#60, these general differences are not necessarily just genetic but also a reflection of the social.

There were some primordial dwarfs on the tube, whose brains were 1/4 the size of a normal sized human, and they were normal intelligence.

I agree. Almost every woman I know has much bigger bra-ins than any man.

76% of statistics are made up, that's a fact.

You do realize that's a joke playing on the irony.

That's not actually true, as it would be next to impossible to accurately determine.

Statistics say 94% know it's a joke. 

100% of WGM's are female.

Even in the USA where females are encouraged to do everything a male can do ( whether capable or not) not many high school girls are gonna sit with the chess dorks after school to play a board game. It's the same as dungeons and dragons to them.

I've encouraged my two daughters to play chess they're just not interested. They'll do all the other stuff like watch/ play sports and sci-fi movies with me but chess, no way.