Girls and Chess

I have a friend that I am teaching. I thought it best to have her begin by playing my nine year old daughter, who has been learning chess and playing in tournaments since she was about four or five years old. My daughter was taking all her pieces, and then kept saying how sad she felt for my friend, and was very happy when my friend finally took a piece.

My daughter is very competitive against boys, but when she begins to win against females, be they young or old, she starts to give away her pieces. I didn't realize she was giving them away until I really observed. I could tell by her face, and how she smiled at the girls encouragingly when they took the piece she placed en prix for them. I knew it was deliberate.

I remember when she was five, and was losing every game at the US Scholastic tournament when it was held in Denver. Once I got a chance to observe, because I was helping to T.D., and I saw that she was actually leaning over and whispering "If you go there you can checkmate me!" . I asked her why she did that, and she said because she wanted the friendship more than the win. Go figure. Girls might just care more about relationships than anything else. Certainly that is a generalization, and there are many exceptions. But it also might only apply to playing other girls. She loves to beat the boys, and the more arrogant they are the more she loves to beat them.