Women and Chess

Look at chess forums. They are full of dudes blithering testosterone-filled nonsense; you know, things like smashing opponents, demanding revenge in rematches, and generally turning chess into a contest that requires a ruler 📏 to determine who has the biggest... rating. There are so many videos and books with titles such as “crush your opponents with .... “

It’s the part I like the least about chess and it’s a total turn-off for most women. Men obsess about being the best. I like to win, sure, but I don’t want to bathe in the blood of my enemies. You’ll almost never hear a women say something, as Bobby Fischer did, “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” For me it’s about doing well, not crushing others. That’s such a man thing and motivates men to obsess about being the best. I think women are just more likely to walk away from something if they feel like they have something better to do.

I saw Andrea Botez mate a guy, who cares how bad he is, from starting position to mate in 4 seconds. 9 of the 15 moves were 0.1 seconds. Girls lack some stamina and pressure retention. Top GM chess is full of memorizations of book lines, well known traps, etc. Is that really chess? Girls have intuition skills for how traps are set and spotted. They can play this game and with great skill.

 

I once saw a game where white got mated in 2 moves.  It proved nothing.

The point is the quickness and efficiency to execute the appropriate moves. You can't make mistakes with a 15 move mate in the middle of the board. That's not the same as a back rank trap. Her head can figure out the game. People saying the intelligence isn't there is the problem I'm addressing. 

Andrea Botez is a good player but she is far away from being among the best female players in the world. People only think she is one of the best because she is one of the most popular female chess streamers. It's a bit different compared to the men's side of things because the top women do not stream, but instead focus on their game, as opposed to someone like Nakamura who is in the top 5 of the world but also streams regularly and popularizes chess to a massive audience.

Top 5? Naka is barely top 20.

To borrow your line about Botez, people just think he's good because he's one of the most popular streamers.

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I also read somewhere that, sterotypically speaking, men are more interested in competition while women are more interested in cooperation.

How else do you explain the dominance of men in cutthroat aggressive fields like business, finance, engineering, and medicine while women are more prevalent in healthcare, social work, psychology, and human resources?

Just ask yourself one simple question: have you EVER seen a woman post in a forum something like “I’m just starting chess and I want to be a GM, what’s the best way to do it” or “I’m 18 and have been playing chess for a while and I’m 1500 rated. Can I be a GM?”

I have literally never seen a woman start a forum post about getting to be a GM. Seriously, never. You see at least a few new ones by guys though *every* week, regardless of how ridiculously far-fetched the idea is. Does that make men smarter? The fact that they are driven to do something heroic makes them smarter? Come on.

Ratings fluctuate a lot and are relatively meaningless in the short term.

The truth is that Nakamura is practically a veteran having competed in many world class events and prestigious tournaments, while several of the players who currently sit above him in the rankings lack his level of international experience and/or long-term success and chess "maturity".

Just to name a few, there is absolutely no way that Radjabov (who dropped out of the Candidates FYI), Rapport (super inconsistent), Firouzja (too young to be reliable yet), and Dominguez Perez (who plays like 5 games a year maybe?) are anywhere close to Nakamura's current skill.

Also, Kramnik is RETIRED. He really shouldn't be on the updated rating list.

Naka was very consistent for what's seemed like 10 years, bouncing between world number 5 and 10.

But suddenly he's dropped out of the top 10, and he's been down around 15 for over a year now.

So that's not really a fluctuation, I think that's him focusing on other sources of income, namely streaming. I also heard he's interested in investing (I think his brother is some kind of financial market guy, probably helps him learn the ropes).

Yea, men get really psyched to arrive at meaningless goals about square geometry. I'm pretty sure women privately laugh at us over this. Getting good at chess kind of dulls the artistically creative impulses. Not much to lose in my case. There is a creativity in chess but its limits are more a man's way. That's not particularly a compliment for men.

I assume most of those posts are kids, it's impossible to tell how many of them are girls, and I don't think anyone would say wanting to be a GM indicates your intelligence one way or another.

Actually attractive women make men less intelligent. That's called the "queen bee effect".

 

Scientifically speaking there is evidence that, on average, women are about 0,2ms slower than an average man to understand, process, and respond to information. There is nothing to do with intelligence tho, it's just some evolutionary stuff that helps men to kill each other without dying in the process. Basic Darwin stuff.

 

So, if Chess was a super competitive thing where real-time information needs to be dealt with, men might have some advantage. Unless she's hot, in this case, it's fair.

Nakamura has multiple sources of income apart from competing, with all his endorsements, streaming, and being some kind of a media personality at least in America.

He's taken advantage of the fact that Carlsen is a pretty lousy ambassador of chess (at least from the public relations side of things) and also that Americans don't really want to support anyone who isn't American. It's really no surprise that Nakamura is able to emerge as that national icon because, compared to Caruana and Wesley, he is much more social, personable, and can more easily relate to a wider audience to get them interested in the game.

He doesn't ever have to worry about breaking into the top 10 again because he has been able to solidify his brand so well, and in the process he's also earning more than most of his peers who are ranked higher than him currently.

As for dumb things males do... not only do I see plenty of males make fake accounts with profile pics like this (obviously fake stock photo)

But I see plenty of males fall for it, shower the account with friend requests, page views, and just generally being disgusting like answering questions really nicely.

IQ tests are constructed to eliminate the difference between male and female.
There are statistical results that show- something is off - when you compare men and women. Despite the same DNA etc etc, women are upto 5 pts on avg less on some IQ tests across populations.
The question is where is the data points better for women than men? That is so difficult to measure. If there were no women, there would have been no point to human evolution. So, an IQ test/ ability to play chess is not a measure of how intelligent a human being is.
Besides, intelligence is not directly correlated with financial success OR success in chess OR ability to attract the opposite sex. Most of the guys here, all the good ratings etc aside, don't have girlfriends/spouses and a significant number can even be reaching/over midlife without a significant other.
So, the ability to play chess, if it is assumed to represent intelligence, is a bad indicator of success in attracting a mate as well. I love chess. I am single and am fitting into the category of mid-life male human playing chess as he quit porn.

Ok, so you're a big Naka fan, I didn't really ask or care.

As far as being more personable, it really says something about how Caruana and So have near negative charisma that they're beat out by Hikaru Nakamura. The petulant egoist who only just recently figured out he could make some cash by practicing a fake laugh, fake smile, and posting Agadmator reaction videos.

Agadmator... now there's a guy bringing chess to a wider audience. Or whoever came up with Pogchamps. Hikaru is just taking what's there and monetizing it.

(By the way, if Pogchamps was Hikaru's brainchild then I take back (almost) everything I said and I'll give him a big thumbs up)

I don't understand why guys would make fake female profiles, but it happens all too often here.

I think, on some level, they just crave attention and want some kind of special treatment, even if it's coming from other men.

The really troubling thing is that, if a guy takes the time to develop a fake profile and does it in a smart way, sometimes these accounts are hard to detect as fakes. And it doesn't require a whole lot of tech savvy skills to do. Someone can easily find a picture of his favorite female friend on instagram (since social media pages can't be reverse image searched as they are not in the public domain), and put on a convincing female personality to make the act seem very believable.