Aronian: Women Cannot Play Chess

Koneru Humpy ( World No2 woman) fed up of such comments decided to play in Mens category. She won 7 games in a row in India's National championship.( Remember we have any number of GMs/IMs and most games end in draw only) . Though she lost a couple games in later half but after that nationals I have not heard this comment from any Indian player ! She qualified for mens or open category team more than once. Judith Polgar beat Vishy Anand more than once !! So I think such thinking is totally misplaced. 

These are only exceptional cases though. The number of top men players compared to top women players is much, much larger. But I don't think anyone here (nor any GM) is qualified to say why that is. It may just be that much more men actually play the game. Oh and you think Judit would beat Anand now? I certainly don't think so.

 Huh? How does the seperate titles have anything to do with a woman challenging for the World Championship title? If a woman played chess well enough to pose a threat to the World Champion, there's no reason to believe she wouldn't get a shot at it.

I checked my Fritz 10 database after Aronian's logically extended claim that Judit Polgar can't play chess and lo and behold, she was +2 =1 -0 against him in three head-to-head games as of 2007 LOL

Cheers,

Russ

I haven't read comments by all here, but with a guy like him saying that...tells me one thing, he's got a problem with himself! So, he should get himself sorted out first...he might feel a bit insecure in his life! poor man! what a shame.

Where did he say that?

 Logically extended means that although he did not actually say those words, you can use logic to reach that conclusion. Aronian said women cannot play chess, and Judit Polgar is a woman.

It's not sexist to state a fact. There are many more men with higher ratings than women. There are always exceptional cases, and to say that women can't play chess, (and by play chess, he means play it at the GM level), at all, is not a smart idea.

That said, all of these people getting their clothes ruffled because he says something like that are just stupid. We are in an age of moral relativity, after all, he is entitled to his own opinion.

The simple fact of the matter is that men, as a general rule, play chess better than women. That is not to say that there aren't a lot of women out there who could destroy me, and many other men, in chess, but as a general rule, men are better than women at chess.

Your hunch is very likely correct -- I'd posit that the disproportionate number of male players compared to women players overall has everything to do with this.

Futher extending this logic, then, Aronian also cannot play chess.

By this logic, it follows that as a general rule white males were superior baseball players in the first half of this century given that they were the only ones who played at the top level.  In fact, if you were not a white male, you simply didn't possess the capability to play.

Something physiological must have changed since then to even the playing field because now we have baseball players from many different races at the top level and it certainly couldn't be that there were some social factors skewing the statistics in the early years of baseball....

Spot on.

from http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/643

Personality profiles of young chess players:



"Although the game of chess has often featured in psychological research, we know very little about people who play chess, especially about children who take up chess as a hobby. This study presents the personality profiles as measured with the Big Five model (BFQ-C; Barbaranelli, Caprara, Rabasca, &
Pastorelli, 2003) of 219 young children who play chess and 50 of their peers who do not. Children who score higher on Intellect/openness and Energy/extraversion are more likely to play chess while children who score higher on Agreeableness are less likely to be attracted to chess. Boys with higher scores on Agreeableness are less likely to take up chess than boys with lower scores. Considering that girls score higher on Agreeableness, this factor may provide one of the possible reasons why more boys are interested in chess."

I couldnt agree more.

 Good point. It's a real shame about his opinion of women players, it does make him look foolish and spoils what is otherwise an intriguing interview. I like his analagy of computers being part of a chess 'arms race'.

Actually, yes and yes. Sexist statements (by Bobby Fischer et al.) were a lot more common 30+ years ago than they are today. You'd think (well, at least _I_ thought) that Aronian would have more sense than to make such inflamatory remarks in 2008.

 It's quite obvious that Aronian wasn't saying that no woman can play chess, but that women generally can't play nearly as well as men.

Gonnosuke, you found a specific case to show that Aronian is wrong, but not. The fact is that, in general, men play chess better than women do. This is what he wanted to say.

Wow that's some solid Polgar chess there... thanks for posting that Gonnosuke

Aronian who?

Didn't he date WIM Arianne Caoili (excuse spelling)? Clearly she could play chess extremely well.