I really needed a good laugh. Thank you very much for making this forum thread. I found it very amusing.
You are comparing Yifan ranking against Humpy lol.
Yifan is 21
Humpy is 28
Thats a 7 year difference that is almost a decade.
WHY stop at a decade?
Lets go for a century. Lets compare
Emanuel Lasker ranking when he was 13 in 1881
with
Carlson ranking when he was 13 in 2004
O yeah now we are cooking with oil
I bet Carlson ranking will be higher.
I think its clear that men are far more visual, and they can manipulate the pieces with less effort than female... its just like arm strength.
its in every visual industry, from painting too hair and makeup .. men dominate it regardless of how outnumbered they are by the opposite sex.
but girls do mature much faster .. I experienced chess at school, it was part of our curriculum. in the younger years the girls crushed guys virtually no effort.
By the time high school came it was getting to be a better balance... we were all doing well, but toward the end of high school , guys were dominating .... in the top 10 was only one female... even the top 50 was only about 8 girls.
We lack the brut strength of visual manipulation, but excel at the psychological aspects and pitting strengths against weakness, exploiting and spotting fragility on the board ... but it fizzles out at some point.
a good accurate graph of many thousand male and female students would demonstrate that so perfectly.
Just don't forget that the ladies have lower rated opponents on average then men.
And since they hardly play eachother on top level the only opponents you get are other people of thesame sex who have lower ratings if you are a girl.
I honestly don't think you can make these comparison's.
To many variable's to count for:
Their is no way to count for all of these in your chart.
I think its clear that men are far more visual, and they can manipulate the pieces with less effort than female... its just like arm strength.
?
I think its clear that men are far more visual, and they can manipulate the pieces with less effort than female... its just like arm strength.
its in every visual industry, from painting too hair and makeup .. men dominate it regardless of how outnumbered they are by the opposite sex.
but girls do mature much faster .. I experienced chess at school, it was part of our curriculum. in the younger years the girls crushed guys virtually no effort.
By the time high school came it was getting to be a better balance... we were all doing well, but toward the end of high school , guys were dominating .... in the top 10 was only one female... even the top 50 was only about 8 girls.
We lack the brut strength of visual manipulation, but excel at the psychological aspects and pitting strengths against weakness, exploiting and spotting fragility on the board ... but it fizzles out at some point.
a good accurate graph of many thousand male and female students would demonstrate that so perfectly.
In many respects women are vastly superior to men. Chess being a form of combat eventually favors men because their wiring favors winning in combat. Women have greater challenges to endure by virtue of the human race's dependence on them for survival. Absent the threat of men, women could survive in a world without men much better than men could survive in a world without women. Put aside all considerations having to do with procreation because obviously neither survives without the other, yet. Technology now provides the means to eliminate men entirely for that purpose it we chose to apply it.
There's not enough data to draw conclusions, but there may be enough to posit some hypotheses.
I am wondering if Chinese players are introduced to the game earlier than players in other countries, and whether this info shows that the Chinese chess program is successful.
You need to get Judit Polgar and top men from her era onto that chart.
By the way, even if you've discovered a real trend it, it does not necessarily speak to genetic differences in chess playing ability between the top men and top women. There are other factors, like tournaments to which the players get invited and the rating strength of these tournaments, to take into account. Most of the top women compete largely in female events, which by and large don't have deep fields and are not conducive to earning rating points.
Hou Yifan has started to compete in more and more "men's" events and that may explain the recent upward tick in her rating.
I really needed a good laugh. Thank you very much for making this forum thread. I found it very amusing.
You are comparing Yifan ranking against Humpy lol.
Yifan is 21
Humpy is 28
Thats a 7 year difference that is almost a decade.
WHY stop at a decade?
Lets go for a century. Lets compare
Emanuel Lasker ranking when he was 13 in 1881
with
Carlson ranking when he was 13 in 2004
O yeah now we are cooking with oil
I bet Carlson ranking will be higher.
Ah, good point. Naturally, I can only compare those ratings that are available on the FIDE website, so we have to leave Lasker aside for the moment. But a seven year difference can indeed mean something, as stated in this article: I didn't think it would be so significant, but apparently, average ratings of top-level players can rise 50 points in such a short amount of time. And since Yifan is younger, that would mean an offset of -50 points on her curve, bringing it down closer to Humpy's.
This is definitely something that could be taken into account to adjust the curves (if one were able to calculate an accurate offset for each year), but it would take a lot more work than what I have done so far.
I've even heard the theory (from a strong female player) that for sociological reasons, the top women tend to play a more aggressive, tactical style than the top men. This may be holding back some of these top women from competing at the highest levels, where positional chess is often dominant.
You need to get Judit Polgar and top men from her era onto that chart.
By the way, even if you've discovered a real trend it, it does not necessarily speak to genetic differences in chess playing ability between the top men and top women.
As I mentioned earlier, it's not possible to include Polgar (or Kasparov) in this chart, because I obtained the data from the FIDE website, which has nothing from before the year 2000. We would not be able to see the rating development of older players, only the plateau that they reach and maintain during their prime.
And nobody here mentioned genetic differences before you did. I only want to show what is happening, not why.
There's not enough data to draw conclusions, but there may be enough to posit some hypotheses.
I am wondering if Chinese players are introduced to the game earlier than players in other countries, and whether this info shows that the Chinese chess program is successful.
Thank you, that's exactly what I was after: speculation based on indicative (but not strictly conclusive) data. That's a good thought, and it's supported by the data for Yifan and Yi. It will be interesting to see what happens with Wei Yi in the coming years - whether his rating growth will slow below Carlsen's level or whether he'll actually be a serious contender for the world championship.
You need to get Judit Polgar and top men from her era onto that chart.
By the way, even if you've discovered a real trend it, it does not necessarily speak to genetic differences in chess playing ability between the top men and top women.
As I mentioned earlier, it's not possible to include Polgar (or Kasparov) in this chart, because I obtained the data from the FIDE website, which has nothing from before the year 2000. We would not be able to see the rating development of older players, only the plateau that they reach and maintain during their prime.
And nobody here mentioned genetic differences before you did. I only want to show what is happening, not why.
You mentioned a biological difference in your opening past: the maturation rates of girls vs. boys.
That may play a role, but there are many non-biological differences to rule out.
Another thing I just thought of: it looks like the male curves are almost perfectly asymptotic with only minor fluctuations, whereas the female curves are fluctuating much more wildly, without a clear asymptotic behavior. This seems to persist in all curves, so it's likely to be more than a coincidence. An asymptotic curve would be obtained if a player improved very quickly and their rating had to catch up; however, if a player were struggling to improve over a longer time period, the rating would fluctuate as we see here. This might suggest that men actually reach their full potential quicker than women; this in turn might be a result of the often-mentioned immersive (obsessive?) interest in improving that men have and women don't.
You mentioned a biological difference in your opening past: the maturation rates of girls vs. boys.
That may play a role, but there are many non-biological differences to rule out.
That's right - I thought you were speaking of some innate chess-related abilities. Anyway, this discussion was inherited from another thread, one of many where the performance differences between men and women are discussed. Those threads tend to get quite heated, so I wanted to be defensive and try to maintain a civil discussion in this thread. 
Men and women should really play together from the beginning and then on, too.
They're like Carlsen, playing with players with similar rating and at the end, rating doesn't move anywhere. I guess there should be more "all-play-all tourneys, 20 players" with women included. We would prevent inflation (top players- like) and boost the rating of women (they're clearly not as bad as 2500s).
"They're like Carlsen, playing with players with similar rating"
Not easy to do that for Carlsen, being 72 points higher rated than #2.
Yes, most of them performed better than expected in the last Spanish Championship.
What I see in the graphs is that almost everybody (not Nakamura or Yi) shows a bit of levelling off starting around age 13 or 14, but this diminished rate of improvement is not as dramatic in the boys.
What's interesting is that Yifan at age 20 (and So at age 19, maybe Giri but it's too soon to say) shows a later uptick... renewed interest? Better coaching?
Extrapolating wildly, Yifan may actually close the gap and reach age-parity with Carlsen by around age 25.