Disgusting Video

She has had a very big effect on women chess and showed that even women can be good at chess and compete with all the top chess players who are men. She's an idol for women. There would be no way she wouldn't be on this list

So popularity is a criterion for being in this list then? Well then Yasser is missing, Fischer should sweep the floor (he was a God in chess skill AND brought a new wave of chess in the US) and as Llama said, XqC and other noobs should be in the list.

I'd say influence and skill, where everyone has to be at least GM level. People like Fabi have a lot of skill(he's #2 in the world), but not much influence on the game, hence his ranking of Legend. Hikaru isn't even in the top 10 in the world for Classical, but his influence in bringing in new players and streaming regularly with over 10K viewers on Twitch makes him a legend too. Polgar's skill was #1 for women, and her influence on the game for women was incredible. I agree with Hikaru and Levy's ranking for Judit: She's a God of Chess.

Again, the reason why Polgar is there is because she's a woman... She peaked at #8 global IIRC so still considerably worse than Naka. She's a God of Women Chess.

I think the streamers did not want to stir any controversy lol. Some people may be offended that they're a God of Chess ranking and a God of Women Chess ranking, and Judit is the only woman even on the list.

So being politically correct

There is a disparity, a sociological and systemic one.  It's just not the disparity you are angling for.

Imagine Carissa Yip going to a tournament without her father or her trainer, etc. and having to deal with a room full of yous.  Few men would struggle through such garbage.  The male ego is too fragile to weather constant bombardment.

If you look at the video, Levy’s main claim to Naka’s greatness is impact on the game, not accomplishments, of which there are few.

Before Judith, many men claimed that women were incapable of playing chess at a high level. It was often blatantly stated that they just didn’t have the brain capacity of men. Judith smashed this misconception by defeating top players.

Now who is more important? Someone who popularized online chess (something that any bozo could do), or someone who smashed a long-held stereotype about the deficiencies of women?

To me the question answers itself.

 

Reality does not care that you are annoyed.

The only reason these players are so good in the shorter formats is solely due to the hard work, time, and effort they have put into getting better at Classical Chess.

 

Without Classical chess we would not see the current "high-standard" of rapid and blitz that the current crop of top GM's play at. 

 

Rapid, Blitz, Women's, - these are faux "world champion" titles FIDE gives out as consolation prizes to give the other GM's something to shoot for.

 

The Classical Chess World Champion is The Chess World Champion.

And today that person is Magnus Carlsen.

Every other chess player is the Champion of Nothing.        And they know it.

 

This is 100% legit.

Judit Polgar was the real deal. She proved that women can compete at the exact same level of chess as men when they have the same talent, desire, and drive.

 

IMHO the reason you don't see more women at the top level is the simple fact that most women just aren't interested in chess. So the raw numbers of young women who stick with chess into their teens and beyond to filter up into the top ranks do not have the same quantity as the numbers of young boys who choose to stick with the game.

So your argument is that Judit had little support and that the misoginy in chess dragged down her chess?

The first one is quite clearly wrong, to the point of having raised the debate about how genius happens which in fact, was the goal of her father. The second one doesn't seem to be the case given that she always had a positive public light in her professional career and as other mentioned, was the best prodigy in the world in her young years.

 

The only real disparity against women is that there are less of them, but as it happens, there are other ways to partition human population which result in less of each group.

 

Utter nonsense.

Men, and young boy's are absolutely horrible to each other. Especially in competitive environments.

They weather constant passive-aggressive bombardments and struggle through the "garbage" of dealing with the abuse of immature bullies all the time. Some of it outright physical.

 

And don't get me started about some of the parents!

 

Yet somehow, in many sports, many young men find the fortitude to persevere overcome, and win.

Sure I agree, Judit had a bigger impact, however, so did many other players that were better than her in their era.

Morphy proved players outside of Europe not only could be among the best (which is what Judit proved) but the very best.

Sultan Khan proved non-white players could be among the best chess players, even with negligible study in comparison.

Bobby Fischer challenged, called out and soundly beat the Soviet School of Chess.

Again, the only actual reason why she's there is because she's a woman.

I’m not sure of the ratio, but here on chess.com, I think I play another woman maybe one game in 100? I literally almost never play against women. Hou Yifan is ranked 85th, so she’s not doing all that badly.

Also, I love it when men talk with authority on what it’s like to be a woman playing chess. I have had to turn off my chat because of all the crap. Some dudes are all super nice, then when I tell them to please focus on chess they get pissy. I’ve had men say all kinds of sexist and derogatory things. Lots of men get especially mad when they lose to a woman. I rarely get treated like another chess player, it’s usually too nice or too mean.

Men also often compete with other men as an alpha male show of dominance—you might as well bust out a ruler. I don’t get this. I play because I want to do well, not get a good feeling because I’ve crushed my opponents. Maybe that puts me at a disadvantage and some would say I don’t have a killer instinct. This may be true, but that’s not a function of intelligence or ability, but rather of priorities. But anyway, that’s why I don’t like playing against men.

Women like playing other women because they don’t have to put up with a lot of this bs.

Overall in that video I think Nakamura showed reasonable reverence and good knowledge of the former generations of chess. People can scoff at where he finds himself ranked among others, especially his immediate contemporaries - but it is worth remembering that you do need a little bit of arrogance to succeed in most competitive endeavours.

One big positive I do take from that video is as other have already mentioned, it is nice to see Judit Polgar being given Kudos for her achievements.

You do have to look at a video like that as a bit of fun, the categories are badly arranged and named and when it came down to it they both had a little difficulty in what metric they would use to judge people - but if a video like that can introduce some of the fans who come just from streaming scene to some of those big names it is a good thing.

(Myself I work in the orthology of ancient languages, so I am off to rank Frege, Colebrooke, Becanus and Dennett by how much I like their beards...I can't believe Jacques Derrida never had a beard....but is semiotics linguistics? If you judge it on beards, it certainly isn't.)

Spoken like someone oblivious to their own gender's privilege.

There's no comparison.  If you are male in the western world, in Asia, India, the North Pole, then when you walk into a chess tournament and nobody knows you, the expectation is that you could be a prodigy/master, and win it.  If you are female, the expectation is that you are there to have fun, and not compete seriously...and where is your brother, the prodigy...are your parents watching him play?  What, you don't have a brother?  Are you lost, sweetie?  Try to smile, we'll find a man to help you...are you going to cry?  We could get a woman to help you, if that's the case ...

Being "toughened up" ala male conditioning is not as stressful or constant as being condescended to with people making assumptions all the time that you're not equal to the other players by default.

Have you ever watched a TD on the one hand argue for a boy that had some issue and was not going to be allowed to advance, because he worked so hard and it was not fair that he miss his chance to win it all, and then watch the same TD turn around and dismiss a girl's issue out of hand, without comment?  The TD doesn't say "well, she had no chance of advancing much farther anyway"...he doesn't even consciously think it to himself, he just assumes it and acts accordingly without realizing he is being prejudicial in his duties. 

Have you ever watched an after school chess program, where the "teacher" (some Class B player who has no idea what he is doing) spends the whole hour hovering over the two boys that show some competitive spirit (no natural talent, mind you, just the two boys most obviously invested in winning whatever they are doing), then tells the girls in the class to just go play a game in the corner?  Then watched the two girls play each other every single day without the teacher ever spending a moment looking over their play, or asking them to play the boys, too?

That's privilege vs. lack of same.

@prometheus - one could easily argue that Judith’s accomplishments in chess are more significant than Nakapookie’s. She won several important international tournaments while Naka only has Tata Steel and a bullet championship. On paper, she’s done better.

As far as social significance, Judith beats Naka by a ridiculous margin. Fifty years from now Judith will be remembered, Naka will not. Now tell me who the legend is.

It's misogyny...and no, I didn't say that was Judit Polgar's issue.  I said that women's representation is lower for that reason.  Judit is just the first woman to prove that a woman can beat any player in the world on an equal footing.  I guess for you that is meaningless unless she pulls a Fischer and conquers the chess world single-handed.

For me, it is as meaningless as it would have been had it been the first person of X race or Y place or Z condition which is to say, pretty meaningless. As I said, the partition of genders in chess is pretty arbitrary.

He beat a 2700 GM with the Boncloud, that means something...