Ian vs. Ju- A big succes for women chess!

Hey there!

After watching the (great) game between Ian and Ju, many thoughts were in my mind. After losing to Giri yesterday, this draw is, for sure, a great comeback. Nepomniachtchi was, after all, a favorite in last year's WC match. To draw against such a strong opponent, especially if the Elo gap of around 200 is considered, is, at least in my opinion, a clear win for Ju.

But in today's post (which is, by the way, my first, but I plan to continue), I want to share thoughts on women's chess in general.

The Elo gap between women and men in chess is nothing unusual but instead very common. Till this day, there has been no female World Champion in the "male" section (male section, because the general section is dominated by men). However, this has nothing to do with intelligence. There are plenty of smart women out there, but only a few get into competitive chess.  Women are not playing worse than men; Ju just proved by drawing against Ian. Instead, it is that women do not have too many connections to chess. If I asked a person who never watched a chess game what the common chess player looked like, they would probably talk about a noble gentleman with a big hat and a monocle. Women are simply not common in the mind of society as chess players. (And therefore not in the educational mind too)

Somebody might argue that this has something to do with the overall opinion of males in sports, but I think we have to separate physical and cognitive sports. While there are biological differences between men and women (this doesn't change that I personally like watching women's football too), in cognitive sports, there shouldn't be such a great difference, right? This article published in "Nature" shows how important women are for cognitive workspaces like science: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00670-5 . Moreover, I assume chess is basically the same. There are plenty of potentially strong female chess players out there, but we just do not appreciate women's chess enough. (This clip is just one of a dozen examples: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XTSrEBsTHp8).

What is my conclusion: Chess is not a sport that should be gender-related. The magic of chess lies in the moves – aggressive, protective, experimental, fast, and so on. Chess is interesting and irreplaceable by a computer because it is played by humans. And humans have emotions. Emotions lead to interesting games. To support females in chess more leads to a greater and more interesting (of course, more diverse too) chess community. However, I'm not in favor of a "women's quota" in chess, since I think this wouldn't lead to anything.

Nonetheless, Ju's "win" shows the great future of women's chess.

Thank you for reading this post, and I'm looking forward to reading your ideas on this subject.

Congrats Ju Wenjun! Elo gaps between gender are sadly common, however draws and the grandmaster level are quite common, especially in classical time. Still, Ian is one of the best in the world.