Men's/Women's chess--why?

Something I don't understand. I understand in arenas like basketball, where men simply have a natural physical advantage. But there is no proof that men and inherently smarter or better thinkers than women. The closest we have to that is that men tend, in general, by a tiny margin to be more analytic thinkers than women. And that is very vague, at best.

The classic response I've heard is that "chess is a sport/game dominated by men". And this is undoubtedly true, we have numbers to show for that. So I understand the logic there, kind of. It is undeniable that, if we assume that the average man and woman chess player are equal in skill, it is more likely that a man will win the world championship, simply because, well, there are more of us. The same could be said about the likelihood of a redhead of left-handed person winning the championship, at least going by simple probabilities.

But patterns and probabilities in the general do not determine what a person will do, it simply says what is likely. An example of this is that teenagers have way higher insurance rates for driving. That doesn't mean a teenager is a more dangerous driver, it just means that on average, they're more likely to be. If you need further proof, look at our President elect, a black man who won a completely white dominated political seat. Look at Yao Ming, a top player in the NBA, a sport with very few Chinese people. Look at Tiger Woods, who dominates perhaps the "whitest" sport in the world (next to hockey, maybe). My point is that simple probabilities say that none of these people (statistical outliers) should be where they are, and yet they are.

But we don't close sports to race, thank god. Why to genders? Is there something I'm missing?

Women are maybe smarter... so do not spend there whole life studying a 'game'.

But seriously, it is to do with the way the brain is 'wired'. Women are not as good (in general) at tactical/logical pursuits in the context of a game. They also do not often posess the same winning desire. Of course there are many exceptions (Polgars, Xie Jun, Cramling etc) but even these never make it to the real top in the mens arena. I also think many younger girls were/are turned off by 'male dominated' smokey clubs and tournaments. I have been thrashed by a 9 year old girl before though (fairly quickly if i remember). Same with Snooker and Darts, I guess.

Let us hope this will change, I think it is already slowly changing.

But that doesn't tell me why we have a specific divider between "Mens chess" and "Womens chess".

Because otherwise many female players would not be able to achieve fide titles (WGM etc) or win money in tournaments. Of course many of the top female players enter male tournaments (e.g. Judit Polgar) and do very well. But they are exceptions.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-buzz/why-is-there-a-womens-world-championship

Men and women have 2 completly different brains that do not work the same way. Man has a logical brain, and woman has an emotional brain

that is why sometimes - they will not compete against each others.

Single'minded girls that devote their life to 1 thing are rare because they do not see any emotional issues in their future life about it- they'd rather build a familly with the man of their dream and be happy with that.

Men that sticks with their families for all their life are rare but great.

Notice that if a girls listens only to her emotion - it won't be smart in some way
as much as a man that bases everything on common sense and logic without considering emotional aspect will be stupid in some way

The difference is notable in language and the way we express ourself.

When a woman talks, she talks with emotions and how she feels about things surrounding her - she don't care if, what she says won't get the conversation any further

when a man talks, he talks with logic and only if he has something to say - he won't talk for nothing or just to share how he feels about something.

NOW - it's true that there's women with a man's brain and men with a woman's brain - and it's true that they bothgenders can play chess as good as the other can - but the people are not evolved yet to mix em up togheter, because there's a lot of complaints about 'how unfair or unlogical' it is.

so yea - because their brain is so different, they won't compete 1 against other

we could qualify this as brainism, or something .

i really doubt Men would really care if women would be allowed in chess tournaments against em - but we're just too different to be associeted togheter.

damn i wish i could express what i want to say in my native language so it could be CLEAR - it sounds like what i just wrote will be hard to understand.

While I agree that men and womens brains are probably built a --little-- differently, I think the overwhelming reason is just the fact that there are faaaaar fewer women chess players.

i'm pretty sure these women has a logical brain - just like men

i don't know about their developement trought their childhood, and how they've been raised tho - so i may be wrong.

Oh good, the women understand!

Hahaha. Nice reply Lisa.

I didn't want to weigh in on this one because I've seen it recurr ridiculously and never go anywhere.

One can cite study after silly study, or throw out pseudoscientific theory after theory, but at the end of the day the only thing evident is the intentionality behind raising the topic in the first place, which I hardly need to explicate.

In any case, Maat - you're being grossly simplistic in your "two brain" theory, with the reductionist analytical versus emotional taglines, which Lisa cleverly lampooned.

Sure, brains might exibit somewhat different developmental trends due to hormonal exposure, but it's misleading to try and typify such a complex issue with such sweeping categorical attributions.

If the standard responses don't satisfy anyone on this topic - ie. that it is this way because of historical circumstance, etc, and you really insist on discussing neuroscience, well, you're not qualified. None of us are (barring a neurologist speaking up).

So realize that this topic has been done to death, and if you were really interested in people's answers you could spend all day perusing previous threads on the matter.

It is the way it is. Ask yourself what you gain from trying to investigate it. Are you going to enjoy some masculine pride if it were true that "women aren't as good of chess players" or some other hooey? Who cares?

Thank God women play chess. That's all I have to say...

I'm not trying to prove anything, except that there should be no "mens" and womens" chess. Anything else is sexist. I think we'd gain a lot from that, for starters, more female players.

Don't worry Ian, I'm sure it they will merge in 10 years or so, nautrually enough.

Everytime someone starts a thread on the topic we get that much closer - like how laugher gets a fairy it's wings.

Sure it should be that way, theoretically. Does making a thread help? Nope, it just invites pseudoscience and misogynistic fantasy on the part of teenagers. But go ahead and argue on as if it's possible to "prove" something in an internet forum, be my guest.

Or just give it time. All will be made better in time.

i do not believe that woman are not as good as man in chess.

they are just less likely to devote their life to it.

and every man and woman(susan polgar's a great exemple) that devoted their life to chess got to be great players.

the question should be, between men and women, who is most likely to spend their life studying chess - not - Between men and women, who is the best players ?

after i tought about this, i came to the point where i have no idea why they're separated

Because basicly, she is in control of the same army as i am.
She knows the move and tactics as much as i know em.
She can play chess as much as i can play chess.

end

the thing is i doubt that most women would be ready to sacrefice their life for chess - and that's the requirment mostly to be grandmaster

they HAVE the intelligence to do it - that is for sure.

...

about the brain theory

i'm only trying to understand why would they separate men and women, simplistic yea, but it's a theory after all, i'm not trying to prove anything, i'm trying to understand.
If i don't come out with theories of my own - i will never understand anything

and experts are there to correct me just like you did, that way, i've learn something.

yeah as usual!

waste of time.

Great new relevant article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16331-the-lack-of-female-einsteins-is-all-down-to-numbers.html.

I think it is just because women belong in the kitchen and there are in most instances no chess pieces or other chess paraphernalia readily available in the kitchen.  So in my humble opinion the reason is in fact environmental.

Makes absolutely no sense to have women and men's chess as separate.

These arguments don't apply to the original message?  Why are the sexes not connected in chess? 

So what if we think differently and if guys "tend" to do better with these types of activities.  If a girl's got what it takes then she enters the tournaments and if a guy's got what it takes then he enters the tournaments.

This makes you wonder if guys really are better at these activities that the studies suggest then are lesbians better at chess (on avg of course) than hetero-females since most of them have brain anatomies that more closely resemble a male brain?

It's genetics.

Men have higher variance than women.

In other words, the distribution for men is leptokurtic. There are extreemly smart/strong men and hopelessly retarded/weak men, whereas women tend towards the center.

This is a known fact, easily visible in higher death ratios for musculin babies and sport/science statistics, where extreem wins (or dies).

The nature is reasonably wise. The nature's base assuption in this case is: the strongest man will win over others and impregnate multiple women, whom should be in sufficient health to carry the babies. Other men, who are unlucky to be on the left side of the dispersion, can die early w/o children, it does not impact the survival chances of the race. Overall in time the humankind will become stronger.

Hope, I answered your question.