It plays into the bias that it's a mens game... I blame the forums for making me too aware of this
Phantom of the Squares
Sort:
Lol is that a troll it a mens game lol lolollol. SJW here. Women play this game a lot if anything they get treated nicer because guys like them.
Apr 11, 2016
0
#5
Actually, Sharon, when this photo was made, more than a half-century ago, chess was, for all practical purposes, a man's game.
Apr 11, 2016
0
#6
But I win them all the time? How come most of them aren't even good at it? Was there an evolutionary hiccup?
Apr 11, 2016
0
#8
No, not all the time
But honestly, if you get just okay at this game then you can win something like 75% of all chess players. Something's up with that
Apr 11, 2016
0
#9
Oh, so not ALL the time. I know I feel better now :-) !!!!
The problem with chess is that once you can beat 99% of all chess players - you start to believe that in order to be "just an ok player" you need to be able to beat 99.3% of them, and on it goes...
Apr 11, 2016
0
#10
Isn't that weird though? To be able to win so many players without even being good at the game? I was at another chess site a couple hours ago and it said I was ranked in the top 15%. It's like there are millions of chess players, and most of them are males, yet hardly any of them are very good at the game. It makes the forum topics about men being better pretty silly.
Apr 11, 2016
0
#12
I'm ranked in the top 1% of this site in several time controls. I get to play many games when I feel really brilliant - but I often feel like a patzer, and I don't even have to PLAY in order to get that feeling - there are just so many positions and types of positions that I know that I don't really understand, there are so many openings that I know the first moves of, and then have no clue or idea what to do - and then, generally when I see a strong master (or higher) analyze a position, or play it quickly and effortlessly, I get the same feeling - which is totally justified.
Just because 99% of players (by chess.com stats) are even less knowledgable - doesn't make me feel that I'm really 'in the know'. We tend to look upwards, not downwards.
It's also true, that in chess, the number of people who TRULY understand the game, is a tiny, tiny fraction of the general and huge population of players.
If it was like driving a car, then maybe the roads would be empty as almost nobody would be able to get a license... :-)
Fortunately chess is a lot less dangerous than driving a car - so pretty much everyone can play and enjoy it.
Apr 11, 2016
0
#13
And one about men being better - not that I would ever enter this boring grind - but just a question here:
suppose 2% of all players are women (I think that this is the case), and that you have 20 woman players in the top world 1000 (and I also think that this is the case) - then where is the issue exactly?
There was even a woman who made it to World no. 8, and several women in the past were also able to compete with all but the very best. It's a non issue as far as I'm concerned.
(funny though, I've personally never lost to a woman in official play - despite already meeting 11 of them in OTB contexts...)
(but I was expecting it to happen in certainly several games, where I got disastrous positions...)
Apr 11, 2016
0
#14
But my point is that there is absolutely nothing inherently male about the game. "Men are more logical"---"Men have better spatial understanding"---"Men are warriors and it's a war game"---"Hunter/gatherers vs caregivers", etc., etc. It's so much BS
This photograph, entitled "Spirit of the Squares" was the creation of award-winning chemist and an Associate of the Photographic Society of America, Vincent C. Vesce (1901-1982) who designed it to represent the Spirit of Chess: