Transpeople in athletics

[DCR]

And this is how I learn that The Queen's Gambit was not based on a real person.

[5hout]

]More accurately: chess has Open and Women's rankings.


Looked it up. Judit Polgar was the greatest woman player achieved the rank of 10th overall (men and women). She did not compete in women's only events and never held a woman's title.

My understanding is that your FIDE is your FIDE rating. You don't have 2 ratings, you have 1 rating used in all tournaments. Women can get ELO/rating from playing in (in theory) slightly weaker gender restricted events, but there isn't a separate rating. This is a tiny quibble.

Less tiny, 1 women all time in top 10, 3 in history in top 100.

[aurelius]

Less tiny, 1 women all time in top 10, 3 in history in top 100.

That is a striking data point. I'm curious is it has been looked into more than just "Men have big brains." I lean more towards the population thing without some science to point to.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

The fact that chess world champions tend to be men is easily explained by two facts:
- the participation gap: there are 10 times more men than women who play chess
- the chess community is deeply misogynistic: at the top level for instance Gary Kasparov, Nigel Short, Bobby Fisher for instance all expressed very misogynistic views.
PS: indeed there is only one ELO rating, meaning that if a 2700 man meets a 2700 female over the board, they both have a 50% chance of winning.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Judit Polgar was the greatest woman player

She and her two sisters were raised by her father to be chess champions. He wanted to prove that women are as intellectually capable as men.

Might be nitpicking, but more accurately to prove that anyone could become an an expert in a given domain, if trained from early childhood. I'm not sure that chess ability is a good measure of intellectual capability.

[ChasingCurls69]

The fact that chess world champions tend to be men is easily explained by two facts:
- the participation gap: there are 10 times more men than women who play chess
- the chess community is deeply misogynistic: at the top level for instance Gary Kasparov, Nigel Short, Bobby Fisher for instance all expressed very misogynistic views.
PS: indeed there is only one ELO rating, meaning that if a 2700 man meets a 2700 female over the board, they both have a 50% chance of winning.

TIL that chess players were the original gamers.

[dw]

The fact that chess world champions tend to be men is easily explained by two facts:
- the participation gap: there are 10 times more men than women who play chess
- the chess community is deeply misogynistic: at the top level for instance Gary Kasparov, Nigel Short, Bobby Fisher for instance all expressed very misogynistic views.
PS: indeed there is only one ELO rating, meaning that if a 2700 man meets a 2700 female over the board, they both have a 50% chance of winning.

Your first point seems misleading to me, and imprecise as well.

Perhaps it means 10x ELO ranked members? If so at that point there is selection bias because the better you are the more likely you are to play in rated games or join FIDE (if that's a requirement of being ranked, I can't remember). Remember there's a vast world of people that know how to play chess and have played chess without ever playing ranked games.

And in general people tend to enjoy things they are good at, which presents the same problem. Is it really true that 10x men vs women ever touched a chess board? That seems implausible to me, especially in Russia and the former USSR which is a major supplier of great chess players.

Also the misogyny claim seems a little wishful. I mean from a certain point of view that is a very attractive explanation, but who knows how much that has to do with women's ranked participation?

I'm neutral wrt to the question we're discussing but let's not be too quick to treat the matter as settled. Same with women in math and science.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

The fact that chess world champions tend to be men is easily explained by two facts:
- the participation gap: there are 10 times more men than women who play chess
- the chess community is deeply misogynistic: at the top level for instance Gary Kasparov, Nigel Short, Bobby Fisher for instance all expressed very misogynistic views.
PS: indeed there is only one ELO rating, meaning that if a 2700 man meets a 2700 female over the board, they both have a 50% chance of winning.

Your first point seems misleading to me, and imprecise as well.

Perhaps it means 10x ELO ranked members? If so at that point there is selection bias because the better you are the more likely you are to play in rated games or join FIDE (if that's a requirement of being ranked, I can't remember). Remember there's a vast world of people that know how to play chess and have played chess without ever playing ranked games.

And in general people tend to enjoy things they are good at, which presents the same problem. Is it really true that 10x men vs women ever touched a chess board? That seems implausible to me, especially in Russia and the former USSR which is a major supplier of great chess players.

Also the misogyny claim seems a little wishful. I mean from a certain point of view that is a very attractive explanation, but who knows how much that has to do with women's ranked participation?

I'm neutral wrt to the question we're discussing but let's not be too quick to treat the matter as settled. Same with women in math and science.

Yes there are 10x more male chess players that have an ELO ranking compared to females. To have an ELO you need to play rated games, which are essentially tournament games. The argument that "well men are much stronger therefore they participate in more tournaments which skews the statistic", is of course incorrect because there exists tournaments that welcome players of any level. If you are a 1000 ELO (a very weak player) you can enter a tournament and you wiil be matched against players of similar ratings.

Furthermore, if you look at all strong players (say at least master strength, 2200 ELO and above), all of them became strong the same way: playing in a lot of tournament games, and analyzing the game afterwards with their opponent. If you don't participate in tournaments you'll never be a strong player, and I don't care how good your chess talent is. And that's "just" for reaching master strength. Now try to imagine what it takes to become world champion strength (around 2700 ELO). For reference if a 2700 ELO player (super GM) meets a 2200 ELO player (a Master), the chance of winning for the master is below 5% (i.e they'd get obliterated every single game).

As for the misogyny, below are two excepts from interviews of Kasparov and Bobby Fisher, you tell me if their misogyny is simply a consequence of how many women play chess). You can also comment on the general stupidity of what they are saying but this is left to the reader.

The Kasparov one:

‘Well, in the past, I have said that there is real chess and women’s chess. Some people don’t like to hear this, but chess does not fit women properly. It’s a fight, you know? A big fight. It’s not for women. Sorry. She’s helpless if she has men’s opposition. I think this is very simple logic. It’s the logic of a fighter, a professional fighter. Women are weaker fighters.

There is also the aspect of creativity in chess. You have to create new ideas. That’s quite difficult, too. Chess is the combination of sport, art and science. In all these fields, you can see men’s superiority. Just compare the sexes in literature, in music or in art. The result is, you know, obvious. Probably the answer is in the genes.’

The interviewer then said: ‘Do you realize that you’re expressing a sexist point of view, and that Western women will be enraged by it?’ Kasparov replied:

‘Yes, but I’m not concerned. I’m sure that women can do many things better than men in many fields. I think it’s wrong to want to be compared all the time, to want to be equal in everything. Men and women are different.’

The Fisher one

"They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know. They're like beginners. They lose every single game against a man. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat."

As for the argument about USSR, this is also incorrect, and has nothing to do with enjoyment. The reason why the USSR produced extraordinary chess talent is because the Bolshevik created programs that encouraged young people to play chess (for instance in "Pioneer Palaces"), and chess talent was scouted from a very early age and subsequently put under the wings of very strong players whom guided them. Mikhail Botvinnik being one of them, and he coached Karpov, Kasparov, and Kramnik from age 12.

[dw]

If I'm understanding you correctly you have misconstrued the argument.

The argument was that the 10x more ranked men than women may not mean that 10x more men play chess.

You can play chess without ever getting ranked or seeking to get ranked, and insofar as people pursue more seriously the competitive activities they are good at, you need to consider the entire population of people that take up chess at all in order to suggest that the skew in question is due to a difference in population sizes. (And really 10:1 is an enormous skew for a common non-gendered game. That should automatically raise the suspicion of selection bias.)

Also the quotes don't advance your argument. The problem is not substantiating the allegation of misogyny but showing that it actually causes the skew in question.

ETA - You also misunderstood my point about the USSR but I don't think it's necessary to go into that.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

If I'm understanding you correctly you have misconstrued the argument.

The argument was that the 10x more ranked men than women may not mean that 10x more men play chess.

You can play chess without ever getting ranked or seeking to get ranked, and insofar as people pursue more seriously the competitive activities they are good at, you need to consider the entire population of people that take up chess at all in order to suggest that the skew in question is due to a difference in population sizes. (And really 10:1 is an enormous skew for a common non-gendered game. That should automatically raise the suspicion of selection bias.)

Also the quotes don't advance your argument. The problem is not substantiating the allegation of misogyny but showing that it actually causes the skew in question.

ETA - You also misunderstood my point about the USSR but I don't think it's necessary to go into that.

Here we were discussing strong players (the heart of the argument was based on world champions and other super GM type of players). If you do not get ranked or seek to get ranked you'll never be a strong player, and this has nothing to do with talent or genetics.

Why is it difficult to understand that spending between 3 and 7 days (that's how long a tournament lasts) in a room almost completely full of men, some of them openly misogynistic, does not sound appealing to the average women ? I'm not sure.

[dw]

If I'm understanding you correctly you have misconstrued the argument.

The argument was that the 10x more ranked men than women may not mean that 10x more men play chess.

You can play chess without ever getting ranked or seeking to get ranked, and insofar as people pursue more seriously the competitive activities they are good at, you need to consider the entire population of people that take up chess at all in order to suggest that the skew in question is due to a difference in population sizes. (And really 10:1 is an enormous skew for a common non-gendered game. That should automatically raise the suspicion of selection bias.)

Also the quotes don't advance your argument. The problem is not substantiating the allegation of misogyny but showing that it actually causes the skew in question.

ETA - You also misunderstood my point about the USSR but I don't think it's necessary to go into that.

Here we were discussing strong players (the heart of the argument was based on world champions and other super GM type of players). If you do not get ranked or seek to get ranked you'll never be a strong player, and this has nothing to do with talent or genetics.

Why is it difficult to understand that spending between 3 and 7 days (that's how long a tournament lasts) in a room almost completely full of men, some of them openly misogynistic, does not sound appealing to the average women ? I'm not sure.

To your first paragraph, are you suggesting that the population of people that know how to play chess but never obtain a ranking will have the same distribution of potential as the population that knows how to play chess but does obtain a ranking?

Would you say that the population of people that know how to play soccer but never try out for a soccer team has the same distribution of potential as the population that knows how to play soccer and does try out for a soccer team?

To your second paragraph, this is still not evidence and ironically enough a bit sexist. I have no problem imagining a woman playing under those circumstances if she has an enthusiasm for chess. Which part do you expect to break her will...the gruelling 3-7 days that everyone else faces? The fact that the people she will be silently playing against are of the male sex? The misognystic thoughts purportedly harbored by them?

Also while we're duking it out I should add an additional point in favor of not quickly dismissing the gender skew - you see strong skews in all competitive games that I'm familiar with. Poker, chess, RTS and fighting games (these are video game genres), MTG. Those are the games I am familiar with and I'm not sure what the precise skew is but there's always a substantial one. I'm sure Google could provide some fodder.

So insofar as you are making speculative arguments unique to chess, that is something to consider.

[JonA]

I think their is some natural selection that happens with many competitive activities. Games and sports were specifically design and evolved in a way that was competitive and exciting for men, so they naturally get skewed towards things that men are predisposed to excel at.

It's not that men are "good at sports or chess". It's that many sports and games evolved rules to be specifically competitive for men.

Horses are good at pulling carts. Buts it's not because of the design of the horse. It's because the cart was specifically designed to be pulled by a horse.

[asdf]

Might be nitpicking, but...

Not nitpicking and I'm sure you're right. I was going from memory, based on what I read in David Epstein's book "Range."

[Hardartery]

I think their is some natural selection that happens with many competitive activities. Games and sports were specifically design and evolved in a way that was competitive and exciting for men, so they naturally get skewed towards things that men are predisposed to excel at.

It's not that men are "good at sports or chess". It's that many sports and games evolved rules to be specifically competitive for men.

Horses are good at pulling carts. Buts it's not because of the design of the horse. It's because the cart was specifically designed to be pulled by a horse.

Most competitive activities have a base of something actually useful to a culture or people. Highland Games, for example, were performed because a people (The Scots) wanted to perform military training but were prohibited from doing so by the occupying English. The basis for these Games is actually the historical training of Vikings for battle, the basis also for things like Stone Lifting and in many ways the modern sport of Strongman. The competitions are tailored to improve skills that have historically been important, not because they were designed by men for men. They may skew towards male traits over female traits, but men also tend to be more competitive than women on the whole so they have always been more likely to engage in competition. Modern society skews the whole thing by making the incentive a personal wealth gain thing rather than a societal benefit thing.

[JonA]

Most competitive activities have a base of something actually useful to a culture or people. Highland Games, for example, were performed because a people (The Scots) wanted to perform military training but were prohibited from doing so by the occupying English. The basis for these Games is actually the historical training of Vikings for battle, the basis also for things like Stone Lifting and in many ways the modern sport of Strongman. The competitions are tailored to improve skills that have historically been important, not because they were designed by men for men. They may skew towards male traits over female traits, but men also tend to be more competitive than women on the whole so they have always been more likely to engage in competition. Modern society skews the whole thing by making the incentive a personal wealth gain thing rather than a societal benefit thing.

I agree with all that, but I also kinda think it validates my point. There were _many_ skills that were historically important, not just combat battle skills. Textiles, animal husbandry, family and household management, etc. These things were dominated by women (and unlike combat, left very little free time to be idle and bored, the two major requisites for inventing games)

[Hardartery]

Most competitive activities have a base of something actually useful to a culture or people. Highland Games, for example, were performed because a people (The Scots) wanted to perform military training but were prohibited from doing so by the occupying English. The basis for these Games is actually the historical training of Vikings for battle, the basis also for things like Stone Lifting and in many ways the modern sport of Strongman. The competitions are tailored to improve skills that have historically been important, not because they were designed by men for men. They may skew towards male traits over female traits, but men also tend to be more competitive than women on the whole so they have always been more likely to engage in competition. Modern society skews the whole thing by making the incentive a personal wealth gain thing rather than a societal benefit thing.

I agree with all that, but I also kinda think it validates my point. There were _many_ skills that were historically important, not just combat battle skills. Textiles, animal husbandry, family and household management, etc. These things were dominated by women (and unlike combat, left very little free time to be idle and bored, the two major requisites for inventing games)

The crux there is the idea of extra time. It is very unlikely it was a matter of men having "Extra" free time to invent anything, it is more the need to do these things for the protection of the group predicates MAKING the time in addition to whatever else is going on. We also do not know who came up with any of the competitions, for all we know it started with matriarchal clan mothers dictating the competition. There is no evidence that it was driven by anything other than meeting a direct need, and therefore a mischaracterization to say that it was dictated by what an individual gender happens to be better at.

[aurelius]

"They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know. They're like beginners. They lose every single game against a man. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat."

Kind of funny because Polgar beat Kasparov when he was ranked No. 1. Kasparov also cheated, and was allowed to, in one of their matchups.
Fischer was supposed to play her but withdrew. When asked if the match would take place Fischer answered, "No, they are Jewish." Fischer is kind of a piece of shit if you look into him. I believe he was chicken shit to play her in a recorded match.

Yeah. I'm starting to see an incel type energy from these chess guys.

I think their is some natural selection that happens with many competitive activities. Games and sports were specifically design and evolved in a way that was competitive and exciting for men, so they naturally get skewed towards things that men are predisposed to excel at.

But I think we have to look further. Natural selection as you state encompasses more than just game selection. It also is societal, cultural, and so forth. Gatekeepers actively enforce social norms. I saw this in my K-12 education and engineering college. Women who were good at mathematics and science were treated poorly and far less likely to be mentored by teachers. It isn't a hard stretch of the imagination that a bunch of men playing chess would ostracize women.

The best woman's player had an advantage no other woman has had: her father.

Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father, László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age.[14] "Geniuses are made, not born," Traditionally, chess had been a male-dominated activity, and women were often seen as weaker players, thus advancing the idea of a Women's World Champion.[16] However, from the beginning, László was against the idea that his daughters had to participate in female-only events. "Women are able to achieve results similar, in fields of intellectual activities, to that of men," he wrote. "Chess is a form of intellectual activity, so this applies to chess. Accordingly, we reject any kind of discrimination in this respect."

[asdf]

"Women are able to achieve results similar, in fields of intellectual activities, to that of men," he wrote. "Chess is a form of intellectual activity, so this applies to chess."

Hmmm. That actually validates what I originally said above. "He wanted to prove that women are as intellectually capable as men."

[BostonRugger]

Polgar and Fischer's fathers were both turbo-brains. One was super involved in making his children chess prodigies, while the other was absentee and provided some child support checks.

Fischer being antisemitic and of Jewish heritage always struck me as more than a bit schizophrenic

[mouse]

I felt compelled to share as it's local and this is now 3 records broken by this individual in the span of less than two months...

https://13wham.com/news/local/transgend ... -ncaa-lgbt