Kosteniuk Wins Women's WCh

Finally, a report on the WWC match.

"It's a delicate and nuanced topic" but you have made up your mind in a rather un-nuanced way "women-only championships and titles are long past their expiration dates".

They still hold a Hungarian championship even if Polgar (and Leko) don't bother to turn up.

You comments about "women writers" are rather strange. Do you want a Nobel Prize for Literature separate for men and women? Chess is a sport, writing is not. Judit Polgar's success after full-time drilling in chess from age 4 is not enough to prove gender equivalence.

I didn't say I didn't have opinions. I said it was complicated. And yes, my opinion about titles and championships (really just a higher title) is much clearer than about all women-only events, especially for young girls.

They also hold a world junior championship without Carlsen. But everyone gets older and can't keep playing in those. My point wasn't that she doesn't play. Polgar's mere existence as a regular member of the top 20 (top 10 once) just highlights how silly it is to have a women-only world championship. It would be just as silly if she played.

My point is that "woman writer" is still a common designation. The implication is that it imparts useful information, not that it recommends segregation or qualitative distinction. Knowing a book was written by a woman (or a black person or a gay person) can alter the value and appreciation one has of the content.

This isn't true of a chess game, at least not with gender and race. But it is true with chess and age and handicaps like blindness (or blindfold). E.g. a spectacular game by an 11-year-old is seen in a different light than if the same game were played by Morozevich.

To me, the content matters. It is either valuable "as it is", or, if I don't like it-no information about the author would make me to do so.

Sometimes the social status and biography of the author adds essence to the text indeed. Like Nietzsche and his remarks about women-when you read about his relationship to women-you see everything in a different light.

Nevertheless, I cannot think of a single female author (from the ones I like) that would be less valuable to me in case I didn't know the gender of the author. To me, it is almost as irrelevant as in chess.

It seems to me that the case of ONE woman who has become so much better than other women through exceptional circumstances doesn't do much to prove theoretical female equality in the sport. Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that there is any inbuilt reason why a woman and a man of similar intelligence, subjected to the same training, should not achieve similar results. Why then is this the case? I bet Kosteniuk and Hou train like mad.

I can think of one explanation, apart from Mig's observation that they are not regularly playing the very best players in the world and so fail to develop to the same extent. This is that, if chess is to be seen as a sport, physical endurance plays a part, and so the women, in other respects equal, tire sooner. This could be tested by looking at games between female 2500+ against male 2500+ and seeing how many of them are won in the endgame.

After all, nobody says that marathons should be unisex.

Thanks

Nice jeremiad, Mig. Bravo.

Has anyone done any actual research comparing the games of players using gender as the control variable? I'm not talking about the win/loss issue, but rather the way games develop between male players vs how female players conduct their games. Opening preferences? Positional vs. tactical? I think we can all agree then men and women are "wired" differently (stereotypically, women are less competetive, less aggressive), so wouldn't this effect they way we play the game?

I'd like to hear what female players think of the gender title (WIM, WGM, Women's World Champ). Since they are the ones really effected, their views would be very interesting.

Now that Mig is a father, I suspect he will sway more from the nurture side to the nature side of this argument in a year or two. There's nothing like seeing your offspring's innate skills surface as if by magic. Of course training matters, but biology (or the manifestation of biology we call temperament and intelligence) matters more. Polgar is an outlier, and we know not to make generalizations (genderizations?) from a sample size of 1.

prail: "Now that Mig is a father, I suspect he will sway more from the nurture side to the nature side of this argument in a year or two."

Especially if he has another kid and sees how different the second one is from the first beginning on day one.

A women's world championship is a fine thing. Women and men are different. Men tend to be bigger, faster, and stronger, and in sports the sexes are largely kept separate. [Even though it's hard for me to excited about the WNBA just as it's hard for Mig to get excited about a match between two chess players in the 2500's.] But even in sports that require more finesse than size and strength (ping pong, billiards, marksmanship), men dominate, and there are, appropriately, separate events for men and women. Until there are significant numbers of women playing competitively at the top in chess (e.g., say, 3 of the top ten and 35 in the top 100), it is wholly appropriate and interesting and worthwhile to have WWC and all-women events.

In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are not.

If women-only events draw sponsorships, that is its own legitimacy.

Using the single outlier that is Judit Polgar is no justification for dismissing as irrelevant the stark statistical divide between the Elo levels of male and female adult chess professionals.

Another major divide is the sheer quantity of male versus females in chess.

When 30% of all chess masters are female, then doubting the propriety of female-only events begins to make sense. That threshold will not be reached in my lifetime, unless men quit chess in droves.

However, present-day elimination of women-only titles seems desirable (WFM, WIM, WGM). It would be easier if there were more grade levels besides just Master, IM, GM. As it is, I think the professional female chess players would suddenly mostly be IM's. More differentiation would be desirable.

It is great for chess to see Alexandra take the crown.
I cannot grasp the inability of general advertisers to make money by marketing the faces of these attractive women -- that chess angle resonates with millions of men who like chess but gave up when they failed to improve up the class levels.

Many years ago I remember one of the Polgar sisters said that she think that the genders are different regarding the chess skills because differences in the brain's structure (something like that). I remember it because at that time I believed the contrary and I was disappointed hearing that from the Polgars.

Mig, if I follow your logic, shouldn't we also do away with Junior world championship events because Carlsen has proven that Juniors can keep up with the best male adults, just like Polgar did? What's the point in giving all these youngsters special recognition and financing big events for them, and especially if Carlsen doesn't play... doesn't that make the world junior title a hollow award?

Mig:
"Perhaps Hou Yifan will save us and unify the titles in eight years by beating Magnus Carlen in a match?"

I am the inventor for the Hou-Carlsen WC match, as posted in Bilbao topbic.

Freemoney

You bring up a good point. Where ARE the women chess authors? I probably have 300 chess books. Many written by people rated below 2600. None written by women. Come on, ladies, tell us club players how you decide where to put the pieces!

Honestly, without getting into other arguments, I enjoy these tournaments very much. As a spectator sport, for me, chess is about games and personalities... and honestly, I may know objectively that a 2500 and a 2450 play games of lower quality than 2700s, but they are still good fights and very enjoyable to follow.

And it's fun to cheer for the women. Anyway, if they want to be the best in the world, they can go play with the boys... and if they are happy with the system as it is, that's their choice. Maybe not everybody wants to be the best in the world. What is wrong with that? And if you can make a living doing what you enjoy, great.

We are probably never going to see a J Polgar vs A Kosteniuk "reunifaction match"...

>"reunification match"

Who cares...

Certainly there are good points here, but dismissing an event because the players are 2500s is stretching it. These are Grandmasters playing, no less. That's like saying there is no reason to watch college football because the professional league is the stronger level.

Now should women compete exclusively with men and eschew women's events? I would believe that will happen in time, but women's tournament will exist in some form. The titles certainly have to go because they make little sense. I feel that this should be scrapped as well as being able to get automatic titles if you win a zonal event.

Should all women seek to duplicate Judit's example? No... it is not realistic. I believe Judit is simply a very expectional player (male or female) who had a supportive conditions. Koneru Humpy has been over 2600 and has primarily played in women's tournaments. For the past two years, she has backed off of women's events, but I cannot see Humpy going above 2615-2625 even if she played in men's event henceforth. She is simply not at Judit's level and most likely, will never be. Ironically, she declined a spot on the "men's" Olympiad Indian team.

I do think that women would improve their ratings among men, but they will continue to suffer heavy losses initially. Notice the past U.S. Championships where women were clustered at the bottom... (sometimes losing every game). In fact, there are no women's national tournaments in the U.S. (besides Polgar's scholastic tournaments) So why haven't U.S. produced a Judit Polgar or even Susan Polgar?

If there is any difference in the gender it may be how each perceives the value of chess and the objective. For men it may be enacting a fantasy of power... a chance to prove one's strength; for women it may be an activity they seek to enjoy... no illusions of grandeur. Win... fantastic! Lose... move on.

Men approach chess differently and spend a LOT of time at it... even things like blogging. ;-) Women... when they get older, they may begin to look at chess as more of a game rather than something they would spend hours of invested time. Plenty of wives of men on this blog can attest that women seem to belittle chess as a mere game. Men spend their lives trying to prove virility and strength. Chess is one such means of expression.

It's up to individual women players -- like Kosteniuk -- to follow J. Polgar's example and refuse to compete in women only events. I think only then will we really see what women can do, and that's probably years down the road.

Mig makes an excellent argument.

Though, women's only chess events can only be gradually phased out, and not abruptly abolished by decree. I think the women players themselves are taking steps in the right direction. Humpy usually plays in men's events. Even Hou Yifan played in the boys section in the juniors and came third or something. I think the women players are keen to cross the barriers and be part of the mainstream.

Btw, those who are not aware of the fact -- we have already achieved complete gender parity in computer chess at least. The current computer world champion is a female.

What about "woman golfer" or "woman tennis player"? Let's just leave all sport to whoever is best at it. Abolish women's tennis!

>

posted by playjunior
"Nevertheless, I cannot think of a single female author (from the ones I like) that would be less valuable to me in case I didn't know the gender of the author. To me, it is almost as irrelevant as in chess."

Are you thinking of fiction books, pj? If so, I'd agree. Non-fiction books though in some subjects, I'd disagree.

Anyway, there have been several cases (in US and Australia that I can think of) where an author has won a literary prize for a book purporting to be about some aspect of the black and/or female experience. When the author is revealed to be an old white guy there is outrage and the book's 'value' is diminished.

Similarly, if Mig was impressed by a game, thinking it to be played by two 2750's, he should be disappointed if he were to find it was actually played by a couple of 2500's (male or female).

Yes Drew, I mean fiction. Right now I am reading a collection of short stories, 50 of them-all different authors. Like I said, none of the stories are good because of the race/sex/whatever, either they are good or not.

Sometimes, sex is an explanation why the story is BAD. For example-an author writes about complicated feelings of a man who marries a lady who is two times divorced before. You read it and have an impression that something is missing; as if the character (a man!) is not real, too soft-too feminine, although that is definitely not the intention of the author. Then you find out-the author is female, well, she didn't manage to make it. Her character was too imaginary to a reader, against her intentions.
Another example I recall very well was from Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", when he his main character of the half of the book is male, and probably an impersonation of himself. It reads so well and smooth. Then he describes his partner (female :) ), and I immediately had the feeling that the author is drifting. The character became unnatural, and basically largely spoiled the read...

Sometimes, the gender of the reader matters a lot. I and my male friends never liked those Emily Bronte stuff, and our female friends were never as excited about "The Catcher In The Rye" as we were.

It's not the brains but culture. Russians are chess players, Americans are basket-ball players and so on. It makes sense to have Russian championships, U.S champs... it doesn't scream out loud that Americans are inferior chess players, unless we are giving it that meaning.

Looks like in many countries there are no female players in Fide database at all. I see no problem in giving those who want to play chess possibility to compete also in women's league.

Damians point about junior champs is quite similar I think. I guess Carlsen is not taking part into Norwegian junior championships anymore, but that doesn't prevent many other players wanting to compete there? It's not about who is best but the competition itself which brings to the excitement.

Mig:"As for women's titles, they are beyond salvation and common sense and are an embarrassment for our sport"

Ahh... so they might be, but not because the title itself but the men who are laughing at them.

So I am to only one seeing that there is NO statistical difference between male and female ELO ratings? It just happens to be there are a lot more men playing this game than girls (ratio of 1 woman for every 100 men or so, which would confirm the 1 woman in the top 100.) And who would blame the girls for not wanting to play in rooms full of hormonally overcharged young nerds? I thus partly agree with Mig, but the monopoly of men in chess is being maintained by men's hormones and equal chances on the chess-sex field seem only possible in adult events given that youth championships can be held seperately .. just so to not to discourage girls to play chess.

>The current computer world champion is a female

Excuse me???

To someone else; there are women chess authors - in the UK Houska and Dembo for example. The reason fewer women do it is perhaps exactly that a 2500 woman can make more money than a 2500 man just by playing.

So, why is Judit Polgar so exceptional? Not because she refused to compete with women, or due to some God-given talent setting her completeley apart from everybody else. I believe she is exceptional because she has spent by far the most time with chess in her early years when thinking patterns develop most efficiently and even get hardwired. By far the most in the world, men and women included. Nobody else has skipped school completely and spent all day (8+ hours) by studying chess from a very early age, with one-on-one professional trainers. (Mind you: Surviving that requires a very special person and a very special method.) Of course, elder sisters breaking the way, acting as role models and finetuning the method also helped a lot.

I don't think many girl (or boy, for that matter) could readily duplicate such an environment. Well, maybe the Chinese can, just look Hou is coming... Of course, her Judit-like development should now require having her play mostly against strong male competition, and the Chinese already seems to fail her at that.

Back in the '70s and '80s, it was popular to argue that there were no biological differences between men and women (aside from the extremely obvious, undeniable anatomical differences). The only differences were artificial cultural differences. Girls prefer dolls and clothes while boys prefer balls and toy guns because that's what they were taught was right and proper for their gender. Women's times in the 100m, 400m, etc. runs would one day equal men's. No women in the NFL or NBA? It's just because they are taught to play with dolls as little girls rather than to play football or basketball. Laughable absurdity!

Women DO think different from men, and there is not a shred of doubt that there are innate differences. Could it be that the kinds of thinking that lead to very strong chess play (e.g., spatial visualization, ridiculous competitiveness, obsession with trivial minutiae, relentless anal pursuit of anti-social and non-productive activity for the sake of winning, etc.) are more common among men than among women? If so, there will never be more than a handful of women among the elite, and it may be a long, long time before we see another woman in the top 10. Nonetheless, this level of success (one woman in the top 10 followed by another who has almost cracked the top 100, with a third who has obvious potential to crack the top 100) in open competition between the sexes is totally unparalleled in physical sports.

Maybe someday there'll be a bunch of women who move into the elite chess levels to make women's events superfluous, but, in the meantime, the drama of Kosteniuk and Hou and Koneru is great theater, even if the level of chess does not rival that of Anand, Kramnik, and Carlsen. And if there's financial and cultural support for the women's events, fantastic! Let's see the action!

I am a female and a chess player. I'm not a serious chess player... I'm about ~1800-2000 strength, but devote little time to chess. I'm a physician (busy job), and literally learned how the chess pieces move 4 years ago). Work and life take priority for me right now. I must say that I agree with Mig 100%. My medical specialty is very male-dominated, and going through medical school and residency, I heard so many comments about how "THAT is not a good specialty for a woman" and "You will NEVER have a normal family life or be a good parent if you go into that". One of my male colleagues even asked me if I plan to be a "part-time mom". Funny... no one has ever asked him if he is a "part time dad". I never had second thoughts about pursuing my specialty. From what I observed, I was as good or better at it than the males in my residency program, and moreover I loved doing it. Despite still having to endure some ridiculous comments and attitudes, I now find myself generally accepted and respected in my field. AND I manage to maintain a life outside of medicine, to the extent that any of us do.

I think high-level chess is analagous. There should be no reason that females can't compete with males,if that is what they choose to do (I agree with some posters that there might not be many women who WANT to be professional chess players... just as there aren't many women who WANT to pursue certain medical specialties). Anyone (male or female) who seriously wants to be a chess professional needs to have talent, support, and the ability to work hard. If those ingredients are there, there's no reason men and women shouldn't be competing on an even playing field. Yes, for the first while women might have to put up with chauvinistic attitudes from their peers and some fans, but that's the way it is (unfortunately) with any male-dominated career... and look at the remarkable advances we've made in the last 100 years.

Finally, with respect to Humpy Koneru, I don't think her failure to progress beyond ~2620 has anything to do with her being a woman, or with her innate limitations. It most likely relates to her lack of financial support, and that her only coach has been her father (~2100-rated). Most male players in the same situation would also have difficulty progressing further.

So, to sum it all up, agree with Mig. Woman-specific tournaments, titles and championships are silly and demeaning, and it's time for them to go.

moodle,
There are many, many women who like the women's events and find great support playing in them. Why on earth would you want to deny them that opportunity?

Bizarre.

bunk,
I don't necessarily disagree with girls'/women's events for junior and recreational players. Girls' chess clubs and tournaments are a great way to get girls interested in the game... and for recreational/amateur chess, pretty much anything goes (ie. tournaments for children in grades K-6, seniors' tournaments, womens' tournaments, etc).

The problem I have is with chess at the highest level. The requirements for achieving a WIM or WGM title are lower than the requirements for GM/IM... this seems to imply that the expectations for women are lower... maybe they aren't capable of achieving the IM/GM standards. This is obviously "bunk", as players like Judit, Humpy and Hou have shown us. The fact that there is a "Women's World Championship" implies that women aren't good enough to compete for the "real" world championship... again, this is obviously untrue. Maybe there are few women who want to take chess seriously enough to compete at that level, but there should be no biologic reason why they CAN'T. In my opinion, this doesn't set a good example for young girls starting out in chess... Why shouldn't a young girl dream of becoming WC instead of WWC?

It's not really the same as junior tournaments. For MOST juniors (with some notable exceptions - Carlsen, and Radjabov spring to mind) junior players are not yet ready to compete for the world championship... hence the junior world championship. When the elite junior players get older, they have their chance to compete for the WC. There is no reason that an adult woman who has been raised in the same chess environment as her male counterparts and has the same motivation, should NOT be qualified to compete for the general WC, rather than a second-rate WWC.

The reason that the players in the WWC were "only" rated ~25oo is NOT because women are inferior chess players. Rather, strong players stagnate on a steady diet of weaker opposition. Carlsen, Karjakin and Radjabov only took their play to the next level when they started seeing tougher opponents - something that just doesn't happen for players who play mostly or exclusively women's events. It will be interesting to see what happens with Hou Yifan. If memory serves me correctly, she has approximately the same rating as Magnus did at her age. She now needs to get her feet wet playing stronger opponents (ie. 2650+) on a regular basis. I really hope this happens... It will be tough... I seem to remember a rating slip for Magnus around age 14 or 15 when he started playing in elite events... but it seems the only way for her to achieve Super GM status. She has the talent, I hope she gets the opportunity.

So you see, I don't disagree with girls' or women's events at the recreational level. I DO think we need to dispense with the women's titles and stop the segregation of chess at its highest levels. Right now we definitely have 2 streams, and one is definitely second rate. Women in chess will not be taken seriously until we stop "ghettoizing" women's chess.

Another thing that bothers me... In coverage of the WWC and other women's tournaments, there is always mention of the players' appearance -- comments on their attractiveness (or lack thereof), mockery of Hou's hair barettes, etc. Sometimes this commentary is almost to the exclusion of the chess itself!

When Anand and Ivanchuk meet over the board, you never really read about who is more attractive... You never hear a male player described as a good "ambassador for chess" because of his appearance. Double standard? Maybe it's because there are far more male chess fans than female.

I, for one, find Lenier Dominguez easy on the eyes.

Hi moodle,
You write: "In coverage of the WWC and other women's tournaments, there is always mention of the players' appearance"--I've noticed that too. It is pretty obnoxious, but considering that it is men writing primarily for men, you are VERY unlikely to see any comments about the attractive appearance of Anand, Ivanchuk, or Lenier Dominguez!

Hi moodle,
You write: "In coverage of the WWC and other women's tournaments, there is always mention of the players' appearance"--I've noticed that too. It is pretty obnoxious, but considering that it is men writing primarily for men, you are VERY unlikely to see any comments about the attractive appearance of Anand, Ivanchuk, or Lenier Dominguez!

moodle,

Humpy does have a sponsor as do many of the Indian players.

Moodle,

Are you really a female physician who learned to play chess 4 years ago (after medical school?) and is 1800-2000 level and knows all about Carlsen's rating?

You really think any medical specialty is remotely comparable in mental and sporting requirements to chess? And you don't know of 'biologic' mental differences between males and females?

To me .. your posts don't sound like a 'woman writer' and you don't sound like a doctor.

I am a great ambassador for male chess. I am VERY easy on the eyes, if a few rating points short of Dominguez. And the reports can focus on my looks as much as they like, preferably to the exclusion of my chess. In that way reporting styles can be equalized. Moodle, I for one would be pleased if the elite dressed sharply. It would help chess's media image quite a bit. Ivanchuck plays great but his wooly sweaters are SO last season.

I can see it all now! Ivanchuck loses every game but just LOOK at that Armani suit! He's already got 50 super tourney invites for next year!!

gg, you make a good case for a gender differential when it comes to needless aggression on internet forums, but beyond that I'm not so sure.

Whether the biological differences between men and women mean that men are, on average, better at chess is still a moot point. This debate on gender in high-level science, for instance, is probably relevant: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html

Even if men were known to be better, on average, it still might not make sense to have separate systems and tournaments (as pointed out - lesser opposition when young makes it harder to climb the rating ladder)... though personally I think the present system is probably close to optimal - i.e. the best women chess players can compete in male competitions if they choose, but there's still funding available to ensure there are more than a handful of female chess players. And besides, what would Chessbase do on slow news weeks if they couldn't bring us pictorial reports from obscure Ukrainian women's tournaments :)

moodle, you write: "The fact that there is a 'Women's World Championship' implies that women aren't good enough to compete for the 'real' world championship... again, this is obviously untrue."

No woman now or ever in history has been good enough to compete for the world championship. This is obviously TRUE. If you mean that, in theory, there is no inherent, innate reason why a woman can't some day be good enough to seriously compete for world champion, I would agree, but the numbers of women that break into the elite levels will probably always be small (e.g., if ever in my lifetime there are two women in the top ten at the same time or five in the top 100, I'll eat my hat). Why? One reason is that the kind of crazy, obsessive competitiveness and one-pointed focus on trivialities that playing chess at a high levels requires are much more common among men than women, and that tendency is genetically linked. This certainly doesn't mean that no woman can win the WC, but it means that the numbers of women near the top will most likely always be small.

Hey Moodle, thanks for adding your thoughts as a high-achieving female professional. I appreciate how you picked up Damian's question for Mig about whether the "no female championship" logic shouldn't also apply to a "no junior championship" position. To quote:

It's not really the same as junior tournaments. For MOST juniors (with some notable exceptions - Carlsen, and Radjabov spring to mind) junior players are not yet ready to compete for the world championship... hence the junior world championship. When the elite junior players get older, they have their chance to compete for the WC. There is no reason that an adult woman who has been raised in the same chess environment as her male counterparts and has the same motivation, should NOT be qualified to compete for the general WC, rather than a second-rate WWC.

Good point that youngsters age and improve, but women keep their gender through their prime. But, if what you say is true, then the burden of proof is upon you. Why has this not yet happened, even with women as fully prepared as the Polgars?

And, to open a related thread likely to cause some flames, is a women-only world championship similar to an Arabic-only or African-only world championship, as those two cultures have been under-represented among top grandmasters?

Great questions about the prevalence of comments relating to appearance in news reports of women's chess. As a middle-aged chess male, I'm sometimes guilty of secretly hoping the prettiest woman wins, and secretly thrilled that our new world champion is such a gorgeous young woman.

Where are all the comments about Dominguez or that devilishly handsome Morozevich, who is the world's #2 ? All I've heard were a few journalistic chuckles when he missed the title of Russian Champion a few years ago by oversleeping a critical round... after cavorting with young women the whole night before. A few winks and a nod are all the press gives him, with no direct reference to his great looks. There's something quite unequal going on here.

Perhaps its time for someone like Moodle to compete with chessgoddesses.com by starting the website chesshunks.com? How about a super-GM swimsuit calendar?

moodle, isn't it rude and condescending to berate the WWC and, by implication, great players like Kosteniuk, Koneru, and Hou? Take it easy! Delight in their accomplishments and stop snooting!

That begs the question, though. Could you consider Kosteniuk, Koneru and Hou "great" players if they never went beyond their current level and made an impact on the overall ("male") chess world? I don't think I could, however much I might admire their sporting achievements, character etc. etc.

But Koneru and especially Hou, who's at the very top for her age, still might do that. Moodle seems to admire their talent and want them to reach their full chess-playing potential - which doesn't seem that rude or condescending to me! I'm betting Hou would rather take Anand's title than Kosteniuk's.

If you want to call an end to women's only championships, first equalise the playing field.

Demonstrate that the men will play while cramping and bloated.

Tell them they must lose a litre of blood over 5 days during the event.

Only then you will see how well women will play against men, and you'll probably want the men to go away for their poor skills! Lolls

Posted by rdh:

">The current computer world champion is a female

Excuse me???"

Rybka is a she.

No woman now or ever in history has been good enough to compete for the world championship. This is obviously TRUE.

It's not that true, is it? What with Polgar playing at San Luis an' all.

Rule of thumb for life: internet postings which use the word 'true' in capital letters are invariably bollocks.

My Czech is weak: is Rybka really a female form or merely a dimunitive? I know Kaufman et al have the tiresome habit of calling the thing 'she', but that just reinforces one's view that computer chess people need to get out more, really.

It's both female and diminutive, in Polish & Russian, at least ("ryba" would be a normal fish). Though of course it's generally a mistake in English to use he or she when it's just a matter of grammatical gender. Unless you really think of your chess engine as being alive...

rdh,
Judit has been a spectacular chess player. She's a relentless fighter, gutsy and smart. She even blipped into the top 10 for awhile in 2005. As a result, in San Luis she was given the chance to join the rarified air of champions like Khalifman, Ponomariov, and Kasimdzhanov. But despite the lofty "WC" title FIDE gives to these tournament winners, it's tough to see how the FIDE WC tourneys differed significantly from other elite round robins like Corus and Linares. Of the few players who are strong enough to crack the top ten, very few are strong enough to be a serious threat to become world champion. It's tough to tell which ones are serious threats until they've been near the top long enough to see how they perform at those levels. Judit placed dead last by a full point in San Luis and never was much of a threat to become world champion. Currently, the big three (Topalov, Kramnik, and Anand) are clearly serious world championship contenders. Kamsky? Who knows. If he can beat Topalov and put up a good fight against the WC next year, we'd recognize him as a serious contender. Those are some mighty big "if's" that he needs to conquer to get beyond the pretender status of Khalifman/Ponomariov/Kasimdzhanov. But Polgar didn't get nearly as close as any of these.

Dyou then agree with her that women chess players are good enough to challenge for the world championship? If so, which women? Judit, Koneru, Kosteniuk? They aren't anywhere near the WC and are never going to be. Hou? She's still rising rapidly and may well be there some day, but she is certainly not good enough yet.

gg,
Sorry if I don't conform to your preconceived stereotypes. I am very much female (or was last time I checked). The letters behind my name tell me I'm a doctor... and 16 years of post-secondary education have to count for something.

I may have exaggerated a bit... I learned how to move the chess pieces as a teenager, and belonged to my junior high school's chess club for a year (one of 2 females in a group of ~15). Chess was just like yearbook club for me- something fun that I didn't take seriously. I didn't start playing again or join my local club until 4 years ago when a 10 year-old relative (male) became chess-obsessed. I thought it would be something fun to do with him, and it has been. And what about Carlsen's rating? Anyone who has been a chess fan in the past 5 years knows about Magnus and the other young stars... so what?

Do I really think any medical specialty is comparable in mental and sporting requirements to chess? Hmmm... let's see. Often I'm on call for 72 hour stretches -- a slave to my pager, with no guaranteed time to eat or sleep. In a sleep-deprived state, I synthesize information from multiple sources to make rapid decisions that could mean life or death for my patients. I perform procedures that require intricate hand-eye coordination, also while sleep-deprived and subject to endless distractions. In training, I did all of this while studying for exams - medical school, residency, fellowship... I can't comment on the life of a professional chess player, as I have never been one. I will tell you that medicine can be VERY gruelling mentally and physically - some specialties more than others.

Now that I'm done justifying myself and my background, I will say that of course I admire the top female chess players! I just want them to showcase their talent somewhere where it matters. I don't want to repeat everything I've already said, but the WWC seems really a tournament for IM/weak GM level players, rather than a "world championship". This is NOT meant to insult the players, it's simply a comment on the strength of the tournament. I think many of the top female players are capable of great improvement (rating and quality of chess), but they have to be given the chance to face stronger opposition! For me, being #20 in the world with a mid-2700 rating is far more impressive than WINNING the WWC and having a 2550 rating.

Of course, not every girl (or boy) who decides to take up chess has the ability or desire to compete at the highest levels.

As for the comment that women are not "good enough" to compete at the highest levels in chess... I think someone hit the nail on the head above by saying that the female:male chess-player ratio is very small at all levels... therefore, we shouldn't expect to see 50%, or even 5% female at the GM level. My hope is that more girls will take up chess, more of the current top female players will integrate themselves into the general tournaments (rather than the women's tournaments), and we will see this ratio change.

moodle, if we can't expect to see women comprise even 5% of GMs, it is silly to advocate doing away with high profile, popular, well-supported events like WWC. It just seems cruel to agitate doing away with it in the hopes that someday maybe 5% of the top players will be female.

And if the male:female ratio is very small at all levels, so what?! If women want to play chess, they'll do it, and women's events make it both easier and more attractive.

mishanp, thanks - yes, of course, I was forgetting lots of languages have masculine/feminine distinctions between things things like ceilings and floors.

Bunk - I suppose it depends what you mean by 'compete for'. I agree no woman has ever been a realistic prospect for world champion and quite possibly none ever will be.

Judit Polgar is pretty strong, but not quite at the level of strongest males. I'm talking about top 5 or top 10 males. The only reason she played in San Luis was that the FIDE president picked her, and she ended up miserably. And the only reason she played in the next cycle matches was because she played in San Luis.

She had her great moments, such as 1st, Madrid 1994 (above Kamsky, Shirov, Salov, Bareev), and 2nd place, Corus 2003 (above Kramnik, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Grischuk, Shirov, Bareev, Ponomariov). But her lifetime record is not at the level of the big guys.

Also, she's now over 30, and I'm not sure she's going to improve much beyond her current level.

>>In a sleep-deprived state, I synthesize information from multiple sources to make rapid decisions that could mean life or death for my patients. I perform procedures that require intricate hand-eye coordination, also while sleep-deprived and subject to endless distractions.<<

Moodles, I don't suppose you're the sleep-deprived doctor that killed my best friend's wife in Baltimore, are you? Or the one who killed a pregnant woman in Kitchener, Ontario(oh yes...I knew her...it would have been their first child) by ordering a lethal injection of something that was to ease the birth (sure did ease it...killed mother and baby, then they tried to cover it up, arrogant unfeeling bastards).

The sleep deprived and drunks are difficult to tell apart just by looking at performance in mental and physical tasks. If you doctors are so into saving lives, why don't the hell you band together to stop this idiocy especially in medical school. If the doctors won't combat this (get political and make the system change) then the public should. A doctor who makes a fatal mistake from sleep deprivation should be prosecuted the same way we'd prosecute a drunk doctor. All this time and we're still so backwards. How many more do you have to cripple and kill before you change things? Do you think just because you can be doctors that the limitations of human physiology don't apply to you? Is this an ego-thing to boast about how little sleep you get? From my stays in the hospital, that's sure the impression I get. Damn damn damn!!

--now returning you to your regularly scheduled on-topic debate--

I find it bizarre that a proposal to entirely do away with women's titles, tournaments and championships could possibly be presented as a feminist initiative. It would have the immediate effect of alienating 99% of professional female chess players and compelling a majority of them to quit altogether. While it might appear inconceivable to affluent western hobby players with the leisure time to get worked up about the perceived misogyny of women's only events, female professionals, especially from places like Eastern Europe and China, rely on chess for a living. Thanks to greater interest from sponsors, 2300-2400 level females can get by financially from playing chess, whereas their male counterparts struggle. Abolishing women's tournaments would simply take away their bread and butter, not compel all of them to magically shoot up 400 points. Would it be a great feat of social equality if all 2300-2400s, regardless of sex, became equally destitute?

Women's titles and tournaments provide incentive and income, thus, in my opinion, facilitating women in achieving their full potential. Nobody is forcing women to inhabit only their own gender-segregated sphere: they can become (male) IMs, GMs and even WC as they progress. For exceptionally talented players like Hou and Koneru, achievements in women's chess are stepping stones to even greater things. And for the women who legitimately peak at 2300-2400, either due to the limits of ability or ambition, at least they still have chess careers - depriving them of titles and playing opportunities is not going to turn them into a legion of Kasparovs. Judit Polgar demonstrated that anything is possible, but at the moment it's simply a fact that women are extremely underrepresented in chess. Maybe we should wait until the male to female ratio of chess players remotely evens out, before we start scheming to take away the livelihoods of "mere" WGMs?

Actually, I do often read about how handsome and dashing Morozevich and Cheparinov are. If they're not there, of course we don't talk about looks, because the other top male players are ugly.

And yeah, when Judit, Kosteniuk, or Stefanova are playing, of course we also talk about looks.

An interesting aspect to consider is that there seems to be a bias among the males, where ugly males are more likely to play chess, whereas the females seem to have the normal range of attractiveness in the normal dispersal. So this would naturally lead to a difference in coverage on the topic, for obvious and multiple reasons.

As for Mig's posting, it's really rather pathetic and transparent; he doesn't respect women, and won't until they man up and do things his way.

Well the notion that performing possibly life endangering actions while sleep deprived is in some way meritorious is surely worthy of attack. I find his comments well-made. Does this blog have anything to do with chess anyway? Who talks about games?
(Grin)

And the notion that performing possibly life endangering actions while sleep deprived is in some way proof of potential to become a GM.

Take 100 'normal' intelligent kids and train them for 16 years, probably 90%+ could become perfectly competent, if arrogant, doctors.

Take 100 'normal' intelligent kids and train them for 16 years, very few will become grandmasters. China has tried this.

Medicine is not a competitive sport. Success in medicine does not require special innate talent.

'Arrogant' in the UK is shorthand for 'dares to express an opinion different from mine and doesn't massage my ego often enough, preferably by politely agreeing with my most uninformed proclamations'.

'Arrogant' on this thread means 'self-deluded enough to think becoming a doctor is as mentally challenging and competitive as becoming a GM'.

If it's really important to determine whether becoming a doctor is as, or more mentally challenging than becoming a GM, we could do worse than ask those who've done both.Gregory Serper and Helmut Pfleger, please help!!!

Serper? Or do you mean Alex Sherzer? (maybe both...)

I'm neither a doctor nor a GM. But being somewhat tied to economics, my version of common sense strongly points toward success in medicine as likely to be more intellectually demanding, competitive and exclusive (in the meritocratic sense) than success at chess.

That old-hat concept of incentives, you know. So yesterday, thinking that the broad mass of people - those with and without talent alike - might respond to something as crass as money. The way professional sports tend to attract the most talented athletes away from purusing no doubt fulfilling careers as dancers or health-club instructors.

Hippie slackers and their intellectual apologists are welcome to disagree. As are sour-grapes types marooned in professions that are neither demanding nor remunerative. (And if past is prologue, some of you will rush to show your true colors by flinging epithets like, "Republican!" at me.)

Of course, one can also compare the sizes of the pools of people who compete in the two areas. Those seeking to become doctors: 5 - 10% of the entire college educated population in developed countries (plus some portion in developing countries as well). Those seeking to become GMs? Well, in the U.S. at any given time, by the loosest possible definition, perhaps 10,000. (That's roughly the number of repeating USCF members who play in at least one rated tournament a year. ONE TOURNAMENT A YEAR! You'll agree I'm being VERY liberal about who might be attempting to become a GM.)

So, given the relative numbers of people trying to get through the two pipelines, which one do you think requires a tougher filtering mechanism?

You have to consider how many of that 5-10& make it, though, Jon. Not that I know the answer, but I bet it's less than the 1 in 1000 or so make it through to be US GMs.

Loving the US perspective that becoming a doctor's about money rather than social service, by the way.

If male chess players wore make-up and form-fitting shirts with their belly-buttons showing, you'd get comments on their appearance too.

Good point by rdh about numbers who make it through. I probably shouldn't have given any figures, simply because I'm mired in the U.S. -- which looks like fertile ground for solid stats about doctors (notwithstanding the objection that doctors elsewhere may have more altruistic motives), but seems to be an outlier in terms of the pipeline for GMs.

That 10,000 figure I gave for U.S. players pursuing GM status was (as I stated earlier) a ridiculous overstatement. Thinking more realistically, I doubt there are more than 200 individuals who reside in the U.S. right now who have any serious ambitions to ever go for a GM title. And I'm including within that number not only pros who are already IMs, but also promising scholastic players who don't have any title, indeed, who might be rated under 2200 at present. But on the other hand, almost no one in this country ever makes it through the pipeline: I think only 4 or 5 U.S. residents have earned GM titles over the past 5 years.

So for an approximate count of people moving through the GM pipeline and emerging from it, we'd best look at some other geographic region. Central and Eastern Europe suggest themselves; but even the UK would probably be more representative than the U.S.

Alexandra has also just won the Beijing Mind Games Blitz title in the women's division. That girl is on a role!

Kosteniuk told an interviewer that her recent pregnancy and early motherhood forced her to change from her usual training techniques, into a more reading & contemplative training format. Maybe her successes immediately afterward provide a clue about optimal training, or the need for variation or well-rounded training?

The publicly available Elo stats showing the differences between male & female chess professionals is the only justification needed for separate women's divisions/events.
The difference in male-female Elo stats is not caused by innate/genetic differences in brain power, but something else in nature is a hugely powerful force that is creating the difference.
Unless you do not believe in cause and effect?

Wearing a policewoman's helmet, what's more, which makes it all the more impressive.

Anyone got a link to those photos on her paysite of her 'doing her exercises' in a bikini on Miami beach? I suppose the urge to do that sort of thing must be the hugely powerful force of nature GeneM is referring to.

On the doctor thing, by the way, I'm not a doctor but I am a lawyer and I suppose it could be said that I've tried to become a GM, and it is clear to me that the latter is many orders of magnitude harder than qualifying as a barrister or solicitor. Rising to the top of the latter professions might be a different matter.

rdh, you're ignoring what Taleb calls "the testimony of the cemetary" - those who attempted to traverse a road that can be pictured as the mirror image of your career path.

To wit: Aren't there a great many GMs who lack what it takes to get through law school and bar exams? (Or, to return to the original question, to gain admission to medical school - still a rather fine-grained filter in the US at least - then get through medical school and the rigors of internship and residency?)

Or are you among the dreamers like GM Levitt who maintain that most GMs really are brighter than the rest of us at things besides chess?

Chess, music and math seem to involve a specific
"part" of the brain. You can have eight-year-old chess, music, or math geniuses, but I wouldn't give much for their opinions about, say, Russian politics.

It's not meaningful that some GMs could not become doctors or lawyers - they may just not be interested or lack essential educational background. Of course, the chance of a doctor without any chess background being capable of becoming a GM, even if they wanted, is virtually zero. Of course, Moodle may surprise us with her continued rapid progress in chess.

Any normal person who is admitted to law school or medical school will graduate. The performance equivalent to graduate and succeed in those professions is not 2500. Maybe a newly graduated doctor is about 1600 strength?

Every chess club has its doctors, lawyers, etc. who hack around hanging pieces and missing cheap tricks just like any other happy amateur.

Wasn't it David Norwood (2600 in chess) who said he could clean up in the financial industry because everyone else was thinking at 2200 level?

To show that its hard to become a GM, there are a lot of chess professionals (teachers now) who are IM but know a tremendous amount about chess. Do you really think IMs like Jeremy Silman or Andrew Martin know less about chess than most doctors know about medicine? Don't you think they would like to become GMs? Some limitation of sporting or thinking performance must prevent it. For a doctor, time (experience) is the main factor in progression, a medical chief will more likely be old than young.

Strange observation, Jon, I'm quite sure that most GMs have higher than average IQs, if that's what 'brighter than the rest of us' means. Are you really suggesting that's not true?

You're right that drop-out rates are important, of course, but then in a way people 'drop out' of chess long before they get near to a tournament. If you spend time coaching a group of random seven-year-olds, it's more or less immediately apparent that none of them have the talent to be GMs (unless some of them do, of course). I don't think you'd find many groups of seven-year-olds where you could say the same about being doctor or lawyer.

"I'm quite sure that most GMs have higher than average IQs."
really? on what basis? merely your opinion. GMs are good at chess. Where are the examples of their world domination in any other fields? on the contrary, the statement above is endemic of the kind of inward thinking that chess tends to foster, cf a certain Fischer.

Talk about "thinking at at 2200 level." Here we are on a chess blog. Of course nearly everyone here is going to think the best chess players are smarter than the average person, and smarter than people who are successful in other highly competitive fields.

Where's sourpuss Irv now that we need him? He could inject a real-world perspective into this discussion.

Typical of the "insular thinking" that chesshire cat just decried, is gg's suggestion that "IMs like Jeremy Silman or Andrew Martin" know more about chess than most doctors know about medicine.

It's inconceivable that such a silly suggestion would be found anywhere but a chess blog. Of course most doctors (most good ones, anyway) know more about medicine than teaching IMs know about chess.

Actually, rdh can supply an informed answer to that particular question. You're an IM, rdh. Which do you know more about: chess, or law?

Most people on and off chess blogs think the best chess players are smarter than the average person.

rdh has already given his opinion about how much easier it is to become a lawyer than a GM.

I am not sure of your profession, Jon, some kind of paralegal by inference from past postings, maybe.

I am sure you could easily have done a law degree or a medical degree. And you spent a lot of time on chess and never became a GM or IM. I wonder why? What do those 15 year old GMs have that you lack?

Most people in real life think chess players are weird, nerdy and geeky social misfits; objects of derision and amusement rather than 'smart'. Of course these are schemata, simplifications of reality in the mids of observers, and just as inaccurate as the hopeful suggestion that 'chessplayers are smart'.

I can't believe we're having this discussion. IQ tests are divided into four parts, one of which is visual/spatial awareness. Does anyone really think GMs aren't going to score above the average on that part of the test. Seriously?

Moreover my experience of life has shown me that most GMs are intelligent in other fields. Will Watson didn't seem to have much trouble becoming a top lawyer after he quit chess, not Dharshan Kumaran becoming doctor, nor Michael Stean becoming a partner in a big accountancy practice, nor John Nunn a university lecturer. And these examples could be multiplied. About half of UK GMs are graduates from either Oxford or Cambridge. These are usually taken to be signs of high IQs.

The US believes chess players are nerds to a greater extent than the rest of the world, partly because of Fischer and partly because their culture worships money and worldly success more than many places.

As which do I know more about, chess or law; it's hard to say. I know virtually nothing about either: no law outside the narrow confines of my particular speciality, and hardly anything about chess either.

Yep, it's an absurd discussion. Of course GM IQs are going to be above average (as are those of doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, poets etc. etc.). It's not the same as saying GMs are superior beings. Besides pure IQ you can't become a GM (I assume) without having an exceptional memory, so GMs should be able to excel in most academic tests, if they so choose.

Yes... this discussion is an old debate. What people do not realize is that comparison between advanced degrees and chess titles is spurrious. I've heard people compare degrees with chess titles. That is the most ridiculous comparision I've ever heard of. Both represent entirely different measurements. The similarity is that there is a system had defines the level of mastery, but the processes (and purpose of mastery) are totally different.

When one goes to university to get an advanced degree, they are laregly confined to a home institution where they are nurtured through a rigorous program with the guidance and instruction of professors and advisors. There is a certain amount of time this happens. The entire world has built these well-oiled systems to support the production of intellectual capital. Obviously there will be more doctors, professors and lawyers produced given the intricate structure and financial support. So to say it's easier to get a terminal degree than say a GM title may be more of a function of how well the systems operate. If FIDE had an academic structure for the attainment of titles which included chess courses, comprehensive exams, research study and tournament play, there would certainly be a LOT more GMs, but chess is NOT an academic subject or exercise.

Chess for all practical purposes is the same as any other sport. It would be more accurate to compare Garry Kasparov with Michael Jordan than to compare him with Dr. Albert Einstein or even Dr. Ken Rogoff (a world-class economist who is a GM). I believe people get sidetracked because chess is a "mind sport" and there is this tendancy to take all "mind activities" as equal and easily compared. They are not.

The idea of a degree is easily understood and these institutions have an obligation to see that a student finishes. The same is not true in the chess world. Nobody cares whether you get a GM title or not... except the person that is seeking it. Thus, it's going to take a lot more individual initative to accomplish it... and yes more challenging in that regard. It is not because of the task itself but because of the process, the conditions and the demand for the accomplishment.

Lastly, there is a perceived benefit to having a doctors, professors and lawyers in a society. Again... there is a motivation to see that these professionals get these terminal degrees for the betterment of society. How do we measure the tangible benefit of chess to society? There is certainly a benefit, but it is abstract and not easily applied. These differences make it very difficult to compare the two.

Daaim, I don't think the major differences that exist between professional/academic degrees and chess titles in terms of qualification processes and purpose, make it absurd to compare the amounts of talent (/intelligence) and/or effort needed to attain them.

The degree of precision and thought in this discussion is really quite low. (That observation isn't directed at Daaim's comment, but at those above it - including my own, as will be shown.)

For instance, misnap says GMs must do better on IQ tests - as though that was an authoritative measure of pure intellect, which is what's being debated here.

gg makes one false assumption after another about me. rdh mentions a number of GMs he knows who are smart individuals, as though that should be viewed as evidence of anything. If someone here were to mention a dozen individual GMs who were boorish people with no discernible abilities beyond chess, would that prove the inverse? (I do admit the Oxbridge stats are suggestive, though probably far from dispositive since there must be other reasonable explanations.)

Now I realize that even my own earlier comments failed to distinguish between talent/intellect and degree of effort, in relation to the pivotal question whether it's "harder" to become a GM or a successful doctor. Most others' comments are equally deficient in this regard, too. Yet it's an essential distinction to make in this discussion.

At least no one here has gone to the comic lengths of GM Levitt, who published a book purporting to prove a linear relationship between FIDE rating and IQ.

Levitt came up with a specific formula, I think each 100 Elo points meant you were 10 IQ points smarter, something like that.

Liz Vicary later turned that proposition on its head, when she polled readers of her blog whether they'd be willing to "trade" (permanently) a 10 point reduction in their own IQ, to achieve a 100 point gain in their chess rating.

(For my part, I think it would be more interesting to ask chess players how they'd structure hypothetical trade-offs between rating, IQ, and size of their male organ.)

"For instance, misnap says GMs must do better on IQ tests - as though that was an authoritative measure of pure intellect, which is what's being debated here".

Actually, I said GMs must do better than average on IQ tests in response to Cheshire Cat who denied they would. Presumably you would't disagree with me.

On your general points - as I understand it you're denying it's more difficult/exclusive to become a GM than to become a doctor or lawyer. Which strikes me as simply wrong (your only loophole is extreme competition between sufficiently capable candidates raising the bar, but then that has nothing to do with the "pure intellect" you seemed to want to talk about).

The training for law and medicine doesn't require anything specific beyond a good general level of intelligence. Becoming a GM requires very particular talents, inevitable implying there are far fewer people capable of becoming GMs than lawyers or doctors.

Note I don't for a second think that makes GMs "better" in any general sense, just different. And you're perhaps missing something salient about chess blogs when it comes to assuming we're biased in favour of GMs (and think of them as Gods who could dominate in any field) - most readers of a chess blog are patzers, or little better, and yet presumably don't consider themselves worthless. If you want to go further and claim most GMs wouldn't be capable of becoming lawyers or doctors then I think that's just your own wish fulfilment. You need specific skills that might be of limited application to become a GM, but you're also going to struggle without more general qualities like speed and agility of thought and a decent memory. So, alas, most GMs would be able to become doctors if they felt like it and didn't spend all their time at a chessboard...

By the way, what exactly do you mean by "pure intellect" and are you really sure it doesn't correlate to IQ, however imperfect a measure that might be?

mishanp,

"So, alas, most GMs would be able to become doctors if they felt like it and didn't spend all their time at a chessboard..."

I believe the assumption that GMs would excel in any subject if they devoted their time is anecdotal. Again... the entire argument is dependent on the environment in which these activities are attempted. This is a very important point. If you had well-funded academies for chess (as you found in the old Soviet Union and increasingly in China and India), you can produce a large amount of Grandmasters. The conditions for attainment are important to the success of the task.

Certainly there has to be specific talents for chess, but that is also true when aspiring to become a surgeon, mathematician or a physicist. You ignore this fact. Are you saying a GM can become a Ph.D. in mathematics if he wanted to? Physics? Molecular Biology? Neurosurgery? Computer Science? Hard to say.

This is why chess is not to be compared to academics, but maybe other sports or even some other mind sports like go or shogi. There is NO relation between the process of getting the GM title and the process of getting an MD or PhD. The similarities are that both take incredible focus, mental discipline and dedication (true in all activities requiring mastery). However, the intellectual process of attainment is totally different and dependant on the environment.

Daaim - I didn't say they'd excel at any subject, just that law and medicine have general enough entrance requirements to mean that most GMs would be able to become a lawyer or a doctor (not necessarily in all specialisations, or at the very top of their field). I agree that e.g. becoming a professional mathematician, musician etc. requires more specific skills, so I wouldn't make any claims for GM success there. I also agree that comparing academic titles to the GM title makes little sense, but I don't see that I did that.

mishanp,

OK... I understand. It's a open question. This debate keeps resurfacing.

Personally, I'm not sure what would make a GM any more capable in medicine or law than a non-GM. It may be possible to transfer the mental discipline over to academics, but it's hard to point to anything else that gives a GM tangible advantages. We all may assume that GMs would be as focused in medicine or law as they are in chess. It's certainly possible, but it has happened in relatively few instances.

Interesting.

I agree, the only obvious similar requirements to excel in chess and math, etc, are just focus and discipline. But notice that even these depend on personal interests. Somebody might be able to strongly focus in chess, without being able to do that in anything else, just because the extent of his interest towards those subjects differ. I believe Fischer in perhaps an very good example of this case. His focus and dedication in chess is perhaps unmatched, but he was never able to transfer those to any other field.

So perhaps there is not much that could be transferred from chess to other fields in a big way, except some basic improvements in discipline, systematic thinking of possibilities, etc. But nothing that could transfer at the expert level.

I don't even understand what we're debating here. Possibly not EVERY GM could requalify as a doctor or other professional - one would like to think the drunks would struggle, for a start. But a much larger proportion of GMs could do so than is true of the population at large. And the same with obtaining PhD's, etc.

Is anyone seriously disputing that? I'm beginning to wonder if some of you people actually know any GMs.

> perhaps there is not much that could be transferred from chess to other fields in a big way..

depends of the "field", not math, philosophy or medicince but yes to other games as bridge or poker and gaming like activities as stock-market gambling and "analysis"

Not maths?? Are you serious?

rdh, the argument is quite simple.

All doctors have mighty intellects.
Moodle is a doctor so she has a mighty intellect.
GMs are of average intelligence at best.
All doctors could therefore easily become GMs, but they are too busy making money.
Moodle is a doctor so she could easily become a GM.
Therefore all those professional chess women who are not GMs should just darn well buckle down and do it, or admit they are morally weak compared to Moodle.

>Not maths?? Are you serious?

Of course I am.
Is there any evidence to support a high correlation between math and chess abilities ?

The kind of combinatorial intelligence and eidetic memory needed for success in chess is similar to that involved in doing mentally very fast trivial computations.
That's neat and spectacular, now and then such "math-geniuses" become subject of TV shows, but , alas, for higher mathematics and abstract reasoning something of a different kind is needed.

If nothing else I'd be prepared to bet a higher percentage of UK GMs have maths O-levels than of the population at large. Or alternatively, two of them are university lecturers in maths, out of a sample of 50 or whatever. That's also a proportion rather considerably above the average,

Take a GM like John Federowicz, who has a regular-guy, working-class, kind of anti-intellectual demeanor. If you spend 2 minutes talking to him, you could tell that he's extremely smart, thoughtful, and humane.

I would say that GMs are, by-and-large, very bright people.

The only thing I've never liked is the self-serving argument of chess teachers, that "chess will raise your child's grades in school by improving his or her concentration, discipline, and strategic thinking." Cut me a break.

Chess could be good for lots of kids, to show them that they can excel in an intellectual endeavor. But promotional material by chess-in-the-schools people would have parents thinking, "Teach your kids chess and they will become doctors and lawyers."

If I am not mistaking, did'nt both Lasker and Euwe have doctor's degrees?

And Kamsky is a lawyer, right?

Lasker was an excellent mathematician. (He proved the primary
decomposition theorem for ideals in polynomial rings, back in
the days before Emmy Noether).

rdh

What's your evidence that a MUCH LARGER proportion of GMs could requalify as professionals or PhD?

Yes, I am disputing it.

I am also disputing the correlation with mathematics. Looks only anecdotal to me.

I've named loads of GMs who have so qualified and others have named more. Maybe you should produce some who've tried and failed?

Other than that I can't be bothered to produce any evidence, I'm afraid. If you knew any GMs you'd see it was obvious. If you don't agree, fine. Have a nice life.

So rdh is pretty much throwing in the towel, it sounds from his last comment. "I know lots of smart GMs, so that proves GMs in general are smarter than the average." (my paraphrase)

Hmm...if that's the way a lawyer applies logic, then maybe rdh is right after all: It can't be that hard to qualify as a lawyer, in the UK at least.

And I just recalled a potential refutation of even a seemingly obvious strength of GMs that rdh alluded to earlier - which quite possibly isn't. To wit: "IQ tests are divided into four parts, one of which is visual/spatial awareness. Does anyone really think GMs aren't going to score above the average on that part of the test. Seriously?"

My knowledge of this might be sorely out of date. But surely some of you recall the classic study of "chunking," done in the 1960s and widely taught in cognitive psychology courses (by Newell and Simon, maybe?) It used chess positions to test pattern-memory in strong chess players versus non-players.

Those researchers concluded that GMs (or whatever their strong-player group consisted of, presumably at least IMs, which for that period were equivalent to today's GMs in degree of eliteness within the chess world) were NO DIFFERENT FROM THE GENERAL POPULATION in pattern-recognition memory ability.

The GMs outperformed the control group ONLY in remembering game-like chess positions. In contrast, for "general" positions - where pieces were randomly placed on the board - there was no difference between the GMs and the control subjects' ability to remember the positions.

Again, this was just one (albeit highly influential) study, performed many years ago. Since I'm not in the field, I claim no knowledge of subsequent research that might change the picture. Still, in the absence of other evidence, this famous result seems to weaken or refute the claim that GMs are superior to average people even in visual/spatial awareness, generally defined.

>So rdh is pretty much throwing in the towel, it sounds from his last comment. "I know lots of smart GMs, so that proves GMs in general are smarter than the average." (my paraphrase)..

rdh's mistaken conclusion despite extensive first hand experience : "I know lots of smart GMs", can be understood if one realizes that rdh mistakenly takes himself as having at least average intelligence.

So, GMs are average in IQ and Jon Jacobs and Ovidiu are much below average?

Jon - is it hard to qualify as a lawyer in the US? Is it hard to become a GM? Jon, if your life depended on getting a GM title or a law degree (by honest means) within 5 years, which would you pursue? Which would be more likely to result in success?

Can anyone advance a hypothesis to suggest why the mean and standard deviation of IQ of GMs (the top of a thinking game) should be equal to the average mean (100) and standard deviation of the general population?

It seems perverse to suppose that high IQ would be of no benefit to a chess player, such that top chess players would not tend to be higher in general intelligence than the average.

Thanks, gg, you saved me the effort of posting the same. I'm also in awe at your restraint in responding to Ovidiu's idiocy :)

>it seems perverse to suppose that high IQ would be of no benefit to a chess player>

Does chess need intelligence? — A study with young chess players

Merim Bilalića, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, Peter McLeoda and Fernand Gobetb
aOxford University, United Kingdom bBrunel University, United Kingdom

Received 7 June 2006;
revised 19 September 2006;
accepted 20 September 2006.
Available online 30 October 2006.

Although it is widely acknowledged that chess is the best example of an intellectual activity among games, evidence showing the association between any kind of intellectual ability and chess skill has been remarkably sparse. One of the reasons is that most of the studies investigated only one factor (e.g., intelligence), neglecting other factors relevant for the acquisition of chess skill (e.g., amount of practice, years of experience). The present study investigated the chess skill of 57 young chess players using measures of intelligence (WISC III), practice, and experience. Although practice had the most influence on chess skill, intelligence explained some variance even after the inclusion of practice. When an elite subsample of 23 children was tested, it turned out that intelligence was not a significant factor in chess skill, and that, if anything, it tended to correlate negatively with chess skill. This unexpected result is explained by a negative correlation between intelligence and practice in the elite subsample. The study demonstrates the dangers of focusing on a single factor in complex real-world situations where a number of closely interconnected factors operate.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4M7CDHB-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=872907e903a9ce221ea8a4d91d189155

Jon Jacobs: "Hmm...if that's the way a lawyer applies logic, then maybe rdh is right after all: It can't be that hard to qualify as a lawyer, in the UK at least."

Ovidiu: "rdh's mistaken conclusion ... can be understood if one realizes that rdh mistakenly takes himself as having at least average intelligence."

It doesn't say much about the strength of these two commenters' argument that they can't discuss an (utterly trivial) academic issue without denegerating into unprovoked passive-aggressive insults. Um, Ovidiu, I'm pretty sure a lawyer/IM is not mistaken in deeming his own intelligence "at least average".

Ovidiu - you quote an abstract that explains away it's own "unexpected result", and points out that otherwise "intelligence explained some variance". If you look up "chess" and "intelligence" at the same site you found that you come up with a couple of articles that also suggest at least a modest correlation between chess ability and general intelligence:

http://tinyurl.com/4gb4zx
"The findings suggest that superior cognitive performance and the underlying cortical activation are not only a function of knowledge and domain-specific competences but also of the general efficiency of the information processing system."

http://tinyurl.com/3km45v
"Correlation and regression analyses revealed a clear-cut moderate relationship between general (and in particular numerical) intelligence and the participants’ playing strengths, suggesting that expert chess play does not stand in isolation from superior mental abilities."

Even if the correlation's small, it's pretty much inconceivable that the absolute elite of chess players are not going to be of above average intelligence.

>Even if the correlation's small, it's pretty much inconceivable that the absolute elite of chess players are not going to be of above average intelligence.>

If "the correlation found is small" then this the same thing as saying "it is very much conceivable that the absolute elite of chess players are not going to be of above average intelligence".

You should have also pasted all paragraph :

" expert chess play does not stand in isolation from superior mental abilities. The strongest predictor of the attained expertise level, however, was the participants’ chess experience which highlights the relevance of long-term engagement for the development of expertise. "

But that is what we knew already : you need not a high IQ but you need dedication to the game, hard work and fanatism to succeed.

PS

Try re-reading these days Em.Lasker old "chess manual". Lasker goes at lenght to explain and exemplify why in chess high intelligence is not the issue.

rdh,

I don't know what you mean by LOADS of GMs, but I think currently there are about 1000 grandmasters. Is the percentage of them that are successful as professionals MUCH larger than in the general population?

Also, I guess we should define what qualifies as "professional". Does getting a certain degree in any field qualify? In the US and europe (where most GMs are) getting a degree is not considered a spectacular feat, even within the general population.

Also, as somebody said, that fact that GMs are scarce (suggesting they are harder to attain) only shows the lack of institutionalized process and general interest in the GM title.

Sorry by accident I typed in rdh's name as sender.
The previous posting was mine.

Ovidiu,

No-one claimed IQ is the determining factor in chess ability, simply that the specific mental abilities required for chess don't exist in isolation from more general mental abilities (unless you think all GMs are idiot savants).

Re: the small correlation. If there's a modest correlation between IQ and chess ability in a small range of chess ability (one of those articles mentioned 2300 as the limit of their survey & your child study presumably involved much lower ratings) then even a small increase in IQ with rating is likely to mean GMs are significantly above average.

Again, do you really think that the average GM is likely to have a lower IQ than the average university student, high school teacher or policeman(all above average in terms of IQ)?

Ovidiu,

Did you read the whole article by Bilalic et al, or just the abstract? I downloaded the whole paper and found some interesting information. The data certainly do not reflect GM-level performance but still...

The study covered 57 children from 4 schools in a single UK county (Oxfordshire). The mean age was 10.7 years.The average IQ of the whole group was 122.

The 'elite' subgroup of 23 children were all competitive players with a mean estimated Elo (converted from BCF ratings) of 1603 (range 1390 to 1835), not bad for such little kids.

The average IQ of this 'elite' group was 133 (going up to 157), compared to 114 for the non-elite group.

The authors say of the high IQ scores of the elite group 'the scores .. by themselves present evidence that intelligence plays a role in the process of chess skill acquisition.

By the way, when you went to chess club at school, who came in and beat you? The bright kids or the average kids?

p.s. and are you sure Rubinstein was stupid. As far as I can gather he suffered from schizophrenia and ended up in a mental institution, but then Nietszche developed the same illness and even you probably wouldn't consider him a fool.

To be honest, I think you'd have an incredibly difficult task to try and find even a couple of GMs who wouldn't perform above average on IQ tests. The burden of proof really is with you.

mishanp wrote:

>It's no different to other fields - professors, writers, doctors etc. all tend to have high IQs, but you'd probably struggle to find a close relationship between IQ and specific achievements in their field. >

Or probably not.
The average IQ of PhD/MD degree holders is higher than 95 percent of the general population.

> The burden of proof really is with you.

I don't have to prove anything, I took issue with rdh's belief in the existence of a strong correlation and asked for the proof/researach.

In general, one doesn't have to prove the non-existence of something (say, atehists don't have to prove the non-existence of God ) the burden of proof is always with those who assert positively "there is X" .

I thought Rubinstein was an exceptionally able student of the Torah or whatever it is very traditional Jews used to study at the time? Seems unlikely he was stupid to me.

>I thought Rubinstein was an exceptionally able student of the Torah or whatever it is very traditional Jews used to study at the time?

He did not finish school, he gave up for chess at 16 years old.

mishanp wrote : "The average IQ of PhD/MD degree holders is higher than 95 percent of the general population...Yes, as the average IQ of GMs almost certainly is"

Your certainity is empty talking. The only study targeting specific chess-GM's general IQ has found :

"Djakow, Petrowski, and Rudik (1927) studied eight of the best grandmasters of the time. They did not find differences with a control sample on general intelligence or visuo-spatial memory, with the exception of memory tasks where the material to be recalled was closely related to chess."

Djakow, I. N., Petrowski, N. W., & Rudik, P. A. (1927).
Psychologie des Schachspiels.
Berlin: de Gruyter

You accept a 1927 study (did you read the whole study) on 8 grandmasters but reject rdh's evidence based on a lot more than 8 grandmasters.

Ovidiu, you lack a HYPOTHESIS - why should it be reasonable that GM are of only average intelligence? Think!!!!

I appreciate Rubinstein did not complete his rabbinical studies (if that's the word I want) but I thought it was commonly accepted that he had been an excellent student.

>You accept a 1927 study (did you read the whole >study) ?..

No, I have tried to but the orginal paper seems impossible to find on the net.
However the "Djakov, Petrovsky, Rudik -1927" research appears to be a classic of cognitive psychology and it is also remarkable for the chess buffs because it had as subjects the GMs participants to the Moscow 1925 Super-tournament.
I learnt about it via a contemporary paper which makes reference to Djakov et. al :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16441964

How intellectual is chess ? Reply to Howard
J Biosoc Sci. 2006 May;38(3):423-6.

Howard's (2005) claim that male dominance in chess is 'consistent with the evolutionary psychology view that males predominate at high achievement levels at least partly because of ability differences' is based on the premise that top level chess skill depends on a high level of IQ and visuospatial abilities. This premise is not supported by empirical evidence. In 1927 Djakow et al. first showed that world-class chess players do not have exceptional intellectual abilities. This finding has subsequently been confirmed many times.[..]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16441964

Ovidiu,

Some things you ignore:

Ovidiu,

Did you read the whole article by Bilalic et al, or just the abstract? I downloaded the whole paper and found some interesting information. The data certainly do not reflect GM-level performance but still...

The study covered 57 children from 4 schools in a single UK county (Oxfordshire). The mean age was 10.7 years.The average IQ of the whole group was 122.

The 'elite' subgroup of 23 children were all competitive players with a mean estimated Elo (converted from BCF ratings) of 1603 (range 1390 to 1835), not bad for such little kids.

The average IQ of this 'elite' group was 133 (going up to 157), compared to 114 for the non-elite group.

The authors say of the high IQ scores of the elite group 'the scores .. by themselves present evidence that intelligence plays a role in the process of chess skill acquisition.

By the way, when you went to chess club at school, who came in and beat you? The bright kids or the average kids? (or all of them??).

And:

Ovidiu, you lack a HYPOTHESIS - why should it be reasonable that GM are of only average intelligence? Think!!!!

Ovidiu, you lack a HYPOTHESIS - why should it be reasonable that GM are of only average intelligence? Think!!!!

Gobet, F., & Campitelli, G. (2002). Intelligence and chess. In J. Retschitzki, & R. Haddad-Zubel, (Eds.). Step by step. Proceedings of the 4th Colloquium "Board Games in Academia", pp. 103-112. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires.

This whole paper is available on the web - http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/2274/1/Gobet-Intelligence+and+chess.pdf

Now, Ovidiu, this is your key study. Here it says 'compared with a control group'. Was the control sample of average intelligence (mean IQ 100)? That must be central to your claim. A word of advice about scholarly research - its risky and dubious in any technical field to depend on a study 80 years old:

"In 1927, Djakow, Petrowski, and Rudik (1927) studied eight of the best grandmasters of the time. They did not find differences with a control sample on general intelligence or visuo-spatial memory, with the exception of memory tasks
where the material to be recalled was closely related to chess."

They report another study:

"More recently, Doll and Mayr (1987) subjected a group of chess masters (N = 27, age = 25.7 years) and a control group of non-chessplayers (N = 88, age = 24.8 years) to the “Berlin Structural Model of Intelligence” test, a well validated IQ test. The masters did better in the measure of general intelligence, as well as in tasks related to
ÔInformation-processing capacity for complex information’, 'Working speed’, and 'Numerical thinking’. Surprisingly, given the fact that chess is a highly visuospatial game, the masters did not do better in the visuo-spatial task."

And in their conclusion:

"In summary, research into intelligence and chess has uncovered good evidence for higher general and performance IQ for chess players."

.. which is pretty much what a normal human being would expect.

gg wrote : A word of advice about scholarly research - its risky and dubious in any technical field to depend on a study 80 years old>

sure, but I assumed that you read all that I posted about it :
"In 1927 Djakow et al. first showed that world-class chess players do not have exceptional intellectual abilities. This finding has subsequently been confirmed many times."-J Biosoc Sci. 2006 May;38(3):423-6.

The study was refined and repeated by DeGroot in 1946 and 1965 (Max Euwe was a subject in one of them). Jon Jacobs wrote about it in his reply to Rdh early in this thread.
DeGroot found no difference from the adult general population except for the memory for game-like specific patterns (confirming Djakow 1927)

>And in their conclusion:
>"In summary, research into intelligence and >chess has uncovered good evidence for higher >general and performance IQ for chess players."

you are doing the same mistake while reading Gobet as you did when reading Bilalic : this_is_the_case_with_children_but_not_with_adults

Gobet's book "Moves in Mind By Fernand Gobet, Alexander J. de Voogt, Jean Retschitzki"

can be read online at google.books

http://books.google.com/books?id=fR7xZlGnyl0C&pg=RA1-PA175&lpg=RA1-PA174&ots=1IQtkJsflA&dq=Mayr+Doll+chess&output=html

the conclusion on IQ and chess, p. 175 :

"In sum, the pattern of results we have reviewed is puzzling. With children, there is good evidence supporting a correlation between chess and intelligence [..]. However, with adults the strenght of the relationship was not as clear, with Djakow et. all. finding no differences between chess masters and non-players when the material was not related to chess while Doll and Mayr finding relatively clear difference.Within adults chess population, there was no evidence of a correlation between chess skill and intelligence.
With respect to the association between skill and visuo-spatial ability, the results suggest some with children and none with adults. (p.175)

By the way, the author of the paper which is generating so much interest in this thread is a Swiss IM as well a university professor (Fernand Gobet), so his arguments as to the correlation between chess skills and a high IQ might not be totally impartial :-)

N.B.:

Although the book "Moves in Mind" by Gobet, de Voogt, and Retschitzki is indexed in Google Books and a limited number of pages may be previewed there, you cannot read the whole thing for free online.

Well, I am happy to have sent the discussion in this direction, which is generating some very enlightening information. I for one was unaware of these studies, and even the researchers' names (other than deGroot, of course - who died fairly recently, I believe) were unfamiliar to me.

It's unclear from the above context whether the two specific studies mentioned in the Gobet quote in Ovidiu's latest post (60 years apart!) are the only ones directly on this subject that Gobet reviewed. If so, then I agree with gg et al that the 1987 study must be accorded much greater weight than a 1927 study, due to the probable lack of sophistication in research methods at the earlier time (along with various real-world factors that probably changed over time as well).

I'd have guessed there would have been several peer-reviewed studies of chess-players' IQs in recent decades. In fact, I'd have guessed there would be at least one peer-reviewed, published study on the question most directly at issue in this part of this thread (which differs somewhat from the design of the 1987 study cited above, if you read the posts closely): specifically, the IQ of grandmasters compared with both the general population, AND the general chess-playing population.

If such studies don't exist to date, perhaps someone here who is a university professor can start the ball rolling. Perhaps some of you even live in a country whose national chess federation might have the desire and resources to catalyze (i.e. sponsor) such research. (I live in the US, so forget about that.)

>Jon wrote : It's unclear from the above context whether the two specific studies mentioned in the Gobet quote in Ovidiu's latest post (60 years apart!) are the only ones directly on this subject that Gobet reviewed.>

Bilalic's and Gobet's obsession with 'Djakow,Petrovky,Rudik 1927' is the normal academic requirement : the first to do a crucial experiment is cited over and over again.
Gobet reviewed all available.

>In fact, I'd have guessed there would be at least one peer-reviewed, published study on the question most directly at issue in this part of this thread .. specifically, the IQ of grandmasters compared with both the general population, AND the general chess-playing population.>

According to Gobet (2001) there are 3 studies involving adult elite players

1987 Doll and Mayer study which found :

chessplayers' IQ is higher on average than that of non-chessplayers but amongst chessplayers there is no correlation between IQ and the level of expertise (ie. GMs just as smart as FMs)

1927 Djabow found :
no difference between GM chessplayers and non-chessplayers (except chess-like situations)

2001 Gobet et. al using only a subset of the IQ-test, i.e "visual memory ability" found :

Visual memory ability does not correlate with chess skill. The performance of master-level players, the elite of the UK chess world, on the visual memory test was not better than that of the other (weaker) players.

http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:RcPKyctkSbsJ:people.brunel.ac.uk/~hsstffg/preprints/Visuo-spatial_abilities.doc+IQ+chess+Doll+mayr&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5

Jon wrote :

"I for one was unaware of these studies, and even the researchers' names (other than deGroot, of course - who died fairly recently, I believe) were unfamiliar to me. "

Now you can understand how deGroot, Simon, et. al came to test what he tested so as to get spectacular, interesting, results.
The basic observatios were already noticed by Djakow in 1927 and they only needed being reworded so as to sound modern and fashionable , i.e. add some "pattern recognition" ,"cognitve", "information processing" and so on.

for instance compare :

"In 1927 Djakow, Rudik and Petrovsky conducted extensive tests on Grandmasters and came to the conclusion that their powers of memory were only greater than that of the layman as far as chess was concerned; in their areas they showed no discernible superiority."

"In (1973) studies conducted by Herbert A. Simon and W.G. Chase the experiments were conducted with real game positions and compared with random positions. The Americans discovered that in the real positions the performance of their subjects declined proportionally to their chess ratings, but that in the random position players of all levels did approximately the same."

So, my memory of more than 30 years ago was correct, in that Herbert Simon was behind a key experiment about memory for chess positions.

I recall reading in detail about that particular study, while taking Reid Hastie's course on Psychology of Thinking, in 1975 give or take a year. Coincidentally, I happened to look up and have an email correspondence with Professor Hastie just a few months ago. He's now at University of Chicago, as I recall...And his academic emphasis has since shifted to business-related research, like just about every other academic psychologist I recall from my undergrad days did too (Daryl Bem, Warren Bennis, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter are three who immediately come to mind).