Prophylaxis in women's chess

@rachel8 Your approach is very useful to me. There are some interesting issues like whether men are the most offensive in chess, or whether women are.

@KMcGeoch I take note of your idea of doing a blind analysis. I'm going to put it into practice with fellow chess players who usually collaborate with me on various projects.

Chess is move by move game, so tempos after all... unless your opponent is in zugzwang there is often no "time" for some useless moves. Prophylaxis is done for just in case you miss something, but hey, because you doubt in your plan you gonna waste one move? Have you seen or had games where question of losing or winning is actually one move?
Every move has to have the real purpose, not just I throw it in just in case, because I am not sure what to do, and maybe 30 moves later I will need it, maybe not - talking here about classical or rapid of course :] In blitz there more wasted tempos happening than prophylaxis.
Like this "luft" move, often I play without it just not to waste time, one full move, for that. There are also many openings when such "luft" is done all by itself, actually by gaining tempo, an active move.
So maybe women just want to preserve that tempo for attack, or they use openings where prophylaxis are either happening as active moves or are not sound moves and so on.

Prophylaxis is Prophylaxis!

Please explain how, if given say 50 games, where you have no idea if the players are men / women / boys / girls, that you can identify which games involved women / girls as opposed to men / boys, based on the moves they play.

The only times I can say for absolute surety that I’ve played a woman / girl is when they’ve been OTB or known to me by chatting and playing on here. And I’ve had my arse whooped many many times by these ladies... in all of my other games I’ve zero idea who I’m playing. I’m not interested, the only thing that bothers me is winning or losing.

All I know is, I’ve lost so many times because they’re better players than me! Women or not. And I’ve never felt inferior because these ladies are far better than myself.

I do not understand this perpetual drive to look for differences in men’s / women’s games and their ability or their ‘thought processes’.

I published last year on my blog an article about this subject see http://schaken-brabo.blogspot.com/2022/03/schakende-vrouwen-deel-2.html

My conclusion was that it is too early and even dangerous to assign specific characteristics to women playing chess.

@BorisOspasky I think we can find some creative ways to do these tests. About the infrastructure, I work for some educational institutions that have well-equipped computer centers. They also have enough boards and pieces. I'm sure that would be a great help. Why do I want to find some differences in the general behavior of women and men when playing chess? I'm just curious. It is not among my objectives to conclude if men are better than women, or if it is the other way around. I greatly admire several female chess players. They have produced many brilliant games.

@peppie23 I have enjoyed reading your article. There are points that interest me a lot. Thanks for sharing it in this discussion. I will include it among my study materials.

I haven't played I have not played enough with female chess players, so I cannot have an opinion on this topic, but It seems very interesting.

These topics are very interesting and necessary to better understand chess. I'm not sure if women are less prophylactic (I'm a woman) playing chess. Perhaps the absence of prophylaxis in a chess game has to do with a lower playing strength, as has already been written here. I feel very identified with these types of issues and I like to discuss them openly with other women. Thanks @Professor74!

@KMcGeoch said in #10:

The other approach is to do blind analysis where someone else prepares for you let's say 75 games between players of similar ratings so comparison is fair of which 25 are women vs women, 25 are men vs women and remaining 25 are men vs men. The names of the players would be hidden so you would just judge the moves and give each player a score for their prophylaxis skills so afterwards you can check if your preconception is correct or not while also adding middlegame and endgame positions to your analysis. It would be interesting to see the results but I don't think many people would want to spend dozens of hours just out of intellectual curiosity.

Isnt 75 a small number?

I think that women do play a bit less prophylactic and more aggressive but that doesn't really matter as winning things like a bishop pair only gives you an advantage of about .25 . Its hard to convert an advantage that small.

Hard to be not offensive when the first thing that comes to my mind is contraception!