Invisible Pieces: Women in Chess

Women are much weaker in chess than men

@meatclown Where are you getting those statistics from? If you look at the database of active chess players, women make up maybe 10-15% of it.

Brilliantly written, you basically talk about everything the show lefts out, how chess (the whole world actually, chess is just a reflection) is deeply misogenystic, and I'm sick of the bunch of smart-ass players out there that think chess makes them intellectually superior when most of them never had anything hindering their development through anytime of their lives. On another note, I didn't like the Show, I think it is a disservice to both chess community as a whole and to women in general, it basically neglects talking at all about how difficult it is for a woman to play chess (I expect it might have been even harder during that time period) and Beth is basically a man, everybody treats her as an equal and helps her good-heartedly (even the Russians during the cold war applaud her and congratulates her, one of the worst parts in my opinion), as if just because she is good every other problem magically disappears. It also is a disservice to the chess community in that it reinforces the myth that to be good at chess you have to be some kind of eccentric genius that makes no effort at all and you have to be born like that, it even slightly suggests that one of the reasons that Beth is good at chess is because she somehow is good at math, because her mother has a Phd in Math, in this day and age, come on this is utter nonsense..

Also kudos to lichess from not shying away from talking openly and taking an instance on difficult topics.

Hey @Onyx_Chess is @AntiRustWD64 your alt?

I didn't read the whole essay, and I've never seen "Queen's Gambit," but I did watch the Fischer interview. It was disappointing, but considering the rantings of his later years, not too surprising. The first counterargument to Fischer is classical music. Playing the piano or the violin at a the level of a touring soloist requires stratospheric levels of intellectual talent and mental discipline; and women are entirely equal to men in that arena from what I can see. They just had to be given the encouragement at home and in school and the professional opportunity. It really is that simple. The second counterargument is to consider the Polgar sisters. That's ONE family of girls that decided to get serious and learn chess from an early age. And they became strong players -- one of them became a top GM! And finally look at politics. It's taken this long for the US to elect a female vice president, and we have living proof (in the form of Dan Quayle) that getting elected as vice president doesn't require any intellect whatsoever. So brains can't be the problem.

A really well written piece!

Just have a look around yourself. Everything you see was a MAN who made.