#women in chess

[chessismyaesthetic]

Happy birthday Nona Gaprindashvili (1941-)!

Gaprindashvili in 1975. Photo: Dutch National Archive/Wikipedia.

Nona Gaprindashvili is a Georgian chess Grandmaster - the first woman ever to be awarded the title FIDE Grandmaster which she won in 1978, and the fifth women's world champion which she won in 1962 and held for 16 years! Contrary to the claim in The Queen's Gambit Gaprindashvili DID play against men (Gaprindashvili rightly sued and Netflix settled out of court). In fact, she played against three world champions: Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, and Viswanathan Anand. One of her best-known games was a win against another man, the German Rudolf Servaty in Dortmund, 1974 which she won in 17 moves (Servaty resigned as it was mate at move 19). Get this: according to this article, Stockfish can't spot Gaprindashvili's game winning 15th move until it's on a depth of about 30 (15 moves per side)!

As a pioneer for women's chess it would be hard to overstate Gaprindashvili's importance. Winning the Women's World Championship in 1962 made her a Georgian celebity. From wikipedia:

"After her victory, Gaprindashvili was a celebrity in Georgia, and crowds gathered to meet her as she returned from the World Championship match. Woman Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade described Gaprindashvili as a symbol of Georgian nationalism and merit during the country's time as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. Her victory marked the beginning of a "women's chess revolution" in Georgia. Woman Grandmaster Rusudan Goletiani said that this went even further, with her success helping inspire a broader "intellectual revolution" for Georgian women. Many women took up chess afterward, and Georgia became one of the most prominent countries in women's chess, producing numerous masters during Gaprindashvili's career."

In a fascinating statistical analysis of the game's greatest players, GM Larry Kaufman found that Gaprindashvili's chess represented a leap in quality over the previous champion larger than any jump among the top men since Morphy! Kaufman writes:

"It is rather remarkable that the current women's world champion, GM Ju Wenjun, is only 37 Elo stronger by my measure than Gaprindashvili at her peak half a century ago, and that Gaprindashvili at her peak would fall right in the middle of the 2019 Women's Candidates! She was really remarkable for the time, and is still winning Senior Women's titles! In fact, her peak compares with today's top women about the same as Fischer's peak (at the same time!) does with today's top men, i.e. a bit below the current champ but on a par with the Candidates."

Gaprindashvili in Tbilisi in 2015. Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

She's still playing - and kicking ass - in seniors tournaments and won the Women's Over-65 World Championship 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2022 (at age 81!).

A true legend of chess. Check out some of her games here.

[yoghurt-bimbo]

no but having a separate women chess league has got to be the stupidest thing ever

women do NOT have a disadvantage over their mental faculties the way someone would argue regarding their physique in other sports

it has also directly led to women performing less than men in general because they are exposed to a significantly smaller range of competitors

this is because less women are encouraged to play chess – especially professionally – and so you have less players you can grow by playing against

[werewolf-transgenderism]

terfs celebrating that the international chess federation has banned trans women from competing in women's FIDE competitions, because it's sooooooo feminist to argue that women are so biologically inferior and nowhere near as smart as men and thus can't play chess on the same level. girl that's not feminism that's literally just misogyny

[boldlycrookedsalad]

Timeline of women chess grandmasters by country.

Notes: This timeline only includes women playing for the same country they were born in at the time they became grandmasters, so that there is no doubt which country they should be considered to be from. A woman is not considered from a country if that country was not independent at the time she was born (for example, Russia or Ukraine as part of the USSR) or if it was not unified at that time (for example, a woman being born in East Germany rather than Germany). When two women became grandmaster in the same year, they are listed alphabetically by the country they are from. This timeline goes by award year, which is not necessarily the same as title date.

1991: Susan Polgar became the first female grandmaster from Hungary.

1992: Pia Cramling became the first female grandmaster from Sweden.

1994: Xie Jun became the first female grandmaster from China.

2002: Antoaneta Stefanova became the first female grandmaster from Bulgaria.

2002: Koneru Humpy became the first female grandmaster from India.

2008: Marie Sebag became the first female grandmaster from France.

2008: Monika Soćko became the first female grandmaster from Poland.

2015: Mariya Muzychuk became the first female grandmaster from Ukraine.

2021:  Zhansaya Abdumalik became the first female grandmaster from Kazakhstan.

[camarilla-arts]

Thinking about Sandra Lynne and Sklonda friendship. Sandra had to catch the Kalina-plague from somewhere. 👀

[pinkgrapefloyd]

*sternly pointing at myself in the mirror* you are NOT writing a spirk federation olympics fencing au. be so for real right now. you have a dozen WIPs already, not to mention a job. sit down

[dsmsix]

I stan her so hard

[bumblingbabooshka]

Overhated Female Character x Underused Female Character [Patreon | Commissions]

[ms-hells-bells]

one thing i haven't seen many people point out in regards to the chess thing. the levels of master for chess require different ratings for men and women. the women's titles require a full 200 rating points less to reach the next level of mastery.

for casual or lower level players, say 1500 or below, this gap doesn't matter that much. for the most elite players, 200 lower rating is a massive gap. in the highest level tournaments, if someone is against a player that has a rating 200 points higher than them, they are unambiguously recognised as having a significant disadvantage. the only exception is when they are a relatively new player that has rapidly risen in the ranks, and their current rating may not be representative of their current skill level.

the current highest rated female chess player in the world is hou yifan. she actually retired recently to go to university, i believe, but no one is close to surpassing her score of 2628. incredible.

the male players with a rating of 2628 are the 130th best male players in the world.

this means that a man could not even be in the top 100 best male players in the world, meaning near zero income to be made from the sport (anything they'd make from winning regional or national championships would have to go towards paying travel and accommodation), and if he decided to transition to a woman, he would be the best in the world and make great bank, especially with the women's tournament and sponsorship initiatives, and the 'representation' he would be.

in a way, it's even more blatant that running or swimming or any of that. because you can see their ratings stay the same, but a change in pronouns can change them from a master to an international master, or even from an international master to a grandmaster.

[beccawise7]

She's the most powerful piece on the board for a reason. Queens see Queens. ~beccawise7 💜🖤

[lizardsfromspace]

As TERFs fall deeper down the transphobia hole they eventually loop around to a level of misogyny typically only seen in MRA pick-up manuals. They start out a bit concerned, and five months later they're shouting about how trans women need to be banned from chess bc AFAB brains are just not as smart as AMAB brains. They slide from "women can do anything men can!" to a level of "women are dainty and must be protected"ness that would make a tradwife blogger blush. They've successfully engineered the belief set of a Reddit incel with nothing but a parasocial relationship with JK Rowling, a incoherent urge to Own the Transes and a box of Tweets Xs

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Gordin's Chess & Checkers Center, at 216 W. 42nd St,, next door to the New Amsterdam Theater, 1955.

Photo: Hulton Archive/Old New York FB

[divorcedwife]

im thinking about doing chess art about moves that could be visually cool, like pawn promotion. maybe castling as well, and a checkmate of course

[pintoras]

Sofonisba Anguissola (Italian, c. 1532 - 1625): The Chess Game (Portrait of the artist's sisters playing chess) (1555) (via Wikimedia Commons)

As a woman, Sofonisba was barred from the life studio, a restriction sh side-stepped by using herself and her family as subjects. Her most famous painting, The Chess Game (1555), is a wonderfully vivid and affectionate portrayal of her sisters, accompanied by their maid, Giovanna, playing chess -- a game considered to be both intellectual and strategic, attributes not often associated with women at the time. Bejewelled in gold and pearls and dressed in costumes more extravagant than the girls would normally have worn to play in a garden, it’s clear Sofonisba wanted to honour her sisters’ beauty and lively personalities, while demonstrating her own dazzling gifts. Perhaps she was also aware of how ground-breaking her homage was: she was the first artist to portray her family as a primary subject. Her younger sister, Europa, smiles broadly at Minerva to her left -- in itself a radical gesture, as such levity was not considered decorous. Minerva is seen in profile, but her right hand is raised, as if in mock surrender to her superior opponent. To Europa’s right, Lucia, the older sister, looks directly out at us, faintly smiling: her right hand moves a chess piece, while her left holds a captured queen. The five hands we can see in the painting are all active: holding, moving, raising, touching. It’s a rare, playful image of girls employing their wits against each other and having fun. The scene is set in a garden to a backdrop of a misty, mountainous landscape. As the landscape around Cremona is flat, we can only assume that Sofonisba was dreaming of future journeys to distant lands.

Jennifer Higgie, The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits

[mimi-0007]

The beautiful and talented. Etta James