Chess is sexist!: Top male plays top female

91239477348238942983 · 2016-01-02T05:43:04+00:00

Chess is as close as you can get to a pure meritocracy, really. The rules are well-known, it is pretty much impossible to cheat if people are watching. (You can't exactly hide an extra rook up your sleeve) The barriers to entry are low. Chess sets are plentiful and cheap; there are strategy books available at a big library. And there is nothing stopping a woman from entering the field at all if she really wants to.

If you are a woman who wants to play chess but you think your sex is a problem, then you can play on a computer for practice. You can play anonymously over the Internet or through the mail if you want a real person. There is nothing stopping a woman from playing chess if she wants to. And quite a few of the world's best female chess-players are coming-out of China, so being a woman of color obviously isn't too much of a problem either.

And before someone says "society encourages boys to play chess and discourages girls", I have to declare bullshit. Boys who go into chess do so despite the shit which is thrown at them. Chess club boys are at the bottom of the high school pecking-order and everyone knows it.

So, yeah. If there's a lack of women playing chess, it's because a lot of women aren't interested. So I don't think there's a problem that needs to be corrected. The only way you can get more women into chess at this point is to change the rules to make it more 'female friendly' and make it easier for women to win, and then it won't be chess any more. You will have Chess+ or Chess 2.0 or Female-Friendly Chess and it will be a joke. And then people can start complaining about the sexism of how people don't respect Chess+ as much as the old kind.

Mitschu · 2016-01-02T13:06:06+00:00

Gah, who is the arrogant arse criticizing two world masters for not playing the way he would have?

Like, more than half of the video is just him quickly showing the actual move, then interjecting with "this was a good move, but if I were playing, I'd have..." and showing several of his own alt-takes on the same game in slow, loving detail.

I never thought I'd want to watch a chess game, but damn it, let me watch the chess game, keep the sports commentary to explaining what just happened, not courtside coaching on what you would have done if you were in the game.

Edit: Seriously, half the time I can't tell if he is announcing the actual moves, or still going on about his grand strategy of what-ifs that he thinks would make the game more interesting. He segues too casually from "this is the move that actually happened" to "and these are the moves that I wanted to happen, lemme just show three or four of them before positioning the board back for the next move that actually happened, before interjecting with a few more of my personal picks for this turn..."

Edit 2: Seriously. This'd be like if sports announcers were all, "Now, if Browning took the ball here instead of fumbling it, he'd have been able to run to the 20 yard line, 30 yard line, 40 yard line before getting tackled, and then on his next turn he'll pull a feign and secure another 15 yards, and on the next down he'll make a miracle break and chaaaaaarge through the defense scoring a TOUCHDOWN AT THE LAST POSSIBLE SECOND, I DON'T BELIEVE IT, THE PACKERS ARE OUR NEW WORLD CHAMPIONS! However, since he didn't, we now return to the third down, with the Packers behind 5 and not looking good. Oooh, sacked. However, if Blackson hadn't been sacked..."

andejoh · 2016-01-02T07:18:03+00:00

I think they should have noted that she was playing black. When I played chess, I always played black better because I was better reacting to what the other player did, but traditionally white is supposed to have an advantage because it moves first.

MalibuStayZ · 2016-01-02T08:50:58+00:00

Why exactly did you post this video?

Title	Chess is sexist!: Top male plays top female
Author	ShariaPantyParty
Upvotes	5
Comments	17
Date	January 2, 2016 4:29 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3z3oa2/chess_is_sexist_top_male_plays_top_female/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/chess-is-sexist-top-male-plays-top-female.964101 https://theredarchive.com/post/964101

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