There are pretty strong rules about how the draw on FIDE tournaments can be done and the programs that make them have to be certified. In one forum someone said they actually checked:
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I see a lot of remarks saying "well, let them show the machine, so someone can check it", "It must be manipulated, this is so unlikely", etc.
The FIDE Swiss Dutch rules are on the FIDE website, in the handbook. There is pairings.fide.com which has a list of endorsed pairing software, meaning it was tested by FIDE to follow those rules. Why is nobody doing the checks?
Guess what? I did :)
Took the SwissManager tournament file from chess-results.com, created a TRF / FIDE rating report file, imported it, verified the pairings.
Round 1: differences, which is to be expected:
people show up late, ratings get corrected, mistakes fixed, etc.
Round 2, 3, 4: equal to the pairing in Gibraltar
Round 5: a few differences in the group of people with 1.5 and 1 out of 4, nowhere near Hou.
My educated guess: results of previous rounds were corrected after round 5 was paired
Round 6, 7, 8: equal to pairing in Gibraltar
Round 9: in the lower echelons 2 pairings were adjusted (the black players exchanged),
due to (probably) Israeli not playing Iranian
Round 10: equal to pairing in Gibraltar.
It could be interesting to check against a set of random seeds or random player lists. It's not entirely implausible that the algorithm is "correct," but that implementation details not covered by the spec mean that, e.g., gender imbalances in pairings occur. It might, for example, generate the pairings starting from a sorted list of players where an element of the sort key is gender.
If people agree that the software was correct but that the pairings were poor, there is always the possibility of reevaluating the algorithm itself. For example, an algorithm could be chosen that results in more "mixing."
You can only optimize an algorithm in so many dimensions. Without making this a debate about affirmative action, I'd like to point out that if you're designing an algorithm to optimize for raw skill comparison in tournament match-ups, optimizing it to rebalance match-up results to be more mixed essentially voids that first optimization. In the aggregate, you're producing very different results by doing that. To put it simply, would you rather have skill-based fairness in a tournament or gender-based fairness?
You can design the algorithm in such a way that your priors are mistaken, or bias creeps in (though theoretically that can be self-corrected). But assuming that's not the case, and the algorithm correctly matches up mostly women v. women and men v. men in a skill parity optimization, you have a fair result for the purpose of a tournemant; i.e. skill-based match-ups.
If at that point you have an issue with the match ups for reasons of gender or ethnic parity, I would argue that you should seek to correct the upstream issues, not the algorithm. In other words, try to get more women playing chess - make the sport appeal to them more, make it more inclusive, etc. Rebalancing an algorithm is, in my view, a handicap, whether it's applied to gender disparity or any other disparity. I feel it does a disservice to both parties and doesn't really solve the root issue.
>I'd like to point out that if you're designing an algorithm to optimize for raw skill comparison in tournament match-ups, optimizing it to rebalance match-up results to be more mixed essentially voids that first optimization
This is not necessarily the case. For example, if you alphabetized by last name, then obviously people with coincidentally the same last name could appear in any order. But if in twenty cases the men always were listed first (that's what the algorithm spat out), it might seem unfair. You could add the first name (another dimension) but you could also add a preference for mixing. Indeed, perhaps adding first names makes it unfair, as the pool of male first names is more skewed toward men (in the way aaron does not have a female equivalent). Last names likely have no such skew since a person born xx or xy gets the same last name.
So this example shows that the first dimension, which is fair (alphabetical by last name) can remain optimized while adding a second dimension. Because the first dimension doesn't care about what order people with the same last name appear.
Likewise perhaps the first dimension is equally fine with a few different pairings - so at that point optimize the second dimension.
I don't know how Chess is classified, but isn't it possible that the men's side of the tourney just starts with more points due to historical imbalances?
For example, if we assumed that the current state had men having twice as many points as women of equivalent skill, it might take a while for people to climb up right?
More generally, it's not like people's skill are well ordered. If so, what would be the point of the tournaments! It seems like having a bit of mixing of levels in the beginning of the tournament would be more interesting. Especially if it's not single elimination
There can be a balance. One could introduce more mixing while still relying primarily on the current metrics. It's not a binary choice between one or the other.
I don't fundamentally disagree with you, but I note that when you say "small bias," you're acknowledging that there is a continuum between total neutrality and total bias.
When people think they want a random output, usually what they really want is a pseudo-random output. People think randomness in some contexts is unfair because it isn't predictable. I don't think we should introduce gender-balancing to the algo, even though I doubt it's random to begin with. Once we cross that line, why not race balancing as well? People just need to be satisfied with the luck of the draw and redefine what "fair" means when dealing with things like random sorting or filtering.
As someone who does statistics for a living and used to play tournament chess, a few of my disorganized opinions/thoughts:
* There's no conclusive evidence that her pairings were tampered with, and the pairings are in line with what seeds someone would be given by a computer. The probability of her playing that many women is very low, but the whole point of randomness is rare events happen (as humans we're very good at detecting patterns in randomness). Her accusations are plausible but not a given.
* I think her goal to break down the barriers of gendered chess is great. The chess world needs more women, and if there were more they would be completely competitive with men. She's fighting a good fight.
* One of the reasons I stopped playing chess is the egos. This one was relatively mild, but purposefully losing games is wrong, even if done in protest. Once you sit down at the chessboard and shake the other person's hand, you're agreeing to a good game. Throwing a game against a woman because you're grumpy she's a woman is not a good thing.
* But, her activist tactic worked, here we are talking about it.
> Throwing a game against a woman because you're grumpy she's a woman is not a good thing.
Not to be pedantic, but Lalith Babu, the Indian Grand Master, is male. I believe the article says Hou Yifan threw the final match against Lalith Babu. She played all the women pairings till she got there.
Not to mention how the winner of that match would feel with such a terrible victory.
* Not sure if pro chess needs more women, men or computers spending their energy on it. I guess stuff like this is its own reward but being good at it comes at a price and competition guarantees that this price will be the highest people can possibly pay. I guess it should be kept legal but I don't see why encourage it.
* Judith Polgar, who ranked #10 among humans and #1 among women, had a crazy dad set out to prove that "any child can be raised to become a genius." Here I use "crazy" in colloquial terms but AFAIK men are more likely to experience mental illness in professional terms.
* Could it be that fewer women are crazy enough to devote their lives to chess than men? Is it really a problem? The societal benefits of chess are not obviously worth the opportunity cost, as someone with a potential as a chess player could probably do something most of us consider more productive.
None of this is in response to TFA (and I wish Hou Yifan success in everything she does), I'm only replying to your point about women being as "good" as men at competing at an inherently unproductive mental activity.
If my "value system" shouldn't apply to someone else, then you are making my point - women are less interested in pro chess than men, and their different value system is not a problem.
If you do think it's a problem, you can only argue that it is based on a judgement of what's productive that is applicable to others. Here I am ready to defend my belief that chess, which I like, is a waste of time.
Noone is arguing that women "should" play more chess, where "should" holds any moral or ethical imperative.
They're simply saying that the chess community would find greater enjoyment in the sport if more women played. And, more women would experience that same enjoyment if they weren't scared away by the lack of diversity.
There is no "should" here. It would just be nice...
With that clarified, indeed, you "should" not be applying your value system on others. There is nothing inherently wrong with encouraging diversity in a sport, which is the idea which you seem to be promoting. (If you're not, then there's nothing material to be discussed here).
That distribution is actually normal, considering how many more men play chess than women. But I haven't heard a good explanation on why so few women play chess in the first place (other than the two reasons I suggested).
The father of the 3 Polgar sisters deliberately pushed them to play chess to prove a point. All 3 got very good, Judith was #10 in the world. This strongly suggests "not interested" is more true of other women than "not that good."
Actually it's a 3 in one example, and the strongest of the 3 players is the strongest woman chess player ever. So I guess that yes, I think it's pretty strong evidence, and no, I don't hold this opinion particularly strongly; I don't really give a shit which group is better at what but it's always fun to watch people foaming at their mouths trying to prove how similar or different groups are when it's obviously false.
> Hou, who currently outpaces the second-ranked female player by 68 points, recently left the women's chess circuit for mixed events where she can compete against men, who fill every spot in the world's top 100 rankings.
I was curious if the women player's ratings were separated from the Top 100 players rankings and thought that the overall FIDE Top 100 ratings was gender differentiated.
On a perusal of the FIDE rankings over the years I noticed that that is not the case.
Here are the stats for this year (Feb 2017):
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Top 100 Players:
Rank; Name; FIDE Rating
1; Carlsen, Magnus; 2838
...
100; Artemlev, Vladislav; 2655
101; Cordova, Emilio; 2655
Top 100 Women Players:
Rank; Name; FIDE Rating
1; Hou, Yifan; 2651
Here are the stats for the earliest reported year (2000):
So even though there is a separate Women Players ranking provided, the Top 100 Players is not gender differentiated.
It just happens that this year, Hou, Yifan, the current top women player is ranked lower than the bottom of the Top 100 players ranking hence the top 100 payers (this year) is all men.
What does that mean? Does that mean that women players do not get a chance to play among men? Are there less opportunities for mixed events?
The major titles, tournaments, and ratings aren't gendered and haven't been for a long time. That said, it is still the case that today's active male players tend to be overwhelmingly better than active female players at chess, so separate tournaments and titles were specifically created just for women. No women are restricted from the "main" tournaments or the "main" titles, though. It is entirely possible for a woman to dethrone Magnus Carlsen as World Chess Champion -- it's just never happened before.
As for why this discrepancy exists, that's really a very different question, and it's one that I don't know the answer to. There are potentially many factors at play. It could be as innocent as there are many more male players than female, so the odds are much higher for super-high-skill players to emerge in the male population than the female population.
The first chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers has a plausible explanation... he gives an example of how successful hockey players are disproportionately born in the months of January, February, and March. To poorly summarize the explanation, it is that the kids who started out with a slight advantage (i.e., being slightly older and bigger than the other kids) have their advantages multiplied over time because they are singled out for extra training and opportunities for growth (all-star games, travel teams, etc). In the case of chess, it is possible that the initial slight advantage (being a boy) does not even exist, but is only perceived, but if boys receive more encouragement, training, and opportunities than girls, the end result could be the same.
>As for why this discrepancy exists, that's really a very different question, and it's one that I don't know the answer to.
That's caused by IQ distribution differences between males and females. On average men and women have an IQ of 100, but there are more men that are both smarter and dumber than women.
According to the article you linked, research findings, including those on variability between sexes, are all over the map. This does not at all seem like a convincing explanation to me.
It's generally accepted [0] that there's more variability in male IQ than in women (with the averages still being about the same). So the effect is that there are more extremely intelligent men in the world than women (and, conversely, there are more extremely dumb men than there are women).
Assuming IQ and chess ability are correlated, this would explain the lack of women at the top tiers of chess playing.
Physical sports have the added factor that men usually have a much easier time building and maintaining muscle mass than women, as well as usually being taller and so benefiting from more leverage with longer limbs.
I believe, but am not sure, that the tournament and ratings are both non-gendered. But one can look at the list of rated players and observe who the top rated woman is on that list.
They talk in the article about how she worked to get OUT of gendered tournaments. This one isn't gendered, but it seems that there's a ghettoization of women in chess that she's working against.
It's easy to look and say, that group is taller and has bigger muscles so that's an obvious advantage.
It's harder to see mental advantages. Statistically, men have better spatial reasoning and are possibly better at the kind of logic (and intuition) chess requires.
Or maybe it's environmental. One way or another, every single one of the top 100 chess players in the world are men.
There is alot we don't know about both general intelligence and what traits specifically makes a chess player good. Certain kinds of reasoning help, but so does the discipline to study and remember many different chess positions and then apply those to the situation at hand.
There's nothing in science that says women should be worse at it than men, or that there aren't enough good women who play chess, and could crack the top 100. We just don't know is the bottom line and anyone who says differently probably has an agenda.
Separate tournaments were added as way to get more women playing than anything else as the sport has alot of educational value even if it's not the only way to develop those same intellectual "muscles". Hopefully, it will expand to the point where enough good players of both genders come in and we finally see more women at the highest levels. But that may not happen.
One common story that is told is that men have more variance in outcomes than women; regardless of whether men are taller, the very tallest and shortest individuals are both male. So if you select for the people with the most board memory, the most pattern recognition, the most patience, and whatever other weird traits, you could have entirely equal representation if you take the top 50% or the top 10%, but the top 0.1% could be all male.
Men exhibit more variance in traits that are expressed on the X-chromosome, as they only have one of them.
Something as complicated as intelligence is not strongly tied to a single genetic marker, so while there may be some variance, it won't be nearly as broad as in something simpler (but still complicated), like height.
I heard Viswanathan Anand on TV a long time ago (when he had just become world champion), he claimed getting physically fitter had a definite impact on his game. Maybe that implicitly means there is physical fitness is a factor, hence women are disadvantaged?
(I'm just trying to reason against you, I don't think the fitness Anand was talking about requires crossing the boundary where being male is an advantage.)
The physical training is for endurance, as at high levels chess can be an exhausting sport. This is because winning chess competitions involves concentrating intensely for hours, days, or even (in rare cases like Kasparov vs Karpov) weeks while being under enormous and constant stress. That can be very draining if you're not prepared for it both physically and mentally.
I would liken competitive chess to an endurance sport like marathon running instead of to something like boxing or sumo wrestling, where physical mass and brute force can be deciding factors.
There's no reason that women can't be as physically or mentally prepared for such as sport as men.
Physical fitness is certainly important but I doubt for chess it's on the level that's not achievable for women. Unless you are talking about chess boxing which is an interesting sport.
The simple fact is yes, for whatever reasons, women are physically disadvantaged at chess. Regardless of how shocking that is. (Cue "differ t oppprtunities", "different emphasis" etc. which I am very much willing to listen to cited arguments for).
Even if you intend to have a good faith discussion about gender dimorphism in chess (whether it be intrinsic or extrinsic), the resulting thread has a high potential for descending into ideological chaos.
I'd recommend not taking the stand that "women are physically disadvantaged in chess" is a "simple fact." You welcomed citations for reasons why that may or may not be - but much like sociological studies across ethnic differences in accomplishment, studies across gender differences accomplishment for non-physical activity are going to be, shall we say, "muddled."
People may not be able to levy citations that argue against that thesis, but it's still a very difficult thesis to defend both socially and rhetorically. Engaging in dialectics about it is unlikely to be productive, and I think it's probably more fair to take an even ground in the absence of compelling evidence on other side. Extrinsically, yes, women display collective disparity in overall chess accomplishment. But we cannot infer anything about womens' chess ability intrinsically unless we have more women in chess. Specifically, we cannot infer anything physically about the female brain that would demonstrate a disadvantage.
This doesn't mean you're wrong; it just means that it's so emotionally loaded, and so devoid of clear, replicable data that even a debate with citations will probably be disappointing at best, and personally insulting at worst.
>This doesn't mean you're wrong; it just means that it's so emotionally loaded, and so devoid of clear, replicable data that even a debate with citations will probably be disappointing at best, and personally insulting at worst.
That's right. If one said women are better home makers, teachers, and parents, people would either agree with you or say you're being sexist. What is wrong with teaching, parenting or home making? Without taking a position on whether men are better than women at chess, why does it even matter if women are better at some things and men at others? It's so overwhelmingly political and emotional, and why should women be ashamed to be good parents or home makers? Those are no less respectable than any other occupation. However, as you said, you can't even touch this topic without getting in trouble.
The fact is the top 100 chess players in the world are men. That may be due to higher variance in men's mental abilities; however, the fact is the reason you are downvoted is for failure to abide by political correctness.
It would be good to know the chances for that. I'm guessing most of the other participants at each round were men, so they must have been pretty low...
I don't follow chess, and I didn't know it's gendered. That doesn't make sense. Why would chess contests be gendered? That's like a gendered photography contest.
It's not strictly gendered - women are free to enter any tournament and hold any title. There are a number of women-only tournaments and titles, purely to improve the visibility of women in the game. Without women-only tournaments, you'd see very few women at major events.
Only one woman has ever qualified for the world championships (Judit Polgar in 2005). Hou Yifan is the best female player in the world, but she's ranked 105th overall. The second highest ranked female player is 303rd.
Gendered tournaments aren't ideal, but the alternative is worse. Most countries do a dismal job of promoting female participation in chess, with China being a notable exception. Western women just aren't being encouraged to take up the game and aren't made to feel welcome when they try.
As the article states, the top 100 chess players in the world are male. The field is incredibly male-dominated and even though women and men should be equal, the reasoning between splitting it tournaments by gender is that women would otherwise get discouraged.
I was just reading a book about this, "The undoing project". The point of the book was that statically even distribution only works in large numbers, in small numbers its normal to get uneven distributions like this. That's why sample size is so important in scientific research.
So, for example, when have a group of 10 men and 10 women, and you randomly pair them up in a tournament, it is normal and possible for a woman to be playing against 5 women in a row. It's not an aberration because small numbers won't necessarily even out. However, when you get a group of 1000 men and 1000 women, and start paring them up for tournament matches, it would still be possible for a woman to end up playing against 5 woman in a row, but on the whole when taking all 500 matches she plays, it should approach 50, the aberration would be if she had played against 500 women in a row. That would be an indication of something suspicious.
What I find interesting and am curious about people's thoughts on here is that while Yifan could have waited until she was able to run the pairing algorithm herself (as someone did see the comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13568108), her protest could be no less valid even though it's based on apparently inaccurate information.
Question: isn't the drawing of opponents dependent on relative ratings?
If so then it probably makes sense that more of one population would match with each other, assuming there are significant statistical differences in the populations. For Chess, this is most certainly the case (top 100 is almost all male iirc).
Regardless, the only way to know if it was a statistically fair setup is to have: 1) the rankings of all playings in the tournament, and 2) the algorithm used to match players.
If 2) matches players of similar ratings against eachother, and she is more similar in rating to women than men, then I don't see what the fuss is all about.
Ignoring the match itself, the commenters seem incredibly sexist. They repeatedly ignored/interrupted a woman saying she'd actually talked to the player to comment on whether or not the player was 'mental' or 'still drunk' or otherwise.
No, it's not, someone is simply rude and talks over everyone. A rude person will talk over men, women (without being sexist), black people (without being racist), etc.
Either you demonstrate that the arrogance is specifically targeted towards women and because they are women, or you cannot speak of sexism.
When you defer to men and interrupt women, it's sexist. They were talking amongst themselves and ignoring the woman there, who happened to have actually spoken with the player.
So she was nowhere near as good as the men who participated in the tournament and rage quit because she had to play against women? Isn't that pretty sexist on her part?
From loosely following chess over the past year it seems they normally play a random pool and whoever has the best score at the end wins the tournament.
No that isn't the case. There are really only two common types of tournaments. A round-robin will see each player play every other player once but this is limited to small fields (10 is the usual limit).
For big fields like the one the article is about the Swiss System is used. Each player gets 1 for a win, half a point for a draw and zero for a loss. Players are mostly paired against those who are on the same score each round. I say "mostly" since there are all sorts of rules to decide the exact pairings. Chess tournaments will use Dutch-Swiss or sometimes Dubov-Swiss
Maybe they need to consider the idea of better-than-random pairings. What this means would be a subject for discussion, but for example there could be heuristics that say something like pairings need to at least look random. What does that mean? Again, it's a matter for discussion, but just to take the Yifan situation as the example, seven out of nine paired with the same gender does not look random. Just saying "it's decided by machines" is not sufficient. They have to say what the rules are that the machines are going by, and what is the source of randomness exactly. And then they have to address the point that maybe pure randomness is not good enough.
I would think that if opponent was throwing the game I'd double down and try to throw it better than her. So the chess match became a chess match. Who can lose fastest. Then resigning is cowardly.
A downvote without a counterargument is not conducive to open discussion and debate.
I can understand this behavior when comments are particularly egregious in some obvious way, but in this case please do contribute to the conversation by explaining your take on the commenter's opinion.
I really didn't like the comments of the tournament GM as quoted in this article.
> I understand: If I was in her shoes, and I suddenly pulled a draw of six girls one after the other, I would say also, 'What is going on here?'
Maybe in the speaker's culture, using the diminutive term "girls" to refer to professional women in a professional context is considered fine, but it's definitely grating to me. I'd be willing to give that a pass if that were all. But he also said:
> I'm sorry for Yifan, because I think she let herself down a little bit today.
I really think Yifan is in a better position to judge whether she has let herself down than Callaghan is. Together these two comments read, to me, as quite paternalistic and tone deaf. If this is how he's speaking on the record, one has to wonder if his private attitude contributed to Yifan's decision to throw the game.
If he's not allowed to say that he thinks she let herself down, then you're not allowed to say you think he's coming off as tone deaf, right? I think that because there's an issue of gender here, we are scrutinizing every word far too much.
I agree with him. One thing I learned when growing up playing sports is that you always do your best when playing. Throwing a fit or protesting by giving up only lets yourself down. Finish the game, and then go protest.
One person is speaking to the press about a protest to the event he organized; another person is commenting on the tone-deafness of the comment. Holding the latter to the scrutiny of the former and claiming that the latter is 'not allowed to say' what he said is an exceptionally absurd -- and frankly stupid -- argument.
Well she is supposed to be the best woman in the world by far yet the top 100 in the world are all men. She probably feels she should be competing mostly against men so she can get shots at those above her and move up.
I agree. Does he also call the men, "boys"? Probably not. Not that it matters whether he does as that's still diminishing and dismissive.
It's also really insulting how he said she let herself down. She lived up to her beliefs and he should acknowledge that. Instead he invalidated her choices.
When I read your excerpt, I immediately wondered if he is British. Turns out he is, and I believe this language is pretty common in their culture, at least traditionally. I do not know whether women in he U.K. are bothered by such comments esp if the man is much older than them, as is the case here.
As for commenting on letting herself down, well he is a TV commentator. You hear this sort of being said by TV commentators in basically every sport.
I am really disappointed with HN that you are being downvoted. I read the article and came away with the same impressions -- that the use of the word 'girls' and the 'I think she let herself down' comes off as exceedingly patronizing.
You have made a clear argument with your comment and others have downvoted you because they disagree with you, which is not what the downvote button is for.
Agreed. You don't hear him referring to the male participants as "boys". This type of sexist language, while probably not intentional on the part of the speaker, is one of the reasons women struggle to be taken seriously in so many professional contexts.
Might it not be that men are referred to as 'boys' regularly in certain contexts but it is simply not remarked upon because there is no historical discrimination against men?
These are valid points, and important to call out this kind of language given the history of sexism.
Side note: One of my biggest frustrations on HN is seeing a comment downvoted without any counterargument given, as with this one. Would any downvoters care to voice their opinions?
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I see a lot of remarks saying "well, let them show the machine, so someone can check it", "It must be manipulated, this is so unlikely", etc.
The FIDE Swiss Dutch rules are on the FIDE website, in the handbook. There is pairings.fide.com which has a list of endorsed pairing software, meaning it was tested by FIDE to follow those rules. Why is nobody doing the checks?
Guess what? I did :)
Took the SwissManager tournament file from chess-results.com, created a TRF / FIDE rating report file, imported it, verified the pairings.
Does that count as sticking to the facts?