[rm999]

There's some good discussion in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/5rm88g/hou_yifan_res....

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.

[gjkood]

> 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.

[rm999]

Not pedantic at all, thanks for the correction!

[_yosefk]

A guy playing very shitty chess here.

* 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.

[orasis]

Why should your value system of what is and is not a productive mental activity apply to someone else?

I'm going to go waste some time with my kids.

[_yosefk]

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.

[smallgovt]

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).

[imaginenore]

Have you considered that women are just not interested in chess, or are generally worse at it than men, so they rage-quit?

Hou Yifan, "The Queen of Chess" is ranked #1 among women has a FIDE rating of 2651, which places her below 100th place among men.

https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=women

https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men

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).

https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess-biologi...

[_yosefk]

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."

[pervycreeper]

>This strongly suggests

Do you mean that that single example constitutes strong evidence of your claim, or merely that it seems to support an opinion which is strongly held?

[_yosefk]

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.

[dogecoinbase]

Truly a compelling statement from "pervycreeper".