[txrx0000]

If you have a relative skill rating system, then there's no need to split competitors into groups. But if you insist, then you can split them based on skill ratings (define a rating range for beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc). And for games with one-on-one matchups, sampling from a gaussian centered on each player's skill rating is good enough.

[kelipso]

It will end up being all men at all the skill rating levels.

[fgonzag]

It doesn't.In tennis a 14 UTR whatever wins against a 13 UTR whatever. UTR is your effectiveness rating against every other player. Same in chess with ELO.

The issue is woman would disappear from profesional sports. Sinners 16.27 rating means that he double bagels Sabalenkas 13.29 essentially 100% of the time. The 500th ATP player has a UTR of 13.81, half a point is quite a bit stronger, do he's still very much stronger than Sabalenka. You probably have to start looking well into the thousand somethings for something that is consisently beaten by her.

Only the top 200 players make money, the top 100 good money, and the top 50 ridiculous money.

[kelipso]

So women would not be in something like top 2000 of tennis players or worse. Which would basically remove any incentive for women to participate in pro tennis at all.

[tremon]

I don't get how you can compare Sinner's UTR against Sabalenka's when they're based to two disparate group scores? Doesn't there need to be at least a modicum of cross-pollination to make a meaningful comparison?

[fgonzag]

There is some cross pollination. Women can play vs men, just usually don't. I'm fairly certain singles UTR is universal across players, it only distinguishes between doubles and singles UTR.

UTR can also include unranked games if one of the players submits a score and the other approves it.

[txrx0000]

No it would not. Look at chess ratings.

[kelipso]

Basically proving my point. Very few women in top chess. Currently there are 0 women in top 100 chess players. Only 3 women were ever in the top 100 chess players. And chess is not even a game where men have a natural advantage like in almost all of the physical sports.

[txrx0000]

I don't deny that there are very few women in top chess, but that wasn't your point. You said it would end up being all men at all the skill rating levels, which is not true. Take chess as an example: there are a lot more women at around 1500 elo than at 2500 elo. So if you host an intermediate-level tournament just for players around 1500 elo, plenty of women will participate.

[kelipso]

The ratio of men to women who are at 1500 Elo in chess is like worse than 90:1, so no, you host an intermediate level tournament and it will be almost all men. Well, mostly boys but that’s current chess for you.

But it’s not just that. If there are no top women in any kind of leagues in chess, that will only further discourage women from participating competitively in chess in the first place.

Note that most competitive women chess players play in women’s only tournaments even though they can easily join open men’s tournaments as well. For various reasons, one being that these women’s only tournaments are where they have the best chance of winning or being in the top k for prizes.

[txrx0000]

The male-to-female ratio at 1500 elo is not 90:1, but more like 9:1. 10% is a visible minority.

But I see where our disagreement is. You think there ought to be more women in chess. I think different people can do different things, so women don't need to match men in every statistic and vice versa. If we open it up to universal participation and it turns out to be a male-dominated game, then let it be. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.