[helipad]

When the Armenian chess team returned to Yerevan as winners of the Olympiad, they were treated like rockstars outside the opera house, fireworks and all.

There are many great reasons this is good for the country: - cheap to play - teaches discipline & patience - both genders can compete on level playing field - scope for creative thinking & problem solving

[_delirium]

> both genders can compete on level playing field

In practice this doesn't seem to have happened, at least not yet (the FIDE top-100 list is 99 men and 1 woman). Would be interesting if it did, though.

[MaysonL]

It is improving though: the first women to achieve grandmaster was in 1991: now 21 of the top 100 women have full grandmaster status.

[hsmyers]

The Polgar's have dropped off the list?

[_delirium]

Judit Polgár is the one I believe. Just checked by cross-referencing http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml and http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=women. Could well change in the coming decades, but competition is currently mostly separated into men's and women's divisions, like other sports (most top women compete for the Women's Chess Championship, though Polgár is a notable exception in never having entered that tournament).

edit: Was curious to look a bit more, and it seems like the reason is that there are currently very few active women in competitive chess to begin with (i.e. it's not that there are many outside the top 100 either). For example, there are 1574 Americans on the FIDE active player list, of any ranking (all the way down to rankings in the 1300s), and of those, 1491 are men and 83 are women.

[hsmyers]

Good enough for West Point, good enough for Armenia.