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Where are the women chess champs?
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Why is chess always associated with serious men in tweeds when women dazzle just as much with the game?
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CHECKMATE There is no reason why there shouldn’t be a woman world chess champion
In probably his nth interview, Viswanathan Anand said, “India has a good talent pool in chess with the crop of young GMs like P. Harikrishna, Sandipan Chanda and S.S. Ganguly doing well.” He said he wanted to play Kasparov one more time.
“If he changes his mind and comes back from retirement, I will be happy.”
Anand is one of the sweetest guys around and has always acknowledged his mom’s contribution to his interest in chess, but isn’t it significant there’s no woman in his list of GMs? But then, why pick on him?
Ask the next guy to name chess champions and you’ll get Spassky, Fischer, Kasparov, Casablanca, Karpov and Anand – very rarely Maia, Judit or Koneru.
A list of World Chess Champions has only men’s names. Women are champions in women-alone tournaments. Hey, this is no physical game!
When seven-times Women’s World Championship Vera Menchick of Britain was killed in a German air attack, The British Chess Magazine wrote in their obit: “The ordinary stratagems of the game…were of course part of her equipment, but she lacked that imaginative, inventive spirit without which few become really great players.” The last part was a common comment about women’s chess in those days.
But people who follow women’s chess closely will tell you that women’s world championship titles have produced matches that were as dazzling as any Kasparov-Karpov finals or Anand’s rapid-fire ones.
Women have been playing contest chess since 1896. The first International Women’s Chess Congress was held in 1897. History has recorded victories of many queens in this battle. Anna Gulko won the U.S. Women’s Championship with a 9-0 score. Edith Baird (1859-1924) composed over 2,000 chess problems.
Zhu Chen’s current Elo rating is 2483. Maia Chiburdanidz, was an International Master at 13, USSR women’s champion at 16 and world women’s chess champion at 17, the youngest to grab it.
Fatima, who won the British women’s chess championship in 1933, was a servant in maharaja Umar Hayat Khan’s household. Gisela Gresser (1906-2000) bagged the 1969 U.S. Championship at age 63.
At 13 years and 4 months, Koneru Humpy was the youngest to win the British Ladies Chess Championship. In 2002, she became the first woman chess player from India to receive the Men’s GM title, at 15 years, 4 months, and 27 days. She is the youngest female GM.
The Vera Menchik Club is made of players who lost to her. Guess who? Albert Becker, Max Euwe, Sammy Reshevsky, Mir Sultan Khan, Sir George Thomas, C.H.O’D. Alexander, Edgar Colle, Frederick Yates, William Winter, Lajos Steiner, Frederich Saemisch, Milner-Barry, Harry Golombek, Karel Opocensky, and Jacques Mieses.
Rating high
Judit Polgar became an International Master at 12 - younger than Fischer or Kasparov. At 13 she was the World Under-14 Champion (played against boys) and FIDE’s highest-rated woman. She won the U.S. Open in 1998, the only woman to ever win it. In 1999 she was the first and only woman to be a FIDE World Champion quarterfinalist.
In 1989 Sofia Polgar achieved the highest performance rating (2900) ever recorded when she scored 8.5 out of 9 at an international tournament in Rome.
Jennifer Shahade author of Chess Bitch, became the first and only female to win the U.S. Junior Open.
Nona Gaprindashvili (1978), Maia Chiburdanidze (1984), Susan Polgar (1991), Judit Polgar (1991), Pia Cramling (1992), Xie Jun (1994), Zhu Chen (2001), Antoaneta Stefanova (2001), and Koneru Humpy (2002) hold men’s (common) grandmaster titles.
There is no doubt at all that WWC Championships bring a lot of women players to the fore. It is good for the game. And world championships in chess are not restricted to men.
Various issues
So how come we haven’t had a woman as world chess champion? Is it the long hours of practice needed for this level of competition? Is it the family pull? Or is there truth in the stereotyped assumption that women lack the innate ability to calculate, read the opponent’s game, make the right moves and implement a successful strategy on the 64–square board?
“There is no reason why they shouldn’t be world champions,” said Anand’s parents. Maybe there aren’t enough women playing competitive chess. As Anand’s dad said, no one is denying them championships. No one is preventing them from qualifying. So we’ll “hope for the day a woman is crowned world chess champion. We’ll wish them all luck.”
GEETA PADMANABHAN
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