Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

[Kerry Liles]

National Post article:

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blo...ten-by-a-woman

[Nigel Hanrahan]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

That's what you get for reading the Nz Post. Kasparov said exactly the same sort of thing right up until when Judit Polgar beat him. Then he was strangely silent about the subject. Bwa ha ha ha. See "Sweet Revenge for Kasparov's Opponent".

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Check out Short's record against Judit Polgar: plus 3, minus 8, equal 5 at classical time controls and plus 0, minus 4, equal 0 at shorter time controls; plus 3, minus 12, equal 5 composite (:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ezsea...Polgar+-+Short

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Check out Short's record against Judit Polgar: plus 3, minus 8, equal 5 at classical time controls and plus 0, minus 4, equal 0 at shorter time controls; plus 3, minus 12, equal 5 composite (:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ezsea...Polgar+-+Short

In case it was not clear, I was not implying Short is (ever) correct; I find his opinion pieces in New in Chess to be always controversial and often outrageous...
Sometimes it is hard to tell whether his intention is tongue in cheek or just bombastic.

[Hans Jung]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Nigel likes to stir the pot. Obviously according to the pictures on chessbase he was having a tremendous amount of fun in Thailand. He certainly knows how to have a good time.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Nigel Short – Girls wired differently

Nigel Short’s Op-Ed piece is in New in Chess 02/2015. I find most of what he usually says and writes provocative and humorous.

Edward Winter in an item today:

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/i...hess_and_women

(Look for #9244)

quotes this paragraph from Nigel’s “Short Stories”:

Given Susan Polgar’s achievements – such as being the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title conventionally by making three norms – it is tragic that her brand is tarnished by extravagant and literally incredible claims like her supposed world record in 2005 of playing 1,131 games consecutively (winning 1,112!) in just 990 minutes. This works out at just 52.5 seconds per game – although it would be somewhat less when one takes into account bathroom breaks. Given that she was walking around the whole time, which causes a second or seconds to be lost on every move, for this record not to be fictitious would require an extraordinary high number of Scholar’s Mates. It is hard to understand why an emotionally stable individual would ever imagine anyone else might believe this record to be genuine.
______

I have checked out the math and get 52.52 seconds a game. That is a quite remarkable feat.

[Caleb Petersen]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

The fact that Judit Polgar has a good score against Nigel is irrelevant when discussing this issue. Why? Because she's an exception to the trend! (someone didn't study their stats well!) Still valid data of course, no data can be ignored but nevertheless still an exception, someone who goes against the regular trend. Also to those who promote the misleading statement that Judit has beaten 10 world champions in either rapid or classical (true but misleading) go to chessgames.com and search Kasparov vs Polgar and look at the results. There is 1 win for Polgar in rapid and dozens of losses in both rapid and classical, but of course you could argue that Kasparov was an exception! There are two explanations for the fact that women aren't as good at chess (a fact I hope we can all agree on. For the most part the top players are male and the majority of chess players are male). Either they haven't had as much encouragement leading to smaller numbers of female players and thus let top female players or somehow there is a difference in the way men and women brains work leading to it being more rare to have top female players because their brains don't usually excel in the area of chess. This seems to be the view Nigel holds. Regardless what your view is on this issue if you go to chess.com forums I'm sure you'd be enlightened by all the intelligent conversing that takes place about this issue. Jack could bet a good amount and be sure that there's a thread on this and it's on fire! At any rate I think there were some ridiculous comments by Amanda Ross including this one
"At least this resolves the age-old debate as to whether there’s a direct link between chess-playing ability and intelligence. Clearly not"
Google Garry Kasparov IQ and then look where that puts him on the list and kindly retract that statement! Garry Kasparov has an IQ of 190, and at 140 someone is considered to be a genius-He has been put on some top 10 most intelligent people in the world currently alive. As Hans said it's just Nigel "stirring the pot" but he does have some valid reasons for his statement and it has been supported by several top chess players. (Kasparov and Aronian being the notable ones). If your going to say that he's an exception (as I said with Judit) I'd agree with you, but I'd also say for the most part chess players at the top are intelligent and Amanda Ross's comment to me shows that she uses twitter too much-sending first, thinking later (this works for facebook, actually pretty much any social website.) Now that I've successfully wasted 15 minutes writing this I'll go over to chess.com to prove my point is correct to all those folks there! ;)

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

National Post article:

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blo...ten-by-a-woman

Kerry, perhaps the subject of this thread should be:
"Nigel Short: Boys wired differently, relegated to playing chess" :D

relegate: consign or dismiss to an inferior rank or position

Also, could the comparison of "chess" to "intelligence" arguably be the same as the comparison of "football" to "athleticism"???

And since girls don't play football much compared to boys, I suppose this means the girls have "less athleticism"???

Another observation: in the tennis world, women fought long and hard to get equal pay to men in prize money (maybe this is just in the US Open, I'm not sure). But what's really interesting is that the women in all major tennis events (that I'm aware of) are only required to play best-of-3 sets while the men play best-of-5 sets. Isn't this discrepancy a sexist statement about women? Doesn't it say that women can't hack playing best-of-5 sets for up to 7 rounds in a Grand Prix-class event? Isn't it saying women have inferior endurance to men?

But of course, the women were ready to let that go. It was the money they were after.

[Ken Craft]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Susan Polgar spoke on this issue on AIH last night.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

They had a panel on CTV discuss this yesterday. The headline was something about a sexist chess champion speaks out. The host did say that Nigel was probably right about his wife having a higher EQ (emotional quotient). Thankfully no one asked me to comment about this.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Thankfully no one asked me to comment about this.

Tarzan and Jane stuff. Hunter and gatherer. Anything Nigel says which gives chess this much publicity can't be all bad.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Tarzan and Jane stuff. Hunter and gatherer. Anything Nigel says which gives chess this much publicity can't be all bad.

If you want to encourage girls not to play chess, it is a veritable boon to chess. I think the other comments were something along the lines that at least he has put an end to the myth that chess ability is somehow positively correlated with intelligence. There is no way I can spin this in a positive light. Hopefully some girls will decide to prove him wrong.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

If you want to encourage girls not to play chess, it is a veritable boon to chess.

You seem to think all it takes is a comment like that from Nigel. I doubt anyone takes it seriously. Well, I suppose a few take what Nigel says as absolute truth.

BTW, I'm not encouraging or discouraging anyone from playing. I don't care.

[Digeng Du]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Don't see the point of these arguments. Who cares? The world has way more important things to think about than whether being a girl prevents you from being a bit better at a board game.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Nigel Short: Girls wired differently; not suited to play chess

Don't see the point of these arguments. Who cares? The world has way more important things to think about than whether being a girl prevents you from being a bit better at a board game.

I've always said girls are as smart as boys and that I think they can play as well. I still enjoy reading the controversy Nigel has stirred up.

Chess isn't simply a board game. It's a way of life.