May be a gross oversimplification, simply because, ignoring everything else around professional chess, the world championship is technically open for all genders…
But considering how FIDE makes women gain ELO by taking it from other women in mixed tournaments, its 2023 ruling on transgender players, and how former World Champion Garry Kasparov reacted to losing to a women, it might as well be the truth.
In Kasparov’s eventual defense, he did say this after losing to Polgar:
“I was wrong about women playing chess. I gave an opinion a long time ago that I no longer believe.”
and later in his book wrote:
‘I won’t hide from the fact that I did make regrettably sexist remarks about women in chess around this time. In that 1989 Playboy interview I said men were better at chess because “women are weaker fighters” and that “probably the answer is in the genes”. The possibility of gender brain differences aside, I find it almost hard to believe I said this considering that my mother is the toughest fighter I know.’
May be a gross oversimplification, simply because, ignoring everything else around professional chess, the world championship is technically open for all genders…
But considering how FIDE makes women gain ELO by taking it from other women in mixed tournaments, its 2023 ruling on transgender players, and how former World Champion Garry Kasparov reacted to losing to a women, it might as well be the truth.
In Kasparov’s eventual defense, he did say this after losing to Polgar:
“I was wrong about women playing chess. I gave an opinion a long time ago that I no longer believe.”
and later in his book wrote:
‘I won’t hide from the fact that I did make regrettably sexist remarks about women in chess around this time. In that 1989 Playboy interview I said men were better at chess because “women are weaker fighters” and that “probably the answer is in the genes”. The possibility of gender brain differences aside, I find it almost hard to believe I said this considering that my mother is the toughest fighter I know.’