Male elite chess players are quicker to quit when dominated by a female | Hacker News Reader

Male elite chess players are quicker to quit when dominated by a female

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15 pointshirundo20 comments

Here's one, possibly very weird, man's perspective: there's truly no worse feeling than snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. To save a woman that torture, I might resign sooner than later. I don't mind inflicting that kind of pain on a man. People will label me sexist, okay. I just don't want it to get ugly.

Have you considered that the behavior you're describing is far uglier.

There's a well-established history of men getting very angry when losing to women in competitive chess so I don't think it's out of some gentleness. Some good background reading https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/02/hou-yifan-and-...

I can tell you're not a chess or baduk player.

Note: the paper title and abstract actually talks about super-elite players, not elite players.

I don't have access to the paper. If anyone here has read it, how many games and how many female players did they look at?

Aside from Judit Polgar who had a peak rating of 2735 and was at one time ranked 8th in the world and maybe Hou Yifan whose highest rating so far was 2686 and has been as high as 55th in the world I'm having trouble thinking of any female super-elite chess players. 3rd highest and below are far enough down that I'd not expect them to have many wins against super-elite players.

So I'm curious how they got enough games to draw solid conclusions from.

>So I'm curious how they got enough games to draw solid conclusions from.

Yes there was. There was a paper by a statistician based on data of officially rated chess players (that would include semi-pro and pro players), the conclusions are hard to argue with.

The lack of female players in top chess is mainly due to very small pool of players.

Other conclusion is that there is a bias against women in chess and it causes many female players to drop off, resulting in only the 'mentally strongest' to keep on playing. Ergo the average female player in rated chess has higher rating than average male player.

I don't like to get to the part where they say it says that the study was based on 10 matches that happened in Iraq.

This brings back memories from like, 15 years ago... I had this friend, we're still friends actually, I used to go to his place to play Starcraft and sometimes his little sister, probably 13 years old or so, used to challenge me to a chess match, and oh boy... she was damn good, I got my sh*t handed to me so many times I cant even remember. It was dehumanizing hahaha Turns out she had true talent, went on to win many tournaments and leagues back then... Good times.

The real question is: What sex quits the most when they feel dominated by an opponent regardless gender.

It was interesting to see the amount of athletes that pulled out of the Olympics for mental illnesses soon as they were being dominated.

Are there other differences between male and female chess play? Like maybe females prefer certain strategies/styles that make a small advantage more secure once you have it.

No, I’m fact the best female chess player, Judith Polgar was known for her aggression while the best male chess player Magnus Carlsen is known for his conservative style. They are different generations, however, but there have always been aggressive and defensive players.

If anything women are considered to be more risky/dangerous players, it's quite anecdotal though AFAIK.

I wonder if this can be extrapolated outside of chess and a narrow sexism view.

Do men have a greater desire to cut their losses in general than women?

It may be in part fear of being interpreted as a guy who refuses to give up just because she’s a woman. There’s a little extra willingness IMO to accept defeat out of a sort of respect.

As I don't have access to the paper, I pose this question:

Won't elite chess players (regardless of gender) be faster to recognize and quit if they realize the game is over (regardless of opponents gender)?

The greatest player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, is characterized by his refusal to quit when behind and to get blood from a stone in the end-game.

> to quit when behind

As you mention, he's recognized for his refusal to give up on trying to win even in apparently dead draw positions, usually endgames, but I'd say other players (e.g. Karjakin) are considered better at defending tough positions.

Abstract answers it, it's in relative terms:

In contrast, female players’ behaviour differs little as a function of the gender of opponents.

Let me guess, this is one of those articles that cherry picks to show women are better then men, like with programming awhile ago ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-con... ).

If you have 1m male programmers there is high chance you will have a lot of average programmers (male dominated profession)

If there is 10-50x less female programmers, you can infer that those people who actively are interested in programming as a career, rather than just ended up becoming a programmer. If that is true on average they will be more skilful.

I personally know more bad male programmers than all female programmers. F to M ration is probably around 1:20 - 1:40

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