Brain games

This week I continue with my analysis of Nigel Short’s recent animadversions upon the differences between the male and female brain and his opinion that women cannot match up to men across the chessboard. The great German poet Goethe once described chess as ‘a touchstone of the brain’; he wrote this, in fact, in the persona of a female character, Adelheid, in his play Götz von Berlichingen.
 
The brainiest person I know is a female triple PhD from Dubai, Dr Manahel Thabet, who is capable of expressing herself in equations way beyond my comprehension. The predominance of male chess players is, in my opinion, not the result of differing brainpower, biologically divergent ‘hardwiring’, as Nigel put it, but of certain predominant cultural conditions. These include the long-held belief in the west that it was improper for women to become chess professionals.
 
Equally restrictive was an article of faith amongst former Eastern bloc nations, the greatest state supporters of chess the world has ever seen, that male and female chess players should be segregated into separate tournaments. If you start with a smaller and less experienced pool of players and force everyone in that pool to stay there, this will necessarily impede progress. Even in Soviet Georgia, the most fervent advocate of female chess, this ghetto mentality still predominated in official chess circles, as it did in communist Hungary, home of the brilliant Polgar sisters, who broke out by rebelling against the system and insisting on facing male opponents.
 
The segregation was based on a false analogy with physical sports, where upper body and general muscle strength counts. In chess, bodily stamina is important and so is brainpower, but muscular strength is not.
 
So Nigel Short’s views may reflect the current situation, but the explanation he gives is possibly not the correct one.
 
Judit Polgar’s lifetime score against Kasparov is unimpressive.