^^^ without doubt

This is how the drawing of lots is done in St. Louis

It might go largely unnoticed, but Ju Wenjun has just become a fifth woman in history to cross the 2600 ELO barrier (albeit, it's live rating so far, not a published one).

Good for her!

I noticed. GM Shanky is partly to blame .

But I am a fan of Ju Wenjun, but I'm not sure if it is her chess or just that she's a bit of a smokeshow (relative to chess). Ah well, ynotboth?

	Men	Rating	Country	Women	Rating	Country
1	Ernesto Inarkiev	2723.0	Russia	Anna Muzychuk	2568.8	Ukraine
2	Alexander Morozevich	2675.0	Russia	Tania Sachdev	2429.0	India
3	Baadur Jobava	2703.5	Georgia	Sopiko Guramishvili	2369.0	Georgia
4	Alexander Grischuk	2739.4	Russia	Kateryna Lagno	2537.8	Russia
5	Dmitry Andreikin	2733.9	Russia	Karina Szczepkowska-Horowska	2414.0	Poland
6	Magnus Carlsen	2838.3	Norway	Yuliya Shvayger	2413.0	Israel
7	Pendyala Harikrishna	2758.2	India	Mariya Muzychuk	2545.7	Ukraine
8	Nikita Vitiugov	2718.9	Russia	Alexandra Kosteniuk	2550.9	Russia
9	Leinier Domínguez	2739.0	Cuba	Elisabeth Pähtz	2464.1	Germany
10	Alexander Ipatov	2660.0	Turkey	Nazi Paikidze	2369.0	USA

Tentative updated looks list, with an arbitrary threshold for eligibility of my choosing.

A lot of shake-up in the men's section. Jobava is kind of weird-looking but also classically attractive, so he has to make it. #8-10 are whatever. Ipatov looks to be somewhat small, which doesn't score highly as far as men's looks go (Maxim Rodshtein would probably be on the list if he were a foot taller -- just a few inches probably wouldn't help), but too many top-100 players are kind of ugly in some way, and he has a mostly clean look to him.

The top three in the woman's list are way above the rest. I was going to say Kateryna Lagno too, but she has gone from stunning and t h i c c to looking like this lately (and that can't entirely be the fault of being next to Anna Mzychk). I'm assuming she suffered a bout of food poisoning or something, and I don't want to drop her out of the top ten entirely for that, so her spot will be preserved due to denial in a holding pattern until more pictures emerge and confirm that she either does or doesn't look that way normally these days. #5 through #10 are quite even to me, a mix of very steadily consistent with few great or bad pics (Karina, Yuliya) and more erratic with both good and bad pics (the rest).

Rei seems to have such a strong bias toward Caucasoids that he's omitted Ju Wenjun despite the above confessions of two fans of hers.

Like Carlsen, she celebrated her birthday in a classy way (yesterday).

The list is sorted according to my opinions. Feel free to make your own list. Also Tania Sachdev is at #2. Ju Wenjun is alright, but I think the rest are above her.

I may need to do some research too. Btw, as a counterpoint on Lagno, here is an extremely recent interview with her:



I thought she was even better looking than I remembered. So, I'm going to say that image you posted is just bad lighting or whatever for her at that moment.

Wenjun is looking very good in everything I've seen her in recently:

Anna often just looks ok to me. I think she should be at the top but her sister has much better fashion sense and looks better some of the time.

Tania is tough. She is very pretty a lot but she looks awful a lot to me. I think it is b/c there are a few faces she makes that are just unattractive to me, and she makes them kind of frequently. Like her disgusted or confused face. She also is quite abrasive when doing interviews and commentating. Robert Hess and Maurice Ashley are too in an unattractive way but they are not anywhere near the list so it's not very relevant.

Jobava is very cool looking but he and Grischuk are just so damn skinny, I'm not sure in person if they really have the presence to be as attractive as they should be. Carlsen is clearly #1 imo. Also, if Ahdiban got rid of the 'stache I think he'd be better looking than Hari, but maybe that's just because he has a very expressive smile and we've seen it often recently.

Ju looks great! Top Chinese export, in my opinion!

What the f just happened in the last round of Gibraltar :O

Hou protesting something, or on drugs?

probably Shirov at Keres memorial 2006, he scored 0.5 out of 9, it was a rapid tournament though

Spoiler alert! Actually, I have no idea what you're talking about. When I check stuff it looks like a 3-way tie for first. Kind of standard?

Oh, or it has to do with Hou Yifan. Weird, I guess concerning women's prizes? Looks like her opening choice was a bit suspect...gonna have to look into this.

Ahhhh, unhappy with playing so many women. Tbh I'm not completely sure I disagree with her but, like, that seems like a private frustration, not something you can blame on the tournament unless it was run improperly or rigged. I mean, an Open tournament is an Open tournament so it's a good thing that there are enough women in it for her to play a bunch of them!

At least now the phrase "pulling a Yifan" can be part of chess nomenclature.

Btw, if she wants to protest why not just refuse to play the game? That seems much more normal than playing 5 weird moves. Just tell the TD "noooope, not gonna play." I don't think she can get fined or anything since it's not an invitational event.

Why didn't she simply play 3. Nc3???

I'm trying to work out the probability of her getting paired with 7/9 women. Does anyone have a link to detailed information on how pairings are made? Thanks.

In an interview with Tania Sachdev, the organiser Brian Callaghan told that the pairings were 'coming out of a machine' so he denied human bias.

Anyway, in a big-field Swiss tourney where it's impractical to prepare vs the whole field in advance, chess is rather a game vs the board than vs a particular opponent, so I don't think that any kind of Swiss pairing (rigged or not towards spectators' pleasure) could have affected Yifan's result dramatically if she weren't paying so much attention to opponents' genders.

I doubt results is her issue, rather that she quit the lame women WCC cycle in order to play men. Then gets posted with almost all women who she is likely sick of playing. I assume that is almost completely her frustration.

Although I like Hou Yifan, it's important to remember that she's only 22, and listening to her explanation afterwards to Tania Sachdev suggested to me that Yifan is still pretty immature.

Aside from her dubious claim that the pairings were somehow rigged, I would believe that a more mature way to protest would be to just forfeit rather than openly throwing a rated game.

She did find the rules of this cycle lame, which was the reason for her dropout.

Women's KO championship doesn't intersect in time with the Gibraltar event, and she would have qualified for the KO by the rating criterion, so she could have entered both like Ju, A. Muzychuk, Gunina and Stefanova. But I understand her desire not to spend time on the KO lottery and focus on the real-life career instead. She's too smart for chess.

It would be more mature of her to play the game normally, maybe recreationally, i.e. without spending too much mental energy on it (though, ironically, it was a chance for her to defeat a male GM that she'd been looking for), but not to throw it in any overt way and preferably not to forfeit it either. She'd be interviewed and able to express the protest verbally anyway.