http://main.uschess.org/content/view/9786/343/

A) I think they're slighty demeaning
B) They're confusing
C) Why do we need 3 different Women's Titles when they represent way less than 50% of the chess population?

keep them. That's the only way I can beat titled players.

And there is 4 women titles iirc (WGM, WIM, WFM, WCM)

haha fine i never count the candidate master one

No idea what to vote atm..

They've been here for so long so its kind of silly to scrap them. However for the most part they don't really mean anything and are incredibly hard to describe to a layperson (as Jen Shahade mentions in the link'd article).

If they were scrapped I'm guessing there would be no more qualification for those titles, but what about the titles people currently have? Do they still keep them but they are now meaningless?

As an ending note it's fairly silly for a WIM to be about the strength of 2100-2150 ELO, i.e. not even a regular master.

i guess you could grant all WGM's ..IM and all WIMs ..FM

ok, that blanketing is a bit silly, but maybe allow them all to apply for the title and have a committe decide if theyve met the qualifications or a correspondign set of qualifications, the stronger WGMS are IMs anyway

Completely Agree

but the weaker to post-peaked WIM's are not even NM strength and NM in rating.

voted: Scrap them.

yeah i play WIMs and WGMs on ICC a lot- they're about expert strength- very rarely FM strength. It's pretty silly.

if you judge me by my internet ability im probably 2 classes lower cant go by that imo

Everyone knows that women are, in general, worse at chess than men.

It's very unpolitically correct to suggest that this is because of something innate. That is only acceptable in physical domains where it is really blindingly obvious that women cannot lift as much or run as fast as men. The only acceptable PC viewpoint is that women could be just as good, but they are oppressed, not encouraged enough as kids, or just not motivated to compete at a stupid game like chess.

This probably isn't actually true. It would be remarkable if human males and females were absolutely equal in all the mental attributes required to be a strong chess player. All the evidence suggests that they are not. And so it makes sense to have women's world championships and women's titles, just as we have them in boxing or sprinting. It really does mean something to be, say, the #20 woman in the world, even if you would get destroyed by the #200 man.

There was a scientific article that proved that the whole rating difference between top women players and top men players can be explained by the overall number of players of either gender. 5% of the samplesize will obv produce less density at the top.

Of course there are reasons why less women play competitive chess, but it's not necessary to go all PC or all non-PC, it's enough to go statistic.

OT: I see no reason to drop the women's titles without dropping stuff like that dumb CM and FM first. These titles mean nothing either and were just concocted by FIDE to make money from applicants.

link? I don't believe this is entirely true, so I would like to at least see how "scientific" the article is.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/m...600756,00.html

german unfortunately, and the link to this "proceedings of the royal society" doesn't seem to work anymore. He compares ratings of the top 100 of men's and women's rating lists.

He says the best 3 women are slightly better than statistically expected, next 70 are slightly worse, and the rest of the top 100 is slightly better again.

Of course the lists are biased because many women play almost exclusively women's tournaments so a similar pyramid is is to be somewhat expected. But the top women have held their own in the last years in men's tournaments afaik, so the lists should be comparable.

He also doesn't claim it's the only reason, he just says it's sufficient to explain 96% of the rating difference, whatever that means. Popular newspapers tend to get stuff like this wrong.

Edit: It should be noted that they used the german chess player database as a sample, so only players with a german national rating were apparently included. At higher levels, this rating is fairly equal to ELO ratings.

Found the abstract via web of science:

http://apps.isiknowledge.com/full_re...olname=MEDLINE

Funny coincindence, i played the coauthor of the paper, K. Smallbone, at Vienna open and blundered a bishop in one move. He thought for 8 of his remaining 9 minutes and didn't take it

I voted scrap them. Their existence is ridiculous, along with basically every women's chess program. The most common justification for women's chess programs is "it encourages women to participate more". So, where are the results? They've been running girls/women's chess for decades, and the participation rate in adult tournaments continues to be anemic. So what are chess federations getting for their money?

I pretty much agree with everything in here -- stupidity of CM especially. Not sure about FM, but that may just be that I'm used to seeing it. I do know someone who has two norms (I think) to IM and refuses to apply for the FM title.

I think Judit Polgar never or almost never competed in those female events.
Its my firm belief that she would never had become as strong if she had done so.

Btw, the FM title should be removed too. Its an almost worthless title.
Only value is reduction in the starting fee in some tournaments.

I dont think playing in Women's Tournament's make's you weaker at chess, haha. I'd bet the house she'd have been just as strong as long as she also played with the strongest players and did the same preparation and studying.

Whats with all the hate on the FM title? Do you guys just want to get rid of all labels and classes too? Lets get rid of Class C chess players? haha

the FM title is bought and you have no norms to qualify. Also iirc it doesn't count as a titled player when people are going for norms, so it just seems like a way to make money for FIDE. I might be wrong on the title thing though, and I would snap buy it if I could.

classes is a US thing and not a FIDE thing. I don't see what the use would be though if you already have a rating system.

Voted to keep it, otherwise many nice chess girls won't be able to brag about being grandmasters, and their life instantly becomes pointless and miserable.

"as long as she also played with the strongest players"

Playing in woman events would had meant that Judit Polgar would had matched herself with a lot weaker competition than she actually played.
Either you play in mens Olympiad or in the womans Olympiad. Most of the time you cant do both.

Maybe you can explain the point with having a title that is next to worthless?
GM or IM titles are actually worth something, usually accomodation +starting fee or at least the starting fee.

Life does not end with open tournaments. WIMs and WGMs often get sponsorships from state or local businesses, or at the very least get their two free ICC handles.

I want one. Where do they sell them?

FIDE, I guess.

one caveat is that you need 2300 in ELO. 2200 will give you a CM title if you want. You still have to pay though.

Yeh, I missed that one. Definitely more value. Sponsorship, columns in news papers, real life career etc.
It migth even be some value with the FM title if you plan to publish a chess book.