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Womens World Chess Champinship kicks off in Iran

Why is there even Women's Chess? Why can't men and women compete against each other? Kind of stupid/sexist to separate them.
 
Why is there even Women's Chess? Why can't men and women compete against each other? Kind of stupid/sexist to separate them.
Because women were excluded from participating in men’s tournaments and banned from many men’s chess clubs up until the 1970s or later, so out of necessity women formed their own clubs and started their own tournaments and championships.

Women are now allowed to enter open tournaments but it will take decades before their participation numbers start to catch up with men. Right now there are still millions more men that play chess and consequently many more strong men players, putting women as a group at a competitive disadvantage for monetary prizes in open tournaments. Eventually, when things start to even out a bit more, the Women’s Chess Championship will be discontinued, a relic of an extremely sexist chess history.

By the way, sexism still exists in chess despite the many open tournaments and increasing participation from women. Just last month at a tournament in Gibraltar, Hou Yifan, the world’s strongest women's player, resigned her last game in protest after only five moves because she was paired against other women in seven of her first nine games in an open tournament with hundreds more men players, a statistical improbability. Yifan wants to compete against men and felt she was being unfairly prevented from doing so. She has beaten many top men players in the recent past and has drawn one of the few games she has been paired against Magnus Carlson, but she felt the pairing algorithm at Gibraltar was weighted to favor her still being forced to play against other women.
 
even if you're not particularly interested in chess, the biography of Bobby Fisher by Frank Brady, is a pretty quick read, quite interesting both in the context of his life and the context of U.S. and Soviet relations - - this was during the Cold War era when the winner of a chess match was sort of a proxy for the winner of the arms race

then détente had to come along and ruin all the fun
 
Sure it is. Your attitude about the matter is that you don't want to drink soda at all.

Regardless, its extreme. You could be less extreme about it and just drink a little soda.
Wrong
 
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