I'm not sure that it makes a difference in this case, but it is insufficient in situations such as these to look at just the expected return. A rational agent's actions are determined by expected utility, which could be highly non-linear depending on myriad factors such as the player's net worth. i.e. it could be rational to trade a lower chance of the largest payoff for a more consistent payoff of a lesser but still substantial amount, even at the cost of a significantly smaller expected return.
Another example that we all participate in is insurance. We all make an expected loss on insurance, but we lower the variance of our outgoings by doing it, so most of us are happy to take the hit.
Given the difference in rating, McShane was likely at a disadvantage.
So, if I'm McShane, do I push when my most likely outcome is draw or loss? That's actually a pretty tough calculation. Nakamura clearly was not going to let him go into the opening line that he wanted to which was going to make the game much more difficult. McShane probably should have pushed for a win since he was going to be at a disadvantage relative to the tiebreakers anyway. However, that's a tough call. Add in some fatigue and taking an easy draw to get past the person ranked second in the world doesn't look that unappealing.
Nakamura, on the other hand, is one of the absolute best players at speed-type chess which is what was going to be the tie-breaker. So, he has a huge incentive to take an easy draw and rest up for where he has a big advantage, and zero incentive to put anything at risk. Nakamura is absolutely not going to let McShane go into his preferred opening when the draw is just fine.
Finally, please do remember that 50%+ of grandmaster games wind up in a draw anyway. So, both of them can decide to press on, waste a lot of energy, and be in the same situation as the nine-move draw anyway.
Given that Nakamura won the whole shebang, it sure looks like he made the right choice.
"Top female Prize " and... no top male prize...We can never be equal while there is any discrimination even when it is possitive. And please don't start with "we need more women in chess thus...". No, we need good players in ches and not insert anything here. And tell, what forces us to improve more than competition? Why play better when you will get prize anyway?
Award for kids I can "justify" by "well, you went against all odfs and you... got somewhere" (still, would argue for separate group with separate prizes). Women are not going against all odds - remember they are equals, as capable and stuff. As senior prize - stupid. Should not be there.
Why I singled out women? Because these "women only" prizes and headstarts are everywhere today. And I am pro equality - means no headstart for anyone.
The actual clothes. Chess players are notoriously poorly dressed and the organizers want to be able to eventually package this for television, so they give some incentive for improvement.
Mind providing examples of males having prize when outnumbered (preferably not once but consistently) or where men get headstart (like in marathon I can't remember name of, where women get head start)? Because I will be angry about that too. It kills competition, it kills meritocracy.
Positive discrimination is a reaction to negative discrimination. The notion that things would be more equal without the positive discrimination is flat out wrong; all the positive discrimination is doing is countering the negative prejudices. When the negative discrimination goes away then the positive discrimination won't be necessary any more. We live in a more equal world with positive discrimination in favour of minorities than without it.
I like to think of positive discrimination as a cosine wave that cancels out the sine wave of sexism/racism/etc.
If you think positive discrimination is a bad thing then I suggest you work on getting rid of the negative discrimination, and the 'problem' will magically resolve itself.
> all the positive discrimination is doing is countering the negative prejudices
IMHO positive discrimination might only reinforce those prejudices.
"Haha, look at those women, they need a head start!"
"Damm, women are so weak they need lower standards to join the firefighters."
"Women need their own separate tournaments because they couldn't even face the worst male team."
All things I heard.
I'm pretty sure there is discrimination around. I'm just not sure positive discrimination helps at all, or only makes us feel like we're doing something.
On the other hand, female-only tournaments (like in some sports) encourage the underrepresented gender to participate, since they're more likely to succeed and feel like they can achieve something, and then maybe get to the same level as males in the long run.
It's a complex problem, though. Teenage females are, on average, slower when running than their male counterparts, and this won't change no matter how much positive discrimination you throw at it. I feel like a bigot just by saying it but, hey, I think it's true and it's been proven (e.g. soccer USWNT scrimmaged against the U-17 USMNT and was beaten 8-2, purely by physical advantage). Sometimes life itself discriminates and IMHO we have to accept it too. Maybe positive discrimination is the only way to work around it? How are we going to get rid of the biological discrimination, to then then get rid of the positive discrimination? I don't think we can. I think we just have to accept it and normalize it and be fine with each person having different aptitudes and traits.
Unfortunately I don't have any alternative methods to get rid of negative discrimination :( I like to think this is an education issue that will get fixed over generations and, in my eyes, it's indeed slowly getting fixed (unless some event sets the progress back, like it's happened in history multiple times... that's what we'd have to work against.)
I like to think my country (Spain) is pretty progressive on getting rid of discrimination, be it gay, female, racial, etc. I think we've come a long way on getting rid of it, and I think education (e.g. TV shows including gay people) was the only factor that helped. I mention gay people because we're one of the most progressive countries on that regard and, indeed, the problem wasn't solved by positive discrimination but, simply, by normalization.
Change came from heroes setting example, not underdogs in need of help.
IMHO positive discrimination might only reinforce those prejudices.
"Haha, look at those women, they need a head start!"
"Damm, women are so weak they need lower standards to join the firefighters."
"Women need their own separate tournaments because they couldn't even face the worst male team."
All things I heard.
Which is why, as an enlightened and intelligent person, when you hear things like that it's your job to point out that the positive discrimination is only necessary because of the negative attitudes people have towards minority groups. All the remarks you heard are examples of negative, sexist discrimination. We should all be willing to speak out against it, and all work to resolve the issue of inequality. And that includes defending positive discrimination for the good it does.
> And that includes defending positive discrimination for the good it does.
Does it? I feel you think that's an axiom. Is it? You didn't argue why, and it's the crux of my comment: if it does good or not. I'm not convinced it does good (or bad), but you seem so convinced I hoped you could answer my comment instead of reinstating how good you think positive discrimination is.
I'll quote myself:
> How are we going to get rid of the biological discrimination, to then then get rid of the positive discrimination? I don't think we can. I think we just have to accept it and normalize it and be fine with each person having different aptitudes and traits.
I invite you to read my comment carefully and reflect on it. IMHO it's not an issue as simple as you seem to think it is. And if it is, please enlighten me (I'm genuinely open to it!)
Positive discrimination is not only reaction to negative discrimination. It may also be just plain simple discrimination. Of course people may claim that positive discrimination is always just a reaction, but in reality it may be just sexism or racism.
How does having a women prize kill competition exactly? There is an overall prize for everyone to compete for. A 'best man' prize would, in every chess tournament I'm aware of every happening, always go to the best player anyway. The day a woman wins the top prize, the is the day we could introduce a 'top man' prize.
And why single out the women prize, as opposed to the over 65 or under 13 prizes?
Please note that I am against extra prizes (because of private bits or skin colour) in open tournaments. Women can have their titles, their own tournaments, their own prizes ( in their tournaments) as long as men can have same. I just request everyone be treated same in tournament where everyone is alowed and fights free for all ( if tournament is split into two separate groups - prizes can be different too)
First off, I'd like to mention that I don't think that sounds very unreasonable, so I'm not responding out of feeling offended. I am taking that as being a fairly reasonable position. I just currently think it is probably at least incomplete. Now on to the actual response:
What would be your view of a tournament which only allows people to enter if they have a different <x> than the majority of the winners of the "main" tournament during the last 5 years?
(Example: If <x> is gender, then if 3 men had won the "main tournament" in the last 5 years, then only people who are not men could enter the alternate tournament, and if 3 women had won the "main tournament" in the last 5 years, only people who are not women could enter the alternate tournament.
(If there was no most common <x> then the alternate tournament would not be run, because there would not be any eligible participants. For example if one year, the two semifinalists refuse to continue.)
Would you say that there should also be another alternative tournament in which participants are only eligible if they have the same <x> as the majority of winners of the "main tournament" over the last 5 years?
I agree that there is not /inherently/ a problem if one gender (or other quality) is more common in an activity, and that the problems are in the causes or effects of such a situation. But I am not certain that trying to apply pressure to make the ratio closer to equal can't be a good way to address whatever problem might be causing , or caused by, the ratio to be unequal. I'm not certain that doing that when there aren't problems related to the inequality in outcome causes any harm.
If someone decides they want to give money to left handed, or to right handed, people, what harm does that cause?
> Nobody has ever said that WGM is equivalent to GM, everybody knows it's not the case, WGM is just a step towards IM then GM, to make sure the player does not lose interest as it is so hard to attain the higher titles.
That's all well and good, but what prize is there to encourage men who are at the level of WGM? Why is no prize needed for men?
It isn't needed to make "more men" play chess. But for an individual, it's pretty unfair: "She's no better than me, but she is a WGM and I am nothing".
Lol. Women and all their unfair advantages over men, right? It's tough for a guy out here...
Women are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged across the board. Why do so many men fail to understand this? For the record I'm a man, and I see women face issues on a daily basis that I have never had to deal with, so by all means, give them a prize.
Please rein in your dismissiveness. It is not insane to consider the ways that men and women have advantages. I'm not trying to step into this argument on one side or the other, but this kind of mocking is unhelpful.
> Women are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged across the board. Why do so many men fail to understand this?
I think because it isn't true? Assuming 'across the board' means 'in every aggregate scenario', then there certainly are places where it's men who are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged (two classic examples are judicial sentencing and when a victim of domestic violence).
One can think that women are disadvantaged 'overall', if one wanted to construct a score-card, without believing that women are disadvantaged in every (aggregate) scenario.
In this particular scenario I think it makes sense to say "We wanted more female participation, so we introduced an incentive". This addresses a particular point, and people can argue about whether the goal (more women at high levels of chess) is worthwhile, but at least that doesn't turn the whole discussion into an 'us against them' mentality.
You're right, the mockery was unnecessary. It's just, agh, so frustrating to me, for men to call out gender-related "unfairness," based on just how far the scales are tipped to one side (imo).
"Across the board" and "overall" seem synonymous to me, I did not mean to imply that men have the advantage in literally every conceivable scenario/dimension.
In this situation I would just tend to err on the side of graciousness and over-correction...men have been calling the shots and having their way with nothing to stop them for so long, for most of us it is impossible to empathize with the challenges faced by the other half. Due to this long legacy there is a tangled web of deep-seated factors contributing to why women might not be competitive with men in chess, and why we might look into ways we can attempt to balance for that. I strongly believe that "just toss them in the ring, no special considerations, because lassiez-faire competition is the best and most fair" totally ignores the larger picture of these issues.
So yes, it is not insane to consider both sides, but in this particular instance - of someone claiming "unfairness" to men because women have their own bracket where it may be "easier" to get a cool title (and you see this argument all over sports) - I find it pretty gauche. It's just the same general issue where people of privilege see no problems because they aren't affected by them, and then label attempts to correct them as "unfair", I guess because of the explicit and intentional nature of the initiative? (Contrasted to the "naturally occurring" or "subconscious" unfairness all over, which I guess is acceptable?)
How does it hurt men, hurt competition, for women to have their own prize? For whatever reasons, women aren't competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time), men are the best, everyone knows that as a given, do we really need to rub it in by forcing them to be ranked alongside men? Is that really preserving some concept of integrity of the sport? Is that helping women get better? Or does it just further discourage them? Obviously some people are fine if women are muscled out of playing chess, if they can't hang that's their problem, right? There I go with the mocking, but agh! Have some compassion, understanding, graciousness...
> How does it hurt men, hurt competition, for women to have their own prize?
This has already been answered and I'd like to hear your rebuttal.
It hurts men and competition by devaluing the prizes. To quote jstanley again:
"She's no better than me, but she is a WGM and I am nothing".
Do you see how this hurts competition directly? Like it or not people compete for the recognition which is embodied by the prize. If the prize can now be given out without full attainment of the skill being tested for, then it loses its meaning and its signaling value.
> For whatever reasons, women aren't competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time)
I'd also be curious to hear from you why you think the reasons for this are "whatever reasons" - I'm presuming by that you mean, that the reasons are inconsequential or they don't matter or they are not important. Why do you believe that to be the case, without first knowing what the reasons actually are?
EDIT: all players have their own ELO score but they are still competing for the prize, which is the embodiment of the attainment of certain skills. If women can win this prize without attaining the same skills then this is devaluing the prize. Please address this directly, if you will. Again, to make this clear, players compete for the prize, not for the ELO score. If players did not compete for the prize, there would not be a prize.
> > It hurts men and competition by devaluing the prizes.
> To quote jstanley again:
"She's no better than me, but she is a WGM and I am nothing"
Well, don't they still have their score? I mean, I'm not into competitive chess, but everyone has their own ELO, no?
> > For whatever reasons, women aren't competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time)
> I'd also be curious to hear from you why you think the reasons for this are "whatever reasons" - I'm presuming by that you mean, that the reasons are inconsequential or they don't matter or they are not important. Why do you believe that to be the case, without first knowing what the reasons actually are?
I'm not the author, but what I would have meant by that phrase is "regardless of what the reasons are". I would have used it because the reasons are essentially unknowable, probably have many different overlapping reasons, and any discussion of those reasons is extremely likely to get bogged down in useless arguments given our collective scientific understanding of this issue at this time.
I want to start out by pointing that I'm generally in agreement with your points.
I urge you to consider that aggregate statistics are not individual experiences. It is a totally normal, expected outcome that there are individual men who have had deeply unfair experiences based on their gender. The fact that 'overall' men have better experiences will be cold comfort to such people. While in aggregate we tend to encourage men/boys to play chess, and as such there are a lot of competitive men, an individual man/boy may have a very different experience. Telling that one man/boy that overall men have it better in this scenario (and others) just won't be compelling. That's why I tend to argue that we should consider these incentives. It's a group-modification action, not an individual-modification. But understanding this may help you to have compassion for people who, for whatever reason, are blind to the 'tipping of the scales' that you mention.
I agree that competition forces people to improve, and that's why a top female prize is a good idea. Awards for women in chess -> more women competing -> more competition in women's chess -> better chess players overall.
I don't appreciate that this is being downvoted and flagged into oblivion. It's frustrating that we Hacker News citizens seem to have adopted a list of taboo topics that we aren't allowed to discuss - such as anything related to discrimination against a non-minority. I think this is an interesting discussion to have, and personally I wonder if segregating chess marginalizes the women, too. The atmosphere around this becomes that men are inherently better at chess and women need a special league with a less glamorous title. Chess isn't inherently a game where gender factors into your ability to play. The article [0] linked earlier establishes chess as a sport, which is fair, but it doesn't follow that all sports should be segregated.
> It's frustrating that we Hacker News citizens seem to have adopted a list of taboo topics that we aren't allowed to discuss - such as anything related to discrimination against a non-minority.
And yet the topic comes up repeatedly every time there is the slightest possible way to bring it up, even if it's completely unrelated to the article, like the grandparent's post. The original article had no mention of female prize or anything related to discrimination.
I find that sort of comment to be extremely counterproductive, because it's totally off the original topic and it seems to be the result of searching for some link to controversy and then pouncing on whatever's found.
I don't really like clicking on the comments for an article about the economics of a chess tournament to find somebody whining about a prize for women players that isn't even mentioned in that article. It's just uncouth. Even if such prizes are a bad idea, there's not worth derailing the conversation, and it's rude to track down some nitpicky complaint to jump on.
How is it derailing the conversation? Are we keeping you from having your arguments in other branches of the comment section?
Why should there be a section for people who want to talk about the aspects you want to talk about, but not a section for stuff I and others want to talk about?
I understand you might not like to click on a chess article to find something else being discussed. Well, that happens to all of us in different ways. The way I deal with it is, I simply skip the comment branches that I don't care for.
I upvoted you because you have the right sentiment imo. Special prices for black people or people with red hair would be ridiculous and those groups are even more underrepresented than women are.
The thing is though that women have it harder in chess the same way as in boxing, tennis or sprinting.
People try to run circles about the fact that there are very significant biological differences which influence performance in chess but if you ever were a part of competitive chess world (or any intellectual game really, for example bridge) you wouldn't argue with that. It's just too obvious looking at children taking up chess and seeing the pace of progress they make.
There are many lazy slobs who are better at chess than the most dedicated women out there (maybe with exception of Hou Yifan). It's the same way a lazy smoking overweight aged player from somewhere in top 200 of ATP would absolutely destroy Serena Williams, it's just the difference is smaller in chess but it's still there.
And yet you and other commenters keep getting downvoted because many old-time HN'ers with the ability to downvote seem to have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that men and women have different capabilities.
Notice how you only see the downvotes, not anyone trying to explain how is it that if men and women are equally capable, that only 1 in the top 100 chess players is a woman, and only 18 in the top 1000 are women.
Could someone provide some context? Had Nakamura and McShane already played each other, and the second game looked like it was going to become an exact copy?
This was their first meeting. The line that Nakamura would have had to play to avoid the repetition was one that McShane had won a smooth victory in earlier in the tournament, so he was leery of going into it.
> Even under some very tolerant assumptions, the expected payoff from playing on, for either player, was greater than the expected payoff from accepting the repetition.
Payoff, sure. But it's well-known that the marginal utility of money is not linear, which means people tend to value money differently based on how much of it they have (poor people value a dollar more than rich people). This indirectly means some level of risk aversion is actually an optimal choice. Turning down a gamble, even if the expected payout is positive, can be rational.
Without invoking the maximization of utility we could use game theory and ask if the players were simply minimizing their maximum regret. It was during the qualification rounds, not the finals. It looks like they each preferred taking an advantage or a draw (chosen by their opponent) over playing against a world-class player at a slight disadvantage.
Nakamura's shown that he'll play interesting and sometimes dubious moves because he wants chess to be more entertaining for spectators. He spends a lot of time playing online against weaker players so they can have the memory of that one time they played against one of the best. He's done so much for chess and its popularity that if he takes an early draw once in a while he gets the benefit of the doubt.
- They say this is terrible for television, but I bet they love it! I wasn't aware of this tournament until this story. TV tries its best to manufacture strife and drama.
- In Go you simply aren't allowed to repeat a position (ko). I wonder how profoundly it would change chess if you simply weren't allowed threefold repetition. Or if you weren't allowed it within the first x moves?
- What if a draw earned you 0.4 points instead of 0.5? Maybe that doesn't matter with so few games, or does it?
50 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadAnother example that we all participate in is insurance. We all make an expected loss on insurance, but we lower the variance of our outgoings by doing it, so most of us are happy to take the hit.
So, if I'm McShane, do I push when my most likely outcome is draw or loss? That's actually a pretty tough calculation. Nakamura clearly was not going to let him go into the opening line that he wanted to which was going to make the game much more difficult. McShane probably should have pushed for a win since he was going to be at a disadvantage relative to the tiebreakers anyway. However, that's a tough call. Add in some fatigue and taking an easy draw to get past the person ranked second in the world doesn't look that unappealing.
Nakamura, on the other hand, is one of the absolute best players at speed-type chess which is what was going to be the tie-breaker. So, he has a huge incentive to take an easy draw and rest up for where he has a big advantage, and zero incentive to put anything at risk. Nakamura is absolutely not going to let McShane go into his preferred opening when the draw is just fine.
Finally, please do remember that 50%+ of grandmaster games wind up in a draw anyway. So, both of them can decide to press on, waste a lot of energy, and be in the same situation as the nine-move draw anyway.
Given that Nakamura won the whole shebang, it sure looks like he made the right choice.
https://millionairechess.com/prizes
Also prizes in each division for "Top senior prize (65+)" and "Best child under 13 yrs old"
Why I singled out women? Because these "women only" prizes and headstarts are everywhere today. And I am pro equality - means no headstart for anyone.
I like to think of positive discrimination as a cosine wave that cancels out the sine wave of sexism/racism/etc.
If you think positive discrimination is a bad thing then I suggest you work on getting rid of the negative discrimination, and the 'problem' will magically resolve itself.
IMHO positive discrimination might only reinforce those prejudices.
"Haha, look at those women, they need a head start!"
"Damm, women are so weak they need lower standards to join the firefighters."
"Women need their own separate tournaments because they couldn't even face the worst male team."
All things I heard.
I'm pretty sure there is discrimination around. I'm just not sure positive discrimination helps at all, or only makes us feel like we're doing something.
On the other hand, female-only tournaments (like in some sports) encourage the underrepresented gender to participate, since they're more likely to succeed and feel like they can achieve something, and then maybe get to the same level as males in the long run.
It's a complex problem, though. Teenage females are, on average, slower when running than their male counterparts, and this won't change no matter how much positive discrimination you throw at it. I feel like a bigot just by saying it but, hey, I think it's true and it's been proven (e.g. soccer USWNT scrimmaged against the U-17 USMNT and was beaten 8-2, purely by physical advantage). Sometimes life itself discriminates and IMHO we have to accept it too. Maybe positive discrimination is the only way to work around it? How are we going to get rid of the biological discrimination, to then then get rid of the positive discrimination? I don't think we can. I think we just have to accept it and normalize it and be fine with each person having different aptitudes and traits.
Unfortunately I don't have any alternative methods to get rid of negative discrimination :( I like to think this is an education issue that will get fixed over generations and, in my eyes, it's indeed slowly getting fixed (unless some event sets the progress back, like it's happened in history multiple times... that's what we'd have to work against.)
I like to think my country (Spain) is pretty progressive on getting rid of discrimination, be it gay, female, racial, etc. I think we've come a long way on getting rid of it, and I think education (e.g. TV shows including gay people) was the only factor that helped. I mention gay people because we're one of the most progressive countries on that regard and, indeed, the problem wasn't solved by positive discrimination but, simply, by normalization.
Change came from heroes setting example, not underdogs in need of help.
Which is why, as an enlightened and intelligent person, when you hear things like that it's your job to point out that the positive discrimination is only necessary because of the negative attitudes people have towards minority groups. All the remarks you heard are examples of negative, sexist discrimination. We should all be willing to speak out against it, and all work to resolve the issue of inequality. And that includes defending positive discrimination for the good it does.
> And that includes defending positive discrimination for the good it does.
Does it? I feel you think that's an axiom. Is it? You didn't argue why, and it's the crux of my comment: if it does good or not. I'm not convinced it does good (or bad), but you seem so convinced I hoped you could answer my comment instead of reinstating how good you think positive discrimination is.
I'll quote myself:
> How are we going to get rid of the biological discrimination, to then then get rid of the positive discrimination? I don't think we can. I think we just have to accept it and normalize it and be fine with each person having different aptitudes and traits.
I invite you to read my comment carefully and reflect on it. IMHO it's not an issue as simple as you seem to think it is. And if it is, please enlighten me (I'm genuinely open to it!)
And why single out the women prize, as opposed to the over 65 or under 13 prizes?
What would be your view of a tournament which only allows people to enter if they have a different <x> than the majority of the winners of the "main" tournament during the last 5 years?
(Example: If <x> is gender, then if 3 men had won the "main tournament" in the last 5 years, then only people who are not men could enter the alternate tournament, and if 3 women had won the "main tournament" in the last 5 years, only people who are not women could enter the alternate tournament.
(If there was no most common <x> then the alternate tournament would not be run, because there would not be any eligible participants. For example if one year, the two semifinalists refuse to continue.)
Would you say that there should also be another alternative tournament in which participants are only eligible if they have the same <x> as the majority of winners of the "main tournament" over the last 5 years?
I agree that there is not /inherently/ a problem if one gender (or other quality) is more common in an activity, and that the problems are in the causes or effects of such a situation. But I am not certain that trying to apply pressure to make the ratio closer to equal can't be a good way to address whatever problem might be causing , or caused by, the ratio to be unequal. I'm not certain that doing that when there aren't problems related to the inequality in outcome causes any harm.
If someone decides they want to give money to left handed, or to right handed, people, what harm does that cause?
> Nobody has ever said that WGM is equivalent to GM, everybody knows it's not the case, WGM is just a step towards IM then GM, to make sure the player does not lose interest as it is so hard to attain the higher titles.
That's all well and good, but what prize is there to encourage men who are at the level of WGM? Why is no prize needed for men?
Women are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged across the board. Why do so many men fail to understand this? For the record I'm a man, and I see women face issues on a daily basis that I have never had to deal with, so by all means, give them a prize.
> Women are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged across the board. Why do so many men fail to understand this?
I think because it isn't true? Assuming 'across the board' means 'in every aggregate scenario', then there certainly are places where it's men who are consistently and institutionally disadvantaged (two classic examples are judicial sentencing and when a victim of domestic violence).
One can think that women are disadvantaged 'overall', if one wanted to construct a score-card, without believing that women are disadvantaged in every (aggregate) scenario.
In this particular scenario I think it makes sense to say "We wanted more female participation, so we introduced an incentive". This addresses a particular point, and people can argue about whether the goal (more women at high levels of chess) is worthwhile, but at least that doesn't turn the whole discussion into an 'us against them' mentality.
IOW: Please try to raise the level of debate.
"Across the board" and "overall" seem synonymous to me, I did not mean to imply that men have the advantage in literally every conceivable scenario/dimension.
In this situation I would just tend to err on the side of graciousness and over-correction...men have been calling the shots and having their way with nothing to stop them for so long, for most of us it is impossible to empathize with the challenges faced by the other half. Due to this long legacy there is a tangled web of deep-seated factors contributing to why women might not be competitive with men in chess, and why we might look into ways we can attempt to balance for that. I strongly believe that "just toss them in the ring, no special considerations, because lassiez-faire competition is the best and most fair" totally ignores the larger picture of these issues.
So yes, it is not insane to consider both sides, but in this particular instance - of someone claiming "unfairness" to men because women have their own bracket where it may be "easier" to get a cool title (and you see this argument all over sports) - I find it pretty gauche. It's just the same general issue where people of privilege see no problems because they aren't affected by them, and then label attempts to correct them as "unfair", I guess because of the explicit and intentional nature of the initiative? (Contrasted to the "naturally occurring" or "subconscious" unfairness all over, which I guess is acceptable?)
How does it hurt men, hurt competition, for women to have their own prize? For whatever reasons, women aren't competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time), men are the best, everyone knows that as a given, do we really need to rub it in by forcing them to be ranked alongside men? Is that really preserving some concept of integrity of the sport? Is that helping women get better? Or does it just further discourage them? Obviously some people are fine if women are muscled out of playing chess, if they can't hang that's their problem, right? There I go with the mocking, but agh! Have some compassion, understanding, graciousness...
This has already been answered and I'd like to hear your rebuttal.
It hurts men and competition by devaluing the prizes. To quote jstanley again:
"She's no better than me, but she is a WGM and I am nothing".
Do you see how this hurts competition directly? Like it or not people compete for the recognition which is embodied by the prize. If the prize can now be given out without full attainment of the skill being tested for, then it loses its meaning and its signaling value.
> For whatever reasons, women aren't competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time)
I'd also be curious to hear from you why you think the reasons for this are "whatever reasons" - I'm presuming by that you mean, that the reasons are inconsequential or they don't matter or they are not important. Why do you believe that to be the case, without first knowing what the reasons actually are?
EDIT: all players have their own ELO score but they are still competing for the prize, which is the embodiment of the attainment of certain skills. If women can win this prize without attaining the same skills then this is devaluing the prize. Please address this directly, if you will. Again, to make this clear, players compete for the prize, not for the ELO score. If players did not compete for the prize, there would not be a prize.
> To quote jstanley again: "She's no better than me, but she is a WGM and I am nothing"
Well, don't they still have their score? I mean, I'm not into competitive chess, but everyone has their own ELO, no?
> > For whatever reasons, women aren't competitive with men (in chess, at this point in time)
> I'd also be curious to hear from you why you think the reasons for this are "whatever reasons" - I'm presuming by that you mean, that the reasons are inconsequential or they don't matter or they are not important. Why do you believe that to be the case, without first knowing what the reasons actually are?
I'm not the author, but what I would have meant by that phrase is "regardless of what the reasons are". I would have used it because the reasons are essentially unknowable, probably have many different overlapping reasons, and any discussion of those reasons is extremely likely to get bogged down in useless arguments given our collective scientific understanding of this issue at this time.
I urge you to consider that aggregate statistics are not individual experiences. It is a totally normal, expected outcome that there are individual men who have had deeply unfair experiences based on their gender. The fact that 'overall' men have better experiences will be cold comfort to such people. While in aggregate we tend to encourage men/boys to play chess, and as such there are a lot of competitive men, an individual man/boy may have a very different experience. Telling that one man/boy that overall men have it better in this scenario (and others) just won't be compelling. That's why I tend to argue that we should consider these incentives. It's a group-modification action, not an individual-modification. But understanding this may help you to have compassion for people who, for whatever reason, are blind to the 'tipping of the scales' that you mention.
Good luck.
Then, if there isn't one, why not?
[0] http://www.chessblog.com/2009/10/abolish-womens-itles-ridicu...
And yet the topic comes up repeatedly every time there is the slightest possible way to bring it up, even if it's completely unrelated to the article, like the grandparent's post. The original article had no mention of female prize or anything related to discrimination.
Edit: reduced hyperbole
I don't really like clicking on the comments for an article about the economics of a chess tournament to find somebody whining about a prize for women players that isn't even mentioned in that article. It's just uncouth. Even if such prizes are a bad idea, there's not worth derailing the conversation, and it's rude to track down some nitpicky complaint to jump on.
Why should there be a section for people who want to talk about the aspects you want to talk about, but not a section for stuff I and others want to talk about?
I understand you might not like to click on a chess article to find something else being discussed. Well, that happens to all of us in different ways. The way I deal with it is, I simply skip the comment branches that I don't care for.
The thing is though that women have it harder in chess the same way as in boxing, tennis or sprinting.
People try to run circles about the fact that there are very significant biological differences which influence performance in chess but if you ever were a part of competitive chess world (or any intellectual game really, for example bridge) you wouldn't argue with that. It's just too obvious looking at children taking up chess and seeing the pace of progress they make. There are many lazy slobs who are better at chess than the most dedicated women out there (maybe with exception of Hou Yifan). It's the same way a lazy smoking overweight aged player from somewhere in top 200 of ATP would absolutely destroy Serena Williams, it's just the difference is smaller in chess but it's still there.
Notice how you only see the downvotes, not anyone trying to explain how is it that if men and women are equally capable, that only 1 in the top 100 chess players is a woman, and only 18 in the top 1000 are women.
> Even under some very tolerant assumptions, the expected payoff from playing on, for either player, was greater than the expected payoff from accepting the repetition.
Payoff, sure. But it's well-known that the marginal utility of money is not linear, which means people tend to value money differently based on how much of it they have (poor people value a dollar more than rich people). This indirectly means some level of risk aversion is actually an optimal choice. Turning down a gamble, even if the expected payout is positive, can be rational.
This is well studied in economic theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...
Nakamura's shown that he'll play interesting and sometimes dubious moves because he wants chess to be more entertaining for spectators. He spends a lot of time playing online against weaker players so they can have the memory of that one time they played against one of the best. He's done so much for chess and its popularity that if he takes an early draw once in a while he gets the benefit of the doubt.
- They say this is terrible for television, but I bet they love it! I wasn't aware of this tournament until this story. TV tries its best to manufacture strife and drama.
- In Go you simply aren't allowed to repeat a position (ko). I wonder how profoundly it would change chess if you simply weren't allowed threefold repetition. Or if you weren't allowed it within the first x moves?
- What if a draw earned you 0.4 points instead of 0.5? Maybe that doesn't matter with so few games, or does it?