You may have seen that chess Grandmaster and once World Title Challenger, Nigel Short, recently wrote an article on women in chess. No stranger to controversy, perhaps even he didn't expect the reaction he got.
http://rt.com/uk/251185-women-chess-logic-sexism/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/chess/11548840/Nigel-Short-Girls-just-dont-have-the-brains-to-play-chess.htmlAnd every other national and worldwide publication has found room to circulate an opinion on the article.
So, what did he actually say?
http://en.chessbase.com/post/vive-la-diffrence-the-full-storyI couldn't help read the article and liken Judit Polgar to Vanessa Selbst. Poker and chess are, without question, similar games and have not-dissimilar attendance ratios when it comes to gender.
Is Short out of order to write:
"With the aid of a couple of bell curves this foursome neatly solve the eternal chess conundrum of why women lag behind their male counterparts, while simultaneously satisfying that irritating modern psychological urge to prove all of us, everywhere, are equal. Only a bunch of academics could come up with such a preposterous conclusion which flies in the face of observation, common sense and an enormous amount of empirical evidence too." ...is he trying to push for equality in a more rational way...
...or is he just making waves for his own amusement and he has an event to publicise?
Does this extend to poker? Should there be more (higher?) prizes for best woman in a tournament?
Or is it all chauvinistic misogyny and we should leave the bloke to his own devices and get on with our lives?