Does Gender Make Chess Skill?

In October 2020, Netflix released The Queen’s Gambit, the hit show about a fictional chess prodigy named Beth Harmon. Despite an acute drug addiction and an unsettling history in an orphanage, Harmon defeats many of the best male players of her time and quickly rises to global prominence. As of March 2021, the series has been exalted by critics and enjoyed by 62 million people. The show came at the perfect time. In the past few years, chess has skyrocketed in popularity, the pandemic acting as its greatest benefactor. Grandmasters and amateur streamers alike propagated the game to an international audience. 

It’s no wonder, then, that The Queen’s Gambit has done so well. But, as with any blockbuster show, its success has not made it impervious to criticism. In particular, experienced chess players have pointed out what seems to be a major flaw––that Harmon, the young prodigy in question, is female. At the root of this critique and the creative liberty behind the show is the age-old question of gender in the sport: Are men better chess players than women?

Some of the best players in history have always given a one-sided answer. In a 1962 interview, American Grandmaster and eleventh World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer said that women are “terrible chess players” and that “they’re just not so smart.” In a 1987 interview, Russian Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who was undisputed World Chess Champion for 23 years, said that “there is real chess and women’s chess.” 

Such thinking is not a thing of the past, either. The vice president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), British Grandmaster Nigel Short, claimed in 2015 that men are “hardwired” to be better chess players than women. Even a few female players have agreed to this sentiment. As recently as 2020, Indian Grandmaster Koneru Humpy said in an interview that men are the superior players, and women would just “have to accept it.”

However tempted we may be to dismiss these comments as baseless speculation, though, the numbers only support them. Compare, for instance, Norwegian Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion and considered by many to be the greatest of all time, with Hungarian Grandmaster Judit Polgar, generally thought to be his counterpart as the strongest female player.