List of Female Chess Players

List Of Female Chess Players

From the Middle Ages through the 18th century, chess was a popular social pastime for both men and women of the upper classes. Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth I played, and Thomas Jefferson wrote several times about Benjamin Franklin's playing chess in Paris with socially important women, including the Duchess of Bourbon, who was "a chess player of about his force". Chess games between men and women were a common theme of European art and literature in the fourteenth through 18th centuries.

By the 19th century, however, the chess world had become dominated by male chess players, perhaps as a result of card playing becoming socially acceptable for mixed groups. Then during the 20th century, female players again made significant progress in breaking the male stranglehold on the game, although remaining fewer than 5% of registered tournament players.

The country of Georgia produced some of the best women chess players of the later 20th century, including the first female International Grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili, who was awarded a special title in 1978. By the mid-1980s a number of women were competing regularly in events with men. In 1991, Susan Polgar became the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title on the same basis as the men, by earning Grandmaster norms.

Read more about List Of Female Chess Players:  Grandmasters, International Masters, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

Famous quotes containing the words chess players, list of, list, female, chess and/or players:

    The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.
    Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)

    I made a list of things I have
    to remember and a list
    of things I want to forget,
    but I see they are the same list.
    Linda Pastan (b. 1932)

    Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.
    Lawrence Kutner (20th century)

    In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    Women’s childhood relationships with their fathers are important to them all their lives. Regardless of age or status, women who seem clearest about their goals and most satisfied with their lives and personal and family relationships usually remember that their fathers enjoyed them and were actively interested in their development.
    —Stella Chess (20th century)

    Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
    be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)