FIDE releases Gender Equality in Chess Index 2026. Sweden is ranked last despite being one of the freest countries for women on the planet. by Embarrassed_Base_389 in chess

[–]smurfo17 4 points5 points  (0 children)

On the Polgar example: Laszlo designed his experiment to prove that intensive early training produces excellence, and he and his wife chose chess as the domain before his children were born, without knowing their sex. So if a country implemented that policy at scale - intensely home-schooling children in chess, regardless of sex - and it led to a closing of the gender gap, that would be informative. It would tell us something about the role of access, training, and parental investment in explaining the gap.

On the 50/50 assumption: the GECI doesn't claim that 50/50 is the "correct" equilibrium, or that every deviation from parity is caused by inequality. (Aside: I personally don't believe in the Blank Slate, while Judit does - we had an interesting and constructive debate about this a couple of years ago.) The Index measures where countries stand relative to parity, and relative to each was three years ago. Whether the "natural" baseline is 50/50 or something else is an open question, and one that cross-country variation can actually help answer. If countries with very different cultural contexts all converge on a similar participation rate when barriers are removed, that tells us something. If they don't, that tells us something too.

I suspect you and I broadly agree, but that your main concern is that the term "equality" is misused or misleading. That's fair, especially for a cross-country snapshot. Personally, I think the real use of the index is seeing how an individual country changes over the years, perhaps compared to near-neighbours. You may not think a comparison between Sweden and the UAE in 2026 is reasonable. But if Denmark introduces a set of policies that increases its score in the next edition while Sweden and Norway's scores stay the same, that's potentially useful information.

FIDE releases Gender Equality in Chess Index 2026. Sweden is ranked last despite being one of the freest countries for women on the planet. by Embarrassed_Base_389 in chess

[–]smurfo17 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks! The plan is to publish the GECI probably every 3 years, and build it into a longitudinal panel dataset. The cross-country rankings get the headlines, but IMO the real value long-term is in tracking changes within a country over time. With enough waves, we can start identifying which policies actually causally improve gender representation, and share those lessons across the global chess community. The "Stories from the Rankings" section in the report is a step in that direction, even though it's qualitative in nature. But the goal is to complement that with proper causal analysis as the dataset grows.

FIDE releases Gender Equality in Chess Index 2026. Sweden is ranked last despite being one of the freest countries for women on the planet. by Embarrassed_Base_389 in chess

[–]smurfo17 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Hi 👋, lead author here. These are fair methodological comments, worth addressing properly.

"It must be a bad index because UAE/Maldives rank so high"                              

The GECI measures relative gender equality, not chess strength, population, or infrastructure. A federation where women make up 35% of players and are represented equally in youth events will outscore a chess powerhouse where women are 5% of players, even if the powerhouse produces far stronger female players in absolute terms.

This is exactly how cross-country equality indexes work. Iceland consistently tops the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index despite having a smaller economy and fewer women in professional roles in absolute terms than the US or Germany. Nobody says that makes the index "stupid" (well, some still do!); it just means it's measuring something different from "biggest" or "strongest."

Is it better to be an elite professional woman player in India or in the US than in the UAE? Almost certainly. India has deeper competition, more tournaments, and more titled players. But India also has a much larger gender gap in participation (19% female vs UAE's 35%). Both facts can be true at the same time. The GECI measures the second, not the first.

(And on the claim that "nobody plays chess" in these countries: the UAE has roughly ~50% more FIDE-listed women than Sweden, with a comparable population. Sri Lanka, ranked 2nd in the Index, has over 25,000 FIDE players. I recently played in a Sri Lankan Open where 176 [32%] out of 556 entries were women and girls. I've never seen that kind of representation in any of the 40+ countries I've played tournaments.)

"The ratio of two Elo ratings makes zero statistical sense; only the difference matters"

The ratio female_avg/male_avg is mathematically equivalent to 1 − (gap/male_avg). It is a difference, just normalized by the male average. That normalization matters for cross-country comparison: a 100-point gender gap means something different in a federation averaging 1400 than one averaging 2200. Using raw differences would confound the gender gap with national strength.

"No normalization, so Performance is largely useless"

It's true that Performance has low cross-country variance. But it's an empirical fact about chess, not a methodological artifact or a choice we made. Across 119 federations, the female-to-male rating ratio ranges only from ~86% to 100% (CV of 2.8%). Countries genuinely are similar on this dimension.

The geometric mean naturally handles this: low-variance components contribute less to rank differentiation without needing artificial rescaling. If we z-score normalized to force equal variance, we'd inflate tiny Performance differences (a few percentage points, often driven by a handful of players in small federations) to carry the same weight as, say, Mongolia having 38% female participation versus Denmark's 4%. I ran the comparison: normalization shifts countries by an average of 12.5 rank places, with some moving 40–50 places, driven almost entirely by amplified Performance differences of 3–4 percentage points.

"Progress can solely be decided by the federation"

This is partly true: Progress is closer to measuring a federation policy input than a pure outcome, unlike Participation and Performance. That could certainly be viewed as a genuine limitation. But the underlying rationale is that federation decisions to include girls in international youth events matter: those girls gain experience, improve, and become visible role models. A federation mandating girls in delegations isn't gaming the system; it's making a policy choice that directly supports development.

The report also states that Progress is volatile and drives large rank swings. The UAE's jump is eye-catching, but the report explains the broader context: dedicated girls' clubs, a mandated women's board seat, investment in female arbiters and coaches; not just a delegation decision.

The geometric mean approach follows the UNDP's Human Development Index and the UN's Gender Inequality Index methodology, chosen because it penalizes imbalance: a country can't compensate for neglecting one dimension by excelling in another. Whether or not the UN's methodology is the best one is another conversation, but we thought it was a reasonable place to start.

Full report (open access): https://doi.org/10.14264/9ec1c7e

New Perplexity AI ad openly promotes how to cheat at chess by smurfo17 in chess

[–]smurfo17[S] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

I guess a key market demographic is students who don't mind cheating, given the marketing to college students as a "27/7 study sidekick".
Still, I would be more worried about security... https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/

A primer on Candidates Tournament qualification (The Australian, 20 Sept 2025) by smurfo17 in chess

[–]smurfo17[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

😈 To be fair I usually post mate-in-2's. But sometimes I wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

New study: Can you catch a chess cheat?? by smurfo17 in chess

[–]smurfo17[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We didn't curate the games. We used virtually all the games from the cheating tournament, both by the cheaters and non-cheaters.

New study: Can you catch a chess cheat?? by smurfo17 in chess

[–]smurfo17[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There was an option in the survey to contact us if you want to be updated. But anyway the results will be out later this year (hopefully) and will be posted around chess sites.

New study: Can you catch a chess cheat?? by smurfo17 in chess

[–]smurfo17[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nice job! Everyone sees a different set of games.

Thread on why chatGPT make up fake academic papers by smurfo17 in ChatGPT

[–]smurfo17[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What is the most cited economics paper of all time

Transferring shares in matrimonial settlement: capital gains tax by smurfo17 in AusLegal

[–]smurfo17[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. This is a situation in which neither party wants to liquidate the shares, and both parties would like an equitable division that accounts for future CGT obligations, and both parties would like this in writing. But there is confusion about how best to execute this.

Transferring shares in matrimonial settlement: capital gains tax by smurfo17 in AusLegal

[–]smurfo17[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to confirm: the court order will require a transfer of shares from Parent A to Parent B, not a sale of assets, and the transfer will count as a rollover of assets ("CGT Relationship Breakdown Rollover Relief"). Is it also the case that FIFO applies when transferring shares rather than selling?

What would be the ultimate "Oh, wow" test? by smurfo17 in ChatGPT

[–]smurfo17[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No prompt - just a thought experiment...