Sorry there is no obviously right forum to post this.
Does anyone know names of any US-born women who hold WGM, IM, or GM titles?
Sorry there is no obviously right forum to post this.
Does anyone know names of any US-born women who hold WGM, IM, or GM titles?
WIM Jennifer Shahade
WFM Laura Ross
I think a fair number of the 22 listed WIM in current FIDE list are US-born, in addition to Jennifer Shahade.
For WGM, there are only 8 currently listed by FIDE under USA.
So the questions about WGM are:
a) are any of these 8 US-born? (apparently not)
b) are any WGM listed under other countries actually born in US?
c) are there any US-born WGM not currently listed by FIDE? e.g. anyone from the early days of WGM title which started in 1977.
Listed as WGM under United States by FIDE:
2000784 Akhsharumova, Anna M wg USA 2310 0 1957-01-09 F wi
2014599 Baginskaite, Camilla wg USA 2336 0 1967-04-24 F w
2008599 Belakovskaia, Anjelina wg USA 2288 0 1969-05-17 F w
2000547 Donaldson-A., Elena wg USA 2375 0 1957-03-11 F w
13601105 Goletiani, Rusudan wg USA 2319 -1.5 1980-09-08 F w
2019558 Grinfeld, Alla B wg USA 2255 0 1953-04-16 F w
2005956 Levitina, Irina S wg USA 2405 0 1954-06-08 F wi
14101572 Zatonskih, Anna wg USA 2435 0 1978-07-17 F w
a) No. b) Almost certainly not. It is barely possible, but if so she never lived in (or played for) the USCF. c) No (with the same caveat as b). No U.S. women were awarded the WGM title during that period.
Of the U.S. players listed as WIMs on the FIDE site, about ten were born in the U.S. Note that the list includes three who I’m pretty sure are dead. It also includes several who haven’t played since the early 80’s, so the chance of any inactive players being excluded is small.
IM (WGM) Alisa Maric is the strongest US born chess player. Her FIDE Rating is 2416. She currently represents Serbia and Montenegro.
WGM Martha Fierro is also US born though she represents Ecuador. Her FIDE rating is 2330.
You have left out IM(WGM) Irina Krush from the list. Irina Krush was not born in the US , she was born in Ukraine but her chess blossomed in the US.
Alisa Maric (and her twin sister Mirjana, also a strong player) were indeed born in New York. They lived in the U.S. only for a few brief periods during childhood. I’m not so sure about Martha Fierro, since her web page says she was born in Guayaquil.
I know about Martha Fierro being US born because she herself told me about it.
There are very few women, native born or foreign born that represent the United States, and are active FIDE and USCF members. The Womens Top 100 List, has at the bottom of the list 1600 plus players. Have found it being very sad, with the USCF having 90,000 members, and so many being male in non-scholastic events. Out of the Women that do play chess, they are the spouse of a chess player, or the second generation USCF member in the family. There is very little diversity with USCF membership, when it comes to gender, always find a lot of males at the tournaments.
To summarize, the information I have:
US-born WGMs:
Alisa Maric (confirmed)
Mirjana Maric (confirmed)
WGM Anya Corke (age 14, Hong Kong) was born in California (confirmed)
Martha Fierro (uncertain - despite the claim on this forum, websites in English and Spanish indicate born in Ecuador)
I still think FIDE is pretty sexist (along with USCF) to post women into categories just based on gender.
Just because they’re women doesn’t mean they need to create new titles for them. If you want to promote chess to the opposite sex, you don’t make up new titles to try to influence women to play, you get your best few women who actually have the same titles as men and promote them.
Maybe they’ll make a new title for me to make me feel special.
Just because they’re women doesn’t mean they need to create new titles for them. If you want to promote chess to the opposite sex, you don’t make up new titles to try to influence women to play, you get your best few women who actually have the same titles as men and promote them.
Not till the Polgar sister came around in the late 1980’s, then making the huge inpact during the early 1990’s. The Polgar sisters made a huge change in womens chess, they went to the open tournaments. They broke away from the mode of the Soviet style Womens only tournaments. FIDE only has a few Womens only tournaments in a given year; if the sisters went to any of the events, it would be common to see a Polgar - Polgar pairing. It would be the Fisher curse, if in a Polgar - Polgar pairing, if one wins or it ends in a draw, people would say it was set up. In fact it has been years since the sisters have been in the same tournament. The only way they could avoid a Polgar - Polgar pairing, was register into the open tournaments and play with the men.
Before the Polgar sisters, the only way Women could be in any tournaments, was only the womens tournaments. There are still a number of Women in FIDE, that only register in the Womens events. This is the reason for the sex based titles. I can go on for hours with this statement, but I have said the simple basics.
Women couldn’t be in chess events prior to the polgar sisters? Gee, I remember them playing.
Yes, we know you can go on for hours about this statement, but will any of it be relevant?
Women couldn’t be in chess events prior to the polgar sisters? Gee, I remember them playing.
Yes, we know you can go on for hours about this statement, but will any of it be relevant?
It looks like you have made it relevant thunderchicken. Women could play in a open tournament, since the start of the USCF and FIDE. With FIDE, it was more common to have Womens only tournaments. For a number of chess clubs in the early 20th century, and the 19th century, Women were banned from the clubs. If they were banned from the chess clubs they were also banned in the tournaments.
During the 1930’s and up to the 1980’s, Women did have more rights to play in tournaments. With FIDE events, they always change from one FIDE congress to the next. Going over FIDE and Womens chess, it would take a book, not a forum to explain every little nut and bolt.
If anyone wants to place a person or era that changed Womens chess, it would have to be the Polgar sisters. With only a small number of Women, would always have a weaker FIDE rating up to a few years ago. Even with the help of GM Kasparov, to make the major reforms in the early 1990’s in Womens chess; like all Women having 100 rating points granted except the Polgar sister since they have already been playing with men.
Womens only tournaments have always had small prize funds, making it a small prize award. Like Nakura wins the U.S. Championship and wins $25,000 and Goletiani wins $12,000 to win the U.S. Womens Championship. In fact I do not see any major problem with it, as the final scores were different. But the days of a Womens only tournament, they are on the decline and could be gone some time in the 2010’s.
You sure know everything.
Susan and her sisters certainly paved the way for treating women like people internationally. But don’t forget Pia Cramling who also was playing in men’s tournaments about the same time.
And Vera Menchik must have been invited to men’s tournaments, no? So did the “problem” start after world war II? Or is it just that the early days of FIDE weren’t as gender-neutral as organizers of tournaments were?
So did the “problem” start after world war II? Or is it just that the early days of FIDE weren’t as gender-neutral as organizers of tournaments were?
It was a cultural bias of the 19th century and the early 20th century. If anyone checks the tournament and match games with Anderssen, Horwitz, Lasker, Steinitz, Morphy, Zukertort, or any major 19th century chess player. Would find little or no record of any of them being paired up with a Women in a tournament or a match.
When Women do break the 1800 mark in chess, most of them have a father, that is or were active in chess tournaments. With the new major Women in chess, they have become a very important role models for the young Women. Not all scholastic girls can use their fathers as a role model to play chess. If a young scholastic girl use one of the Women that plays chess on the covers of Chess Life, they might stay around for years to come. Its’ going to take years, even a life time to change the organic cultural bias.