FIDE CEO: ‘Removing women-only events would deprive many of opportunity under false pretence that women can grow in Open tournaments’ | Chess News

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) CEO Emil Sutovsky remarked that removing women-only events from the International calendar will deprive many women players of a chance to develop under the false pretence of growing competing with men.
Speaking during the fourth leg of the 2024-25 FIDE Women’s Grand Prix happening in Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus, Sutovsky said, “If we were to remove all the possibilities to compete in women-only events, if we were to remove the possibility to support travel and so on, I think we would deprive many of these talents of opportunity under, I think, a false pretence that we will try to prove that women can grow in Open tournaments, better than they can competing in women-only events.
“Once again, never restricting, but any women player should have a chance to compete and excel in girls-only or women-only events. But, of course, also to provide an opportunity to play in open events and compete on par with the best.”
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Unlike other sports like cricket, football and tennis, where the events are segregated based on gender — for male or female — chess has a more inclusive category where both men and women (boys & girls too) can play together apart from an exclusive women’s category. The Open category allows any player across genders to participate in an event whereas Women’s category, as the name suggests, is only for female players.
The gulf between the average strength of male players and female players has also widened over the years and the number of elite women players who can comfortably compete in the Open category has also gone down, believed Sutovsky. He said, “While top-rated players, at the age of 15, 16, 17, reached 2500 before, now just a couple of players are rated above 2400 at the age of 17 or 18”.
The highest-rated active women’s player is reigning world champion Ju Wenjun whose Elo rating is 2561. Former world champion, Hou Yifan, a semi-retired chess player has the highest rating (2633) among women players at the point. She is also the only women player to have a rating above 2600.
The event, which is being played from March 14 to 25, has two Indian representations in Divya Deshmukh and Harika Dronavalli.
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