Talk:List of female chess grandmasters

youngest 2600

so are we gonna exclude the youngest 2600 thing still? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_female_chess_players&type=revision&diff=1059888648&oldid=1059868715 i mean come on top peak FIDE has the youngest 2800 thing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_players_by_peak_FIDE_rating#2800+

Thewriter006 (talk) 02:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

• First to reach 2500 rating seems more relevant to the GM title, but the requirement used to be 2450 and I don't know when it switched, so I left it out. (Also the 100-point bonuses may affect this, and I didn't think that was worth mentioning.) Sportsfan77777 (talk) 06:54, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
• Also, looks like Hou Yifan reached 2600 at 16 yr 10 months, while Judit Polgar did it at 16 yr 11 months, but that's misleading because they only used to publish rating lists every six months. So stating who got there at a younger age is more of a reflection of that discrepancy. Judit probably actually holds the record in terms of unpublished ratings. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 06:54, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

* ah you mean the live rating vs the FIDE rating? Thewriter006 (talk) 18:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

record youngest female GM before judit polgar

In 1991, Susan Polgar became the first woman to achieve the GM title through three conventional norms. Later that year at age 15, her younger sister Judit Polgar became the youngest Grandmaster in history among men or women, breaking the previous record set by Bobby Fischer. --> ok good but please mention Judit broke Susan's record, Susan broke Maia's record. See the 'Youngest female grandmaster ever at the time' here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_female_chess_players&oldid=1059868715

Thewriter006 (talk) 09:23, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

• I think it's a bit of a moot point who was the youngest when there were only two or three GMs at the time, and none of them were particularly young. I did mention that the Polgar sisters were relatively young when they started obtaining norms. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 12:49, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Gaprindashvili

I guess that the explanation of how Gaprindashvili got her title is taken from Graham. However, Graham's account looks rather shaky to me. First, Gaprindashvili had two tournaments, not just one, in which she fell a half point shy of a GM norm: Sandomierz 1976 and Dortmund 1978. Second, the arithmetic is wrong in the sentence "Nona was two or three games short of the requirements", whether you count just Lone Pine and Dortmund, or you count Sandomierz, Lone Pine, and Dortmund. Third, where is he getting his account of how FIDE, somehow anticipating by several months an overhaul of their title requirements, magnanimously created a loophole for a player applying under the current requirements? This looks implausible at best. In editing Nona Gaprindashvili, I have refrained from trying to come up with an explanation for the discrepancy between the two near-miss norms and the title awarded. I note, by the way, that a GM title had similarly been awarded to Rosendo Balinas, based on one eye-catching GM norm at Odessa 1976, and two near-misses in earlier tournaments. Unless one can find more convincing documentation of FIDE's logic, I would recommend treating Gaprindashvili's title award similarly in this article to how I have treated it in the biography article, and remove the dubious "Gaprindashvili: FIDE decision" notation in the Direct Awards section. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:36, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't mention either of those points Graham made that are incorrect. As it's been discussed on Nona's talk page, it's clear that she didn't meet the GM requirements stated in the 1976/7 FIDE yearbook. In line with what Graham wrote, FIDE must have circumvented those requirements somehow, even if his full explanation is not entirely sound. If you have a good source that FIDE did something similar for Balinas, we can add that as context in the prose to show it wasn't an isolated incident. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:43, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

QiYu Zhou

Chess.com claims that QiYu Zhou is a women's grandmaster, https://www.chess.com/players/nemo-qiyu-zhou

"Zhou became a woman international master after winning the 2015 North American U-18 Championship and made all her woman grandmaster norms that same year. She then became the first Canadian woman grandmaster and won the Canadian Women's Championship a year later in 2016."

I don't see her mentioned on the Wikipedia list of women grandmasters, nor even on the lists of female chess players. If the first omission is due to a 'technicality' regarding FIDE norms/recognitions vs. other systems, perhaps a paragraph can be added to the women grandmaster list explaining or noting the discrepancy for the casual observer?* But in any case, why is she not listed on the "otherwise renowned" women in chess page?

• i.e. "Some other chess players have been given the title Women's Grandmaster by other organizations and therefore style themselves a such, but..."

172.98.219.221 (talk) 06:51, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

See Qiyu Zhou. She's a Woman Grandmaster, not a Grandmaster.

The confusion is understandable since the article is completely inadequate in explaining the difference between the women's titles and the open titles. The page buries its single mention of the WGM title in a two-sentence footnote. Instead the article expends many words and much of the reader's time expounding on topics such as the Ostend 1907 chess tournament. Completely understandable as it's obvious and indisputable that Ostend 1907 is vastly more important to women's chess than the WGM and WIM titles are. Quale (talk) 03:52, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

The entire section, "Birth of the Grandmaster title", does not belong in this article, because who would look for it here? The material in it belongs in Grandmaster (chess); some of it is already there. It doesn't help this article to have a big blob of background material that barely even mentions women (one reference to Menchik). It is distracting and should be removed, or replaced by a one-sentence summary or cross-reference to Grandmaster (chess). Bruce leverett (talk) 16:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Active players and otherwise

What sources are used for the claims that some players are "active" and others are not? What are the criteria for determining if a player is "active"?

The background color for Zhu Jiner is white, but presumably should be gray, since the little superscript circle indicates that she is considered active. Bruce leverett (talk) 16:47, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd imagine it should be the FIDE requirement, i.e. whether a player has played at least one rated game in the last year. Double sharp (talk) 14:49, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

WGM

At present, the distinction between WGM and GM is noted both in the main text and in note A. This can't be right.

Formerly it was noted only in note A. Generally, when we have an article about X, and we want to warn readers that X is not the same as Y, we can mention the distinction in the main text, or mention it in a note, or somehow balance them with a little of both.

Perhaps the right Wikipedia tool to use is a hatnote. Woman grandmaster redirects to the appropriate paragraph of FIDE titles, so that would give the confused reader something to look at. See WP:Hatnote for more details.

I did not object to using note A, because the discussion of WGM in that note is really too distracting to use in the main text. Moreover, space in the first paragraph of an article, let alone the second sentence of that paragraph, is expensive real estate. Following MOS:LEAD, we should go to great lengths to avoid talking about tangential things like WGM at that point in the article. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:48, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't fully agree. General readers really don't know that women who are GMs are not the same as Woman Grandmasters and burying this in a note isn't sufficient. This really does cause confusion. The note itself is probably too long and could be tightened, and the certainly the explanation of Woman GM title could be reworded if desired.

A different problem is that there is too much prose for a list article. I don't know the best solution for that. Possibly much of the prose should be moved to women in chess leaving the list, or maybe the article title should be changed to not suggest that it is a list article. Quale (talk) 04:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I support the suggestion to use a hatnote. It seems like it was created for this kind of purpose. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 08:52, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Leontxo Garcia article

@Sportsfan77777: The concern I raised about the citation of Leontxo Garcia at Women in chess is equally valid here. If you translate Leontxo Garcia's text, you will see that it is just blatantly false.

As we know, Gaprindashvili got her GM title without exactly fulfilling the norm requirement. As for Chiburdanidze's title, we are citing a source that says that she got it by winning three WWC matches, but she got the title in 1984, and the only WWC matches she had played before then were in 1978 and 1981. I don't have my own copy of the source (Xie Jun). What exactly does it say? Is it really plausible that she got the title in 1984 because of results in 1978 and 1981? Or is this something like Leontxo Garcia's claim?

To the extent that the claim "Polgar was the first ... with complete norm requirements" is based on Leontxo Garcia's article, it's insupportable and we simply must remove it. If we can find that claim in some more reliable source, then it's back to being good again.

Here's another thing to think about. We don't do WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. Or at least we shouldn't; our chess articles are full of world records that editors themselves researched, in fact List of chess players by peak FIDE rating is more or less based on that. But technically, if one source says that Gaprindashvili didn't fulfill the norm requirement, and another source says that Chiburdanidze didn't, it's something like WP:SYNTH to combine those two sources into one claim. But I would defer to your judgment about that. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:25, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

The fact that the statement about Gaprindashvili isn't true doesn't mean the statement about Susan is false. Whether Nona got the GM title through the WWC or the Lone Pine norm (we know it's the latter), either way it wouldn't affect whether Susan was the first to earn the GM title through regular norms. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:50, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

As for Chiburdanidze, we have a few sources that state she earned the GM title through the WWC. We don't have any sources that claim she earned the GM title through regular norms, so there isn't a dispute. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:50, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Since the Leontxo Garcia article is bad, the citation to it has to be removed. With that citation gone, the claim about Polgar is unsourced. If something is unsourced, either it is WP:BLUE, or it is WP:OR, or it is WP:SYNTH. Would you agree that it isn't WP:BLUE? If it is one of the other two, we can't put it out there.

Look at it this way. Why aren't reliable sources picking up this claim? Either it's false, or it's not notable enough to be worth their while. We are an encyclopedia -- we don't just pick up claims from Polgar's website; we have to follow reliable sources. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:33, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I think the statement about Susan appears in WP:RS quite often, for example her chess.com profile and Jennifer Shahade's book Chess Queens. I also don't think a source making a mistake disqualifies it from being an WP:RS. Whether or not a source is an WP:RS depends more on its general reliability, and I think Leontxo is generally considered a highly-respected chess journalist. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 17:48, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

A source making a mistake about the claim it's used to support absolutely and totally disqualifies it as a WP:RS for that claim. Wikipedia recognizes that a source may be reliable for certain claims and not reliable for others, but this source is fatally flawed for this claim. There may be other sources that are reliable for this claim but they've been surprisingly difficult to unearth, and this is a question that chess editors have considered for many years. Bruce is on point when he says that either the claim is false or else it seems it isn't interesting enough for any reliable source to establish its veracity. Quale (talk) 05:05, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

If it's true, why would anyone clarify they have researched its veracity? It's not like there was any doubt it was true. No WP:RS has asserted it might be false. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:11, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The assertion that it's not interesting is just crazy. It's quite well-known. And in general, how players obtained their title goes in articles for titled players whether it was unique or not. Even if Susan or Leontxo never said a word about it, we would still put in this article who were the first players to reach obvious milestones involving norms. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:11, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I remembered that WP:BLP is the bee in my bonnet.

In the 1980's, the rivalry between Polgar and Chiburdanidze was open and bitter; Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze supported and defended FIDE's move to add 100 rating points to every rated woman except Susan Polgar. The invidious claim that Polgar was the first woman to get the GM title "by norms and rating" (I am quoting from her website, [1]) is an artifact of that evidently still smoldering rivalry.

Wikipedia's BLP rules are written specifically to guide editors to avoid stepping on land mines like this. The one I have in mind is, Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. My own interpretation of what "unsourced or poorly source" means in this case includes: no crude errors of fact regarding the claim itself (as with Leontxo); and using a primary or secondary source. Primary in this case would be documents spelling out how the decision was made, or personal recollections by contemporaries (officials or journalists) spelling it out. A secondary source should identify its primaries in such a way as to give the reader confidence that the secondary has read and correctly understood the primaries. I'm looking at Polgar's chess.com profile, and it doesn't cite primaries; indeed it looks autobiographical, albeit written in the third person. What about Shahade's book?

I should mention that I am aware that Leontxo Garcia and Shahade are successful and reputable journalists (I had the privilege of working with Shahade for some years, as an occasional contributor to the USCF website). Wikipedia can't get away with some things that journalists can get away with. Bruce leverett (talk) 13:54, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

If we all agree it's true, it's not contentious. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:11, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

If you don't agree it's true, what are you suggesting is true instead? That Maia Chiburdanidze earned the title by making enough norms? If that's the case, find a source to back that up. Or do your own WP:OR to try to find her norms. That would settle it. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:11, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The most common way that people get titles is via norms. The burden of proof is on someone who claims that she got her title another way.

When FIDE awards a title, they don't simultaneously publish an account of how the person qualified. You just have to figure it out. Nowadays title applications are posted to the website, and you can look them up; but that wasn't being done in 1984.

When someone's qualifications are, shall we say, unusual, one can sometimes find signs of that in reliable sources. For example, I found that article about Rosendo Balinas's title for that footnote in this article. There are also some notes about Gaprindashvili; you have seen the one by Benko (although he made a factual mistake), and there is also an article by David Levy in the October 1978 Chess Life, in which he carefully describes her norm and her two "close calls", and then innocently says, "... her chances of reaching the highest rung would appear to be quite promising." But we don't always get lucky. It is common knowledge that Evans, Bisguier, and Tal all got their GM titles before they had qualified by the standards of the time (1957), thanks to a deal between their federations, but there is no whisper about this in contemporary literature such as Chess Life or Chess Review, so there is nothing for Wikipedia to hang its hat on. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:32, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The most common way male players get titles is via norms. Of the first 12 women earn the GM title, half of them did it another way. It's not safe to assume a woman earned the GM title through norms until at least 2006, which is way after Chiburdanidze earned the title. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:19, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, for every single player on this list that earned the title through norms, we can say exactly where they earned all of their norms. For Chiburdanidze, we have no record of even a single norm by 1984. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:19, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Inspecting DiFelice 1981-1985, I agree that I don't see any norms. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:24, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

References