If you are a fan of chess, you probably already know about the 2026 Candidates Tournament being held in Cyprus right now. Eight men are battling it out for the honour of becoming the challenger for the World Chess Championship.
And if you are a serious chess fan, you’ve probably been tuning in to watch the games live on YouTube until well past midnight. The FIDE (International Chess Federation) Candidates Tournament began on March 28 and ends on April 15.
Of the four games on day one, three ended in decisive victories, which at this level of chess makes for a very exciting start. But for me, the most interesting position came from a match between two women, where Grandmaster Zhu Jiner offered her knight as a sacrifice against Woman Grandmaster Tan Zhongyi.
You might have two immediate questions. Did she win? Unfortunately, no. Despite gaining a significant positional advantage, Zhu misplayed at a crucial moment, and the game eventually ended as a draw.
But the next question you might have is, didn’t you say there were eight men taking part? Well, these two women were playing in the Women’s Candidates Tournament, which men cannot qualify for or even participate in.
The uncomfortable fact is, none of the women players around the world were strong enough to qualify for the main Candidates event. To earn a spot, players must either accumulate top points in the FIDE circuit (based on their best seven results across eligible events), or finish in the top three of the FIDE World Cup, or the top two of the FIDE Grand Swiss.
While Zhu was the highest- ranked woman in the 2025 circuit, she finished 133rd overall out of 304 players. Indian player Divya Deshmukh was the top-performing woman in the 2025 Grand Swiss, but finished 81st. She was also the only woman who took part in the 2025 World Cup, but was eliminated in the first round.
Why don’t women perform as well in chess? On the surface, there is no obvious physical disadvantage given that chess is a purely intellectual game.
Over the years, many explanations have been proposed. Some have suggested that women are just less interested in the relatively solitary sport, and prefer games with teams and cooperation. Others point out that chess clubs have historically been male-dominated spaces, which may make them less welcoming to women. And then you have those that argue that men are just biologically superior to women, including in chess.
Whatever the reasons, FIDE has established women-only tournaments and titles. While rating systems are standardised across genders, the requirements for women’s titles are lower. For example, the Women’s Grandmaster (WGM) title is awarded at a rating roughly 200 points below that required for the Grandmaster (GM) title. Today, there are only about 42 women among roughly 1,700 living GMs.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Missouri in the United States attempted to shed light on this performance gap and how it might be narrowed. The researchers analysed data from 106,000 players aged three to 15 who competed in US Chess Federation tournaments between 2000 and 2019.
One of their most striking findings was that a gap in performance between boys and girls appears almost immediately, as soon as children have played enough games to receive an official rating. This gap then persists as they grow older and remains consistent across all levels of play.
The easy conclusion would be to say that, obviously, boys are simply “naturally better”. But the data doesn’t easily support this. As players gain experience, the rate of improvement between boys and girls essentially remains the same. If there were a strong innate advantage, one might expect the gap to widen over time.
Where the researchers did observe a meaningful difference was in participation. When there was a higher proportion of girls playing chess in an area (by zip code and county levels), girls closed the gap. The improvement was not dramatic, but it was statistically significant. It seems the more girls play chess, the better they become. Which is obvious, except it’s usually considered lower down on the list of reasons why girls underperform.
Why this happens is, as academics always say, “subject to further research”. But they do conclude that encouraging more girls to participate from the outset could help narrow the performance gap. Even if many eventually move on to other pursuits, those who remain will hopefully continue performing from a stronger starting point.
While the study focuses on chess, it is hard not to see the broader lesson. Diversity in participation brings more benefits than just a feel-good wokeness. The more varied the group of people engaging in an activity, the greater the range of ideas and approaches that appear.
Yet, at least within FIDE’s current structure, the door remains difficult to push open. Women like Deshmukh actively seek out open tournaments to compete against higher-rated opponents (who are overwhelmingly men) but this often comes at the cost of results. And while this path offers a route to the open Candidates Tournament, it’s impossible to qualify for the Women’s Candidates Tournament if they don’t play in any women-only events.
My crazy idea is somewhat simple: Abolish women’s only tournaments, let everybody fight it out against everybody, and to promote participation, offer prizes for the highest-placed women.
And if that leads to 16 players fighting it out for the chance to be world champion? Well, that would be really serious chess.
