Women players dominate men on club’s chess board
By Angela Green, Reporter
Published: February 23, 2010
The University’s chess club is not a typical chess club.
Club president Daniel Gordon said 90 percent of chess players are male, but the University’s chess club, has more female members than male members.
“It’s not very typical,” Gordon said. “People think males are better at sports so they must be better at chess. Women are just as good if not better.”
Breaking the stereotypes of chess players even more, not everyone in the chess club is a computer science major.
Gordon said there are all kinds of majors in the club and that diversity helps the group.
Gordon, who learned how to play chess from his father, started the club from scratch last semester.
“I know this sounds corny but I fell in love with it and have been playing ever since,” he said. “It’s kind of like a sport but it’s more strategic and tactical than a card game or kicking a ball into a goal.”
The club meets twice a week and Gordon said they were lucky to have five people show up in the beginning. The club now has 46 members and not all have been playing their entire lives.
Gordon said about 20 percent of members are completely new at playing chess, 20 percent have played for years and the rest fall in between.
“If they’re a true beginner, we teach them the rules, how to set up the board and pieces and what the legal moves are,” he said.
Then the chess club take a hands-off approach.
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This is a good thing.