Chess Queens

Female players are merely pawns.

By Patrick Taylor Smith

In Mainz, Germany, two young chess prodigies played last August under the glare of a media frenzy. They played an attack-oriented style of chess involving exciting tactics and vicious attacks. But that is not why the regular media took interest. Nor is the fact that these teenage prodigies represent role models for the next generation of young chess players the reason for the unusually high level of media coverage. Rather, the extraordinary characteristic of these players is completely unrelated to the game. Elisabeth Paehtz and Alexandra Kosteniuk are female chess players, but more importantly, they are attractive female chess players.

LOLITA CHESS

From the beginning, the so-called “Duel of the Graces” match between Elisabeth Paehtz and Alexandra Kosteniuk was not about chess. Alexandra “Sasha” Kosteniuk appeared in several risqué photographs for FIDE (chess's international governing body) that involved her posing semi-nude in much the same manner as swimsuit or lingerie models. These photos have gained Kosteniuk the international renown that her chess skills as the women's vice world champion have not. For example, Fox News had never covered a chess tournament or profiled a chess player until Kosteniuk became the acclaimed “Lolita” of the chess world: “The new face of chess is not a nerdy, nondescript, temperamental teen-age boy-but a smart, hip, sexy 17-year-old girl.” CNN has hailed Sasha Kosteniuk as “chess's answer to Anna Kournikova.” A website devoted entirely to “chess beauties” has Sasha Kosteniuk as its star attraction. Kosteniuk has become a vehicle to make chess a hipper, more relevant attraction. Like efforts to glamorize Anna Kournikova, this attempt to make Kosteniuk a sexual object has overwhelmed any discussion, in the worldwide media, of Kosteniuk herself or her talent (which is quite considerable).

Perhaps even more ominous, Elisabeth Paehtz has been forced to engage in the same kind of pandering in order to gain any publicity at all. Before she was placed as Kosteniuk's foil in the “Duel of the Graces,” Paehtz generally refused to make any concessions to the new chess journalists who required women players to be beautiful as well as brilliant. Initially, she scoffed at Kosteniuk's glamour photo shoots, saying, “With a lot of makeup any woman can be pretty.” By the way, Paehtz is not even mentioned on the “Chess Beauties” website. However, the pressure to conform to this atmosphere eventually became irresistible. According to Mig Greengard (a very respected chess journalist for Chessbase.com), the organizers “have promoted the Lolita aspect of the match more than the games.” Chess journalists chronicled Paehtz's journey to the hairdresser's and talked more about her new leather hat than how she played the game. By the end of the tournament, Paehtz had totally succumbed: “That pink shirt she [Kosteniuk] wore was horrible. I have some spectacular [sic] sexy T-shirts in my hotel room, so you guys can expect something.” To which, the promoters promptly responded, “Oh, oh, that sounds like a ‘Duel of the Crazies.' We are looking forward to the fashion show on Sunday.” At the same time, Ruslan Ponomariov (FIDE world champion) and Visawanathan Anand (No. 3 in the world) played the “Duel of the World Champions.” There was very little discussion of the hair and makeup of these two male players.

A less blatant example of this “Lolita” phenomenon occurred at the French Championship at Val d'Isere. The eventual champion, Etienne Barcot, was scarcely mentioned in the “teasers” advertising coverage of the event. While half of the final report is devoted to the championship games (and rightly so!), prominently pictured are the more “attractive” members of the tournament: Marie Sebag, Aurelie Dacalor, and Raphaelle Delahaye. Sebag and Delahaye were very competitive in the tournament, but Dacalor was included, by the author's admission, because she was far more attractive than the second place woman: Christine Flear. The teaser had this to say about the tournament: “Chess is for boring old fogies. Male fogies. Not any more! These days it can be about curls and dreadlocks, plunging necklines and bra straps.” This overwhelming coverage of the physical appearances of the players to the detriment of the game prompted Greengard to say, “There seems something amiss when most of the talk about women's chess is men talking about how women look.” Of course, all this discussion about makeup and clothes hides the fact that the woman's champion received less than a third of the prize money the male's champion received. But I may be getting a little ahead of myself here.

THE POLGAR EXPLOSION

It was not always thus. Women players were not always sex objects, tools to sell tickets. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean women were treated better: chess history is full of discrimination against women. Chess champions from Bobby Fischer to Garry Kasparov (not Max Euwe, who was the first world champion to lose to a woman) have expressed contempt for women's ability to use the higher order thinking required of high level chess play. In fact, this belief has been so widespread in the chess world that even women players accept it. Sasha Kosteniuk, in an interview, said, “men are more industrious and less emotional than women” and that, consequently, women would never achieve parity with men in chess.

However, this argument took a severe beating with the arrival on the chess of scene of the Polgar sisters. These women, particularly Judit Polgar, shocked the chess world by being the first widely known women who were consistently competitive (others before her were usually swept aside as aberrations) against men. Judit Polgar became a grandmaster who bested the best male players routinely and was ranked in the top ten in the world at one point (she is currently 19th in the world; by comparison, the top-rated American-male or female-is 74th). For the first time, many questioned the long held belief of natural male supremacy in chess. Since then, women's chess has only become richer. Female players like Elisabeth Paehtz, Sasha Kosteniuk, Irina Kush (USA), Koneru Humpy (the youngest grandmaster until a month ago), and Zhu Chen (who defeated FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov last April) have shown that women can be quite competitive at chess. However, Greengard makes an excellent point when he says that men “have gotten use to seeing Judit Polgar in the elite ranks.” It is clear now that the old contempt for women as inherently inferior at chess is no longer tenable. Why has this new contempt, this new marginalizing of women occurred? Mig Greengard right? Does, as the cliché would have it, familiarity breed contempt?

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY

To answer that question, one must look at the deeper currents that are running through the chess world. For that, a history lesson is needed. For much of modern chess history, FIDE was the undisputed master of the chess world: it organized tournaments and determined the world champion. However, in 1985, FIDE snubbed Garry Kasparov-undisputedly the greatest chess player in the world at the time-so badly that Kasparov declared his independence from FIDE and began to organize qualification tournaments so that he could play the best in the world and maintain his title. Meanwhile, FIDE obliviously had its own “KO” tournaments in which FIDE's “world champion” was crowned.

The current President of FIDE is Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, a fantastically wealthy, Don-King type figure in world chess. The “KO” tournaments were funded by the personal wealth of Ilyumzhinov while Kasparov's tournaments were funded by sponsorships. Both sides were essentially content with this set-up until two recent events disrupted it. First, Vladmir Kramnik defeated Kasparov in 2000, winning Kasparov's title. And in early 2002, Ilyumzhinov stated that he would no longer be able to personally fund the “KO” tournaments. Years of corruption, investigations, and the declining world economy have wiped him out. FIDE can no longer be a charity; it must act like a business. Now, both sides need something. Kasparov and Kramnik need a way to legitimate their respective claims to the world championship, (especially since Kasparov has played brilliantly in the last two years while Kramnik has stumbled), and FIDE needs sponsorships and funding. The result : the Prague Unification, a plan to unify all claims to the world championship under FIDE that would involve all significant claimants. This would, supposedly, crown the first unified chess world champion in 17 years.

SEX SELLS

What does this have to do with sexual objectification of female chess players? Plenty. The top players are demanding prize money in the millions of dollars, but the sponsorship pie is getting smaller. The Unification matches (and the matches of Kramnik and Kasparov against top computer programs) will rekindle some interest, but one must remember that chess only received a short-lived burst in popularity when Kasparov first played against Deep Blue in 1997. These events are merely short-term solutions. Big name sponsors must be attracted to chess, but only drawing a greater mass appeal to the game can do this. American companies and media must be brought into the sport. Bobby Fischer did drew in popular interest and sponsorship dollars to a certain extent, but the next American world champion is a long way off. So, consciously or unconsciously, the objectification of women chess players is an attempt to recreate chess's image and to appeal to new, youth-oriented sponsors. The end result is that the resources devoted to women's chess are still small while the resources devoted to selling particular female chess players are growing. This is a great boon for Sasha Kosteniuk who can play the sex game with skill. Unfortunately, if this trend continues, players who are not pretty enough and those who are unwilling to play the “Lolita” card will be marginalized. There can only be a few “Anna Kournikovas of chess.” The rest of the field of women players will have to survive on a smaller slice of an already shrinking pie (the recent World Cup championship offered $46,000 to the male winner and $16,000 to the female one). This new tactic of sexualizing the Sasha Kosteniuks of the chess world may lead to a short-term increase in exposure, but the chess world is walking a dangerous line . This trend is creating an environment that is more and more hostile to women like Elisabeth Paehtz and Irina Krush who simply want to play the game. If those women go, then the most dynamic and fastest growing element of the game goes with them. As Mig Greengard succinctly puts it: “Not that you'll ever stop men from talking about pretty women, but if that's all you hear it can't bode well.”

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu