Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Miss Universe Chess a Joke?

While having morning coffee and analyzing a personal game I am posting on video today, I came across a message on Twitter announcing an online forum to vote for Miss Universe Chess. Obviously interested, I took a look at the link thinking I would see a lot of the best in women's chess. Curiously, in the slide show hosted on the site from which people vote from, there was a huge amount of Alexandra Kosteniuk pictures, and even the Twitter page created for the contest (as of the posting of this article) had a Kosteniuk icon. Interesting!

Notably absent from the contest was the world's highest rated women's chess player, Judit Polgar. Susan Polgar is also not listed, but she hasn't been active in competitive chess for awhile, focusing mostly on promoting chess to the next generation, so that might be the reason why. But no Judit? Here is a picture of Judit Polgar:



As to why the world's strongest women's chess player (who also happens to be quite beautiful) isn't on this list is completely beyond my understanding of how the world works. Somethings off in my opinion.

There are some interesting comments posted about the competition and these oddities on the Miss Universe Chess site.

For those interested, here's the FIDE list of the top 10 women chess players in the world as of July 2009:

Rank Name
1 Polgar, Judit
2 Koneru, Humpy
3 Hou, Yifan
4 Zhao, Xue
5 Muzychuk, Anna
6 Kosintseva, Tatiana
7 Dzagnidze, Nana
8 Stefanova, Antoaneta
9 Sebag, Marie
10 Cramling, Pia

I don't know who is hosting this competition, but there definitely seems to be a little bit of bias to the whole thing. Feel free to post your thoughts or go to the official site page and voice them there.

Miss Universe Chess Official Site
Miss Universe Chess Official Twitter Page
FIDE Top 100 Women Chess Players

3 comments:

Michael Quigley said...

Hi J,

Well they must have listened to you! Judit is now there and the icon on the twitter page changed!

Having said that, I'd vote for AK.

:-)

Mike

David Seruyange said...

I'm not young so I think Susan Polgar has not only the gravitas /accomplishment on those younglings but she's quite elegant. Nevertheless I think I'd lose a game of chess to just about everyone on that list.

Unknown said...

dude i clicked on the link provided and the page said hijacked...? U didnt send me to a virus did u jrobi??