Can Knowing Your Opponent Hurt Your Chess?

According to a recent study carried out in Italy, the answer is yes -- at least for women. In an interesting experiment, men and women of similar strength were paired up to play chess with each other over the Internet. Each pair played two games, although they did not know they were playing the game opponent. For the second game, some pairs were told they were playing same-sex opponents, while other pairs were told the truth.

A large gap emerged in the results. When the opponents were unknown, or they were thought to be of the same sex, the pairs did about as expected; both sides won approximately an equal number of games. However, when the pairs were told the truth about who they were playing, the women fared much worse -- scoring barely over half as many points as they did against the same opponents when they were unknown to them. The researchers theorize that this is due to less confident and more cautious play on the part of the female players when they know they're playing against men.

I have no idea how much this study will add to or impact the research being done on this topic, but there has certainly been plenty of work done to try and find out why women are underrepresented in chess. It may well be for a variety of social and cultural expectations that lead to many young girls giving up the game in their teenage years, and many more playing the game only casually. On the other hand, while some people may think it's true, I seriously doubt that women are "naturally" less talented at chess. I'd love to see a growing proportion of women who play the game seriously, and hopefully the information being gathered can help find ways to make this a reality.