It is a terrible format to run the Women FIDE candidates & the FIDE candidates at the same time.

From a spectator perspective, it is the equivalent of running the NBA finals at the same time as the WNBA finals and then covering both simultaneously with the same announcers. How fun does that sound?

It is a lame attempt to force-feed women chess onto chess fans watching the candidates.

The recaps with Gotham cover both, and so does a lot of the live coverage go back and forth.

Here is the thing... We already have four games to watch at once. Which would leave 25% coverage on average per game. Some will be more exciting and get more coverage obviously so each game shines less.

When you add 4 more games at the same time the Women FIDE candidates that means you gotta watch 8 games at once. That 25% coverage drops to 12.5% on average coverage per game.

I would watch the Women FIDE candidates if it had its own set aside time frame, but coupling it up with the FIDE candidates is bullshit.

Women's chess should have to stand on its own. Attempting to prop it up by tying it to chess is disastrous for both.

I hope they don't do the same nonsense for the world championships.

And end rant...

I live 12 time zones away, so most of the games are finished when I check in to check out the scores. I quickly scan through the results, look at the chat just on the off chance that one of the spectators has said something informative (a few of the Canadians have, Lyle Craver for example), then figure which 2 to 4 games of the 8 warrant a second closer look. The fact that most if not all the games are over just mean that I'm an hour or so behind the early birds in being baffled completely by chess that I don't understand.
Sometimes at a big international tournament you can get a booklet after each round with all of the game scores from the master section. Some people used to collect them and study them to prepare for the next round. Seriously. I figure only 8 games isn't that much. But then, I'm not preparing to play in this candidates (nor the next).

@verylate said in #2:
>
Yea, I hear you. We all suck at chess compared to the players in the Candidates.

Personally, I like the way that Judit Polgar handled chess more than any other woman. Not just because she is the strongest female chess player in history. Rather, she refused to play in "Women's Only" events. She basically said, "I'll compete in the open stuff. Bring the men, I'll beat them!" and she did most of the time!

She has beaten Kasparov, and Karpov, Kramnik, and Anand and even Carlsen. (She may not have a winning record against these champions, but she has wins against them all)

I have 100 times more respect for her as a chess player than any Woman Chess Champion. When another woman gets in the top 10 on FIDE ranking and has wins against several world champions we will talk.

There are lots of sports where major events are run simultaneously for both men and women. Athletics, swimming, tennis, cycling, and speed-skating, to name a few.

Considering that it can take 20 or 30 minutes for a player to make a predicted move, spectator wise, I'd argue that have just 8 games going on at the same time is not enough. Many games are uninteresting draws anyway.

It's a long time ago that I could bare to watch a chess event live. Nowadays, I just watch a YouTube recap, so I can see all the interesting games in just half an hour to an hour. And I don't mind whether half the games are between women.

I don't have an issue with the men and women being run together. In fact, I believe it's a bonus as it encourages us to look at both events. There are only 4 games and there will be times when not much is happening so you can watch the other.
One thing that sucks is lichess putting the games as two separate broadcasts. I'd prefer to see all 8 games on one page.

I think the reason they have so many games at once is because chess is a very slow game. This way there will always be something happening on one board or another.

Yep. They have both tournaments at the same time, precisely because the tournament organizers cannot earn a good return on their investment from the women's tournaments. It has low viewership. From a business point of view, it's logical to hold them both at the same time, otherwise they'd lose money.

Women's chess is not that popular, and like the WNBA, no matter how hard they try it will never be popular.
If the women played in the open field against the men, the top women would be around 2400-2500, and of course we don't watch Men at 2500 either so why would we watch women at 2500. It's natural to want to see the best, and that means 2750+.
There are exceptions like Polgar, but they're super rare.

They're also exceptions for viewers. Some crazy chess folks will watch anything, even a 1500 rated tournanment. But it's not common.

But of course, some people just can't handle reality. They want to live in their fairy tale world.

@Sleprithslayer said in #7:
> If the women played in the open field against the men, the top women would be around 2400-2500
They do and out of the 8 participants in the tournament, 6 are higher rated than this range. (And in total, 12 women have rating higher than 2500.)

> and of course we don't watch Men at 2500 either so why would we watch women at 2500. It's natural to want to see the best, and that means 2750+.
This is snobish, nothing else. Neither me, nor you - or vast majority of the viewers, FWIW - are experts who would be able to recognize the nuances that differentiate the play of 2500 rated players from 2750+ ones. If I gave you 10 games without any annotation, 5 played by ~2500 rated players and 5 by 2750+ ones, would you be confident enough to recognize on your own which are which? Confident enough to bet money on your answer?

Fun fact: 3 out of 8 participants of the open candidates tournament are below 2750 at the moment.

> They're also exceptions for viewers. Some crazy chess folks will watch anything, even a 1500 rated tournanment. But it's not common.
I have no trouble to admit that for me, watching e.g. 2000 (FIDE) rated playes is a better experience than watching a GM level game where I would have no chance to understand what is going on without an expert commentary. Sure, I could be like many others and utter "wise" comments like "oh no, how could he miss that?" about engine lines that I would never see on my own but I guess I have too much common sense for that.

And I'm not ashamed to watch even games of players of my level. It gives me some idea what to expect and it's a useful exercise to compare what I would play with what was played or to check if I can notice the opportunities that appeared in the game.

In another 100 years, hopefully less, all the countries of the world will allow women to play chess against men; the 'women's" tourneys will go the way of the dodo bird, and cease to exist.

Woman should be playing with men in the masters tournaments. They should just remove the woman’s titles in this game. Men don’t have a natural advantage in this game unlike sports. Also It’s just disrespectful that they make the women’s titles easier to achieve.