The world of young female chess champions now emerging to challenge the historic mastery and hierarchy of their male counterparts on the international chess stage is provocatively exposed in the new book "Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport" (Siles Press, a division of Silman-James Press, Los Angeles; publication date October 1, 2005).
Powerfully and authoritatively written by two-time U.S. Women’s Chess Champion Jennifer Shahade, "Chess Bitch" is an insightful exploration of the top women players who are successfully infiltrating the male-dominated subculture of international chess – giving the term "play like a girl" a whole new definition.
The 24-year-old author, who won the U.S. women’s chess title in 2002 and 2004, and holds the title Woman Grandmaster, unveils the growing bevy of young globetrotting women chess masters – many of them glamorous and revered, like Shahade herself – who are battling for equality in a game rife with gender bias.
Through her own personal experiences and those of other top women players, Shahade traces the evolution of female masters past and present who have struggled to achieve a threshold in the upper echelons of chess, often to the outspoken displeasure of ranking males.
"In the game of chess, the Queen is the strongest piece and is often referred to as 'bitch' to describe powerful, aggressive female chess champions," explains Shahade.
Crisply and engagingly written, the book chronicles Shahade's triumphs, failures and the chess world characters she's befriended in her travels from New Delhi to New York City to Shanghai.
"Chess Bitch" profiles great players back to Vera Menchik (who became the first woman’s World Champion in 1927, beating men with disarming regularity), through to today's famed Polgar sisters (three Hungarian grandmasters who refused to play in separate women's tournaments) and the champions who comprise chess dynasties in Russia and China. Shahade also introduces a network of such glamorous young players as Russian Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk and current Women's World Champion Antoaneta Stefanova, who gallivant from one country to the next on the tournament circuit.
"There are riveting personalities who populate the women’s chess world," says Shahade, "and it's far more colorful and intriguing than the stereotypical image of two people sitting quietly across the table immersed in thought."
She examines why few women players are considered geniuses, the issues surrounding the exploitation of feminine beauty to promote the sport and whether separate tournaments are detrimental to the future of women in chess.
"Chess Bitch" candidly captures the often harsh and inbred bias against women masters as a microcosm of the perennial battle of the sexes, opening an avenue of accessibility to a universe long unapproachable to outsiders.
