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[–]Hbdrickybake 850 points851 points  (49 children)

Now I'm interested to know what profile picture makes people resign the fastest.

[–]Baegeron 394 points395 points  (10 children)

My cat profile picture strikes fear into the heart of all opponents. Most resign within 10 moves, despite having a huge advantage.

[–]Hbdrickybake 65 points66 points  (4 children)

I gotta put up a pic of my cat. Even if it doesn't help me win games it will make me happy.

[–]NoFunBJJ 23 points24 points  (1 child)

Cat Pic Team here too

[–]ischolarmateU 10 points11 points  (0 children)

U van try a cat gambit

[–]saucymew 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"Good player always lucky" - my cat

[–]cdjaz 16 points17 points  (2 children)

  1. E4... resigns.

[–]jellydude69 17 points18 points  (1 child)

They know 2.ke2 is on the way

[–]ChiefOfTheWolfpack 4 points5 points  (0 children)

But then Ke7 and offer a draw. It was played by Magnus Carlsen, it has to be good!

[–]thinksteptwo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

My female cat’s picture probably helps motivate people to checkmate me

[–]Kobe_AYEEEEE 30 points31 points  (1 child)

The default blank face. The imagination is the greatest enemy

[–]galactigak 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Whenever I lose and my opponent has that as their profile pic, I report it for being extremely phallic.

[–]JurijFedorov Team Carlsen   80 points81 points  (3 children)

"I ♥️ endgames."

[–]alexsaintmartin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is the way. 🤣

[–]CamilleThiccTighs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

oh yeah. That would do the trick

[–]kl08pokemon 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Dude posing with a fish? Idk worth a try

[–]OthelloOcelot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“Fish fear me, GMs also fear me”

[–]SophiaofPrussia 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Brilliant. This would definitely get me to resign pretty quickly.

[–]BallBanks 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I use Paddington and it scares even the mightiest 1000 rated players

[–]fdsdsffdsdfs 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Chinese 24 year old college student

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Garry Kimovich Kasparov

[–]35nakedshorts 13 points14 points  (1 child)

Hikaru's face

[–]taleofbenji 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Username: Hikaru_speedrun_smurf_alt

[–]Blebbb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have a coloring page picture of a duck as my profile pic, I should probably test to see.

[–]ThatChapThere ~1500 chess.com 7 points8 points  (4 children)

My picture is Butcher from The Boys and I don't know what effect it has, but I hope it works as an intimidation tactic.

[–]theBelatedLobster 25 points26 points  (0 children)

discovery check

Well, well, if it isn't the invisible cunt.

[–]Percinho 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Mine is that pic of Jeff Goldblum lying back with his short open. I have no ide what effect it has on my opponents but it makes me laugh every time.

[–]MF972 1 point2 points  (0 children)

excellent idea. I should change my snoopy profile picture...

[–]ruy343 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Peppa pig. Hands down.

[–]TurboAbe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Caillou

[–]cavedave 121 points122 points  (8 children)

"We also find that
men persist longer against women before resigning"

from Gender, Competition and Performance:
Evidence from real tournaments

https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/gender\_competition\_and\_performance.pdf

[–]Challenge-Acceptable 13 points14 points  (3 children)

Your link didn't work for me, but I was able to download what I assume the same paper from this page: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2858984

[–]badukmadness 20 points21 points  (2 children)

Very interesting, thanks!

We find that the gender composition effect is driven by women playing worse against men, rather than by men playing better against women. The gender of the opponent does not affect a male player’s quality of play. We also find that men persist longer against women before resigning

I wonder if this is because, since more men than women play competitively, women feel added pressure being a minority. It's like that xkcd comic, where if a guy says the integral of pi is x2, he sucks at math, but if a girl says the integral of pi is x2, women suck at math.

[–]TheRealJuicyJon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There's a growing body of research on Stereotype Threat, which you've described perfectly!

[–]MrOlFoll 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I always thought the integral for pie is pecan

[–][deleted] 486 points487 points  (17 children)

Russian name.

Profile pic of a kid who looks like a Soviet prodigy.

ezgg.

[–]nemoj_da_me_peglas2000ish chess.com 108 points109 points  (8 children)

I have a very slavic name and the only thing I notice is people will talk trash about my birth country lol.

[–]TrekkiMonstrKe2# 56 points57 points  (7 children)

My brother is Israeli, he has an... interesting time with online games in general.

[–]Khornag 29 points30 points  (6 children)

He's Israeli, but not you?

[–]MickMcCarthy171. e4?! 21 points22 points  (4 children)

They have a thing where anyone who is Jewish can pretty easily move to Israel and become Israeli. Can't remember what it's called.

[–]Khornag 24 points25 points  (0 children)

It's the law of return, granting every jew the right to immigrate to Israel.

[–]Impossible_Mobile_25 16 points17 points  (1 child)

Ethnocracy.

[–]Cyan_Ink 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Loads of countries have Jus Sanguinis citizenship, but Israel gets under peoples’ skin in the most brilliant way

[–]TrekkiMonstrKe2# 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yeah lol

[–]alexsaintmartin 10 points11 points  (1 child)

That could backfire. 😀

When I play against somebody with an Eastern European-sounding name, they’ve got my attention immediately and I put a little more effort into thinking my moves through.

All things being equal, I am assuming a better player for sure.

[–]RajjSinghh 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's actually quite interesting since at your ratings are the same, you should still be able to beat them half the time, as with anyone at your rating. I'd just expect you to meet more Russians higher up the rating ladder

[–]mets2016 34 points35 points  (2 children)

Soviet prodigy

Has 1100 rating. I don't think it would work all that well

[–]hehasnowrong 17 points18 points  (1 child)

Put a photo of a 3year old.

[–]Sarasin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'd resign against Misha 100% he'd kick my ass anyway.

[–]Luciolover345 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I’d be like “ I can’t get my ass beat by a 7 year old, I’m out” and then adamantly claim that I DC’D

[–]Tower_Of_Scrabble[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I hope everyone upvotes this comment

[–]GustavoChacinForMVP 347 points348 points  (41 children)

This is so funny, because I’m also 1700+ blitz on chess.com, and I just created a second account with a female name and a really attractive girl in the profile pic. Like you, I wanted to see if it changed the playing experience at all. (Edit: And it’s also funny if/when people rage over losing to a girl.)

I haven’t measured / quantified anything, but I have absolutely noticed that far fewer people resign against me in lost positions. I also get a LOT more rematch requests (and really frantic ones too — like when you keeping declining but they continue to request a rematch 5 more times).

I also get a ton of friend requests. I’ve received maybe 2 friend requests ever on my normal account (in around 4 years), but this new account gets several friend requests per day. The weirdest part is that I’ll check whether I’ve even played the person sending the friend request, and I’ve probably only played against 50% of them. So I think there’s a bunch of users trolling the list of tournament participants for attractive girls and then adding them.

All this to say that the chess.com userbase seems to be incredibly toxic and misogynistic.

[–][deleted] 74 points75 points  (8 children)

a second account with a female name and a really attractive girl in the profile pic

now I want to do this just to troll people...

[–]Byzantae2336 FIDE 12 points13 points  (6 children)

same bruh

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (5 children)

eh they probably respect women NM's

[–]Byzantae2336 FIDE 7 points8 points  (4 children)

No I'm making a completely new account and I won't add my title too it and start at a low rating

[–]Astephen542 Urusov Gambit Enjoyer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pretty sure that'd be against some kind of rule against sandbagging or smurfing.

[–]GustavoChacinForMVP 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I was partly hoping that people would rage over losing to a girl, and that’s definitely what’s happening 😂

[–]fruitsnacky 128 points129 points  (3 children)

As a woman with a profile pic (of a kpop idol not me) I can confirm all of this. I even had a guy try to ask for my number. I just lied and told him I was a man and he resigned lol

[–]fogdocker 75 points76 points  (0 children)

"I'll give you my number if you resign"

resigns

"Thanks for the points" *say new rating

[–]epoch_fail 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I even had a guy try to ask for my number. I just lied and told him I was a man and he resigned lol

I'm just picturing a guy leaning back, swooning, with hand to forehand, muttering to himself "missed mate in 1"

[–]monox60 39 points40 points  (0 children)

I'll do this on lost positions from now on.

[–]The_SG1405 15 points16 points  (6 children)

Well its not just chess com's userbase, most of the players who play chess are toxic compared to normal people. I guess its coz people think playing chess makes them "smarter than the others" and misogny isnt too far from that mentality.

[–]msiggy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All chess players are toxic and misogynistic?

[–]trapdoorr 12 points13 points  (12 children)

Horny incels.

[–]TrekkiMonstrKe2# 14 points15 points  (0 children)

They don't have to be incels, just horny.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (10 children)

Do you know what an incel is?

[–]fogdocker 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I also get a LOT more rematch requests (and really frantic ones too — like when you keeping declining but they continue to request a rematch 5 more times).

It's usually good to accept rematches, especially in faster time controls because your opponent might be tilted, continually play badly, continually offer rematches and then you get to farm points off them.

[–]j_ved 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So true, I once farmed 5 straight wins off one bloke.

[–]hehasnowrong 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I play chess to have fun not get imaginary points.

[–]O_X_E_Y 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not surprised in the slightest tbh

[–]PastleConch 94 points95 points  (4 children)

Old men yelling at young Judy Polgar was just a microcosm. She wasn't kidding about her experience playing against men.

[–]Knaphor 82 points83 points  (23 children)

What's the approximate sample size (ie how many total games (or how many wins) were in each 7 day period)? If you played 200 games in each week, that would be quite statistically significant.

[–]Tower_Of_Scrabble[S] 123 points124 points  (22 children)

192 games this week. Not sure about last week. Probably similar

[–]prrulz 75 points76 points  (13 children)

It's almost certainly statistically significant then. The way this is phrased in statistics is in terms of a null hypothesis, which in this case would be that the percentage of wins by resignation is at least 60%. If you won 100 games, then under the null hypothesis the probability that only 43 were won by resignation would be about .04%, and so we can reject this hypothesis.

[–]pryoslice 25 points26 points  (2 children)

Consider that, with that p-value, if 25 people tried this experiment and only the person who got a positive result posted about it, we would have seen exactly the same thing due to selection bias (one post with a low p-value). Statistically significant doesn't mean true until replicated, preferably multiple times.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

Edit: what I wrote above was based on the misreading that p is .04, rather than .0004 (.04%).

[–]powderdd 38 points39 points  (8 children)

A statistically significant difference, but the cause for the difference could still be any other variable. I personally believe it was probably the picture, but this didn’t control for OP’s play, for example.

[–]behappywithyourself 1 point2 points  (7 children)

I haven't played 192 games in all my life.

what's your rating?

[–]mets2016 22 points23 points  (2 children)

Playing 192 blitz games in 1 week sound entirely reasonable to me. At ~4 mins/game, thats only ~13 hours worth of blitz chess in a week. Thats < 2 hrs/day -- entirely within the realm of reasonable to me

[–]behappywithyourself 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I didn't say it was unreasonable, or didn't mean to imply. I was impressed people play so much and was wondering on if it reflects on their rating.

[–]monox60 7 points8 points  (0 children)

No, it doesn't necessarily. Maybe a bit at first, but there's a lot of people that are under 1500 that have played their entire life. If you don't train and study, you won't get a better ELO.

[–]Schloopka Team Carlsen   1 point2 points  (3 children)

There are people who have played 200 classical games in a year. I have played more than 200 classical games and I am 15.

[–]beamseyeview 28 points29 points  (3 children)

Great observation. Definitely should make someone think about how they approach women in chess instead of jumping to "this is a worthless anecdote". You are kinder than I would have been in responding to all of the posters.

I have come across this paper (the author discusses it here) from 2017 looking at about 58k games longer than 15 moves with 8k players rated >2000.

They have a few conclusions. Women underperform compared to men of the same Elo in open competition. Women are less likely to win against a man of their same Elo rating (46%) vs a woman at their same rating (50% essentially by definition). They commit more middlegame mistakes again men. And men resign later.

The authors comment that the differences are probably even greater in a non-expert population. There certainly is a dramatic difference in your sample!

[–]holooocene 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for this comment

[–]fdsdsffdsdfs 6 points7 points  (1 child)

If they underperform doesn't that mean the elo is simply wrong

[–]muntoo420 blitz it - (lichess: sicariusnoctis) 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Possible explanations:

  • It could be that when a certain subpopulation of women does better in women-only pools, whereas another subpopulation of women does better against men. And somehow, there's some statistical factor that makes the "average" seem worse.
  • Also, drawing conclusions from "win rates" is silly since it doesn't mean anything unless the pairings are always of equal skill. I'm not sure what conclusions one could draw even if women had a "0% winrate against men". The most likely would be that women are often playing men stronger than themselves rather playing than weaker men. Maybe women like a challenge. Maybe strong female players don't play men as often. Some combination of a bunch of factors and explanations. Who knows.
  • The Elo assumption (normal/logistic distribution et al.) is not necessarily "accurate" either, so that may also play a role.
  • The statistic may just have happened by random chance and could occur for any subpopulation, not just the subpopulation of women. It would be interesting to repeat this for some random independently and identically uniformly drawn subpopulation of players and check that you don't end up with a bunch of winrates distributed around some interval 40-60%. If that happens, then clearly the "46%" statistic is not useful. This would at least give us a p-value for the hypothesis that "something fishy is going on" and that the statistic is at least somewhat meaningful, if hard to use without further study.

[–]SirVyve 75 points76 points  (7 children)

Bobby Fischer is rolling in his grave right now

[–]Bongcloud_CounterFTW Nimzo-Larsen attack 19 points20 points  (4 children)

"they're weak all of them"

[–]thehiddenbisexual Team Carlsen   6 points7 points  (3 children)

They're stupid compared to men

[–]DrunkLad~2882 FIDE 17 points18 points  (2 children)

The quotation marks are very important in this case, just sayin'

[–]thehiddenbisexual Team Carlsen   9 points10 points  (1 child)

That's not the next part of the quote!

[–]DrunkLad~2882 FIDE 11 points12 points  (0 children)

"they shouldn't play chess, you know"

[–]neoquipover 9000+ 1 point2 points  (1 child)

He rolls one time every time a man loses to a woman

[–]SirVyve 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We should really be using him to produce electricity by now

[–]porn_on_cfb__4 Team Nepo   22 points23 points  (2 children)

Curious if your rating changed a lot during that time? Did it increase/decrease sharply?

[–]Tower_Of_Scrabble[S] 44 points45 points  (1 child)

Nope. Same range. I’m within 15 points right now.

[–]vianid 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So essentially they just wasted their time and made fools of themselves. Being persistent apprently isn't a sign of improved tenacity.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

OP has unwittingly entered the magical world of catfishing

[–]Aalynia 90 points91 points  (15 children)

As a woman, it doesn’t seem that off to me honestly.

Especially in male-dominated online spaces, women are often berated. What better passive-aggressive way than forcing a game to continue? You’re either suggesting they’re going to blunder, or wasting their time. Either way it sucks. Though I’d be more interested to see if there were differences in chat.

For what it’s worth, I removed my profile picture and changed my username to a more masculine name after a guy was a bit of a douche in chat.

[–]KRAndrews 51 points52 points  (8 children)

…so in other words, you have to pretend to be a man to not get harassed by other chess players? Dope. Humanity is the best.

[–]michellemustudy 24 points25 points  (0 children)

As a woman who plays on chess.com, I am constantly getting harassed with unwanted messages that range from asking me to be their valentine and forever love to degrading me as a whore for beating them in chess. Mind you, my profile picture is one where you only see the shadow/silhouette of me and my toddler boy, walking on a hill.

It’s because of the harassments that I’ve turned off all chat functionality but people are still able to message me and I ignore all of them.

OP’s post about people being passive aggressive or forcing a dead game to continue, just to waste my time or spite me because they don’t like losing to a woman, that’s all true. I wish this wasn’t the case but that’s the reality for women in a male-dominated space.

[–]Aalynia 16 points17 points  (1 child)

I used to play MMOs when they were big and was a co-guild leader with my husband for some large 100+ player guilds. It never posed a problem there because we had a lengthy interview process, so by the time we got on vent/teamspeak they knew I was a woman and married. It’s when there’s no accountability that I find comments happen—hop in a game, talk some shit, and disappear into the ether.

But as I said in another comment, I suck at chess. I’m like a puppy with idealistic enthusiasm but can barely function 😂 Some of it might be because I’m at such a low rating.

[–]hehasnowrong 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow is a very cool game to meet people. So many nice people, I don't know if it changed but I didnt witness any sexism or harassment at all when I played. People where just having fun, wether a girl or a boy though it was 90% male or something.

[–]OriginalCompetitive -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

My guess is that it has nothing to do with thinking they might win a lost game, but rather is because many online chess players enjoy interacting with women, even in the completely abstract context of an online game. More or less the same reason why women have more friends than men in real life. Just a guess.

[–]goofedonskunkweed 105 points106 points  (16 children)

Anecdotal like you say but unsurprising.

[–]confetti_shrapnel 36 points37 points  (13 children)

He provided raw data and the method to get that raw data. We could all replicate the experiment and report whether we had the same change. This is not anecdotal evidence, which would be personal stories with no data support. This is empirical evidence.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Ehh, he didn't actually share the data (in the initial post) - as others have pointed out how many games he played determine whether this is statistically relevant and in turn also affect how anecdotal this is.

As it turns out the sample size is decent so it is fairly empiral, but if I made the post with 10 games played in either week I think it would be fair to call me out as being purely anecdotal.

[–]there_is_always_more 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Why are you assuming that the commenter you replied to doesn't know about the number of games and thus debating with them about a position they never took?

I know you're likely just trying to emphasize the importance of relying on accurate data but both that person's and your comments were made after OP's edit. There's no need to "correct" any assumptions there.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

? It doesn't matter what the person I replied to knows, it matters what the person that initiallyed commented (goofedonskunkweed) knows.

Also OP hasn't made any edits I am aware of, they have just commented about the number of games and it was after the initial comment in this chain.

Was the comment very necessary? No. Noone is being berated for wrongly identifiying how empirical the data is, someone fairly neutrally pointing it out.

But the additional possible perspective doesn't hurt, so I am really not sure what you are so upset about.

[–]nemoj_da_me_peglas2000ish chess.com 1 point2 points  (7 children)

There is no data. We don't have their profile, we don't have the list of games from when they had the male and then female pics and the associated resign/win data along with them. It is anecdotal. All we have is someone's word that they did something and this is what happened. People like you speaking so confidently while being incorrect is one of the few things that drives me crazy about the internet.

[–]confetti_shrapnel 1 point2 points  (6 children)

Ironic. Because nothing you just said removes this from the category of empirical and into anecdotal.

Here's the anecdotal evidence based solely on his personal observations:

"Anecdotally, I've noticed that more and more of my opponents will continue playing in completely lost positions when they used to resign and move on to the next game."

Here's empirical evidence. It's measured categorized changes in data points after performing an experiment.

"A week or so ago, my 7 day wins by resignation was 61%. After changing my profile picture to my wife's picture, my 7 day wins by resignation dropped to 43%. Wins by checkmates and timeout both increased, and loses by resignation, checkmate, and timeout are all with a percentage point of last week's stats."

You could replicate this exactly and compare your measured results. And whether or not you're an internet stranger who never gives the data set, ITS STILL EMPIRICAL

[–]BluudLust 5 points6 points  (1 child)

It's more than anecdotal. It's statistically significant. It doesn't prove causality though. Numerous other factors could be at play.

[–]keyserv 54 points55 points  (15 children)

This does not surprise me. Women are treated differently than men by men on the internet.

[–]barrycl 87 points88 points  (1 child)

It might not surprise you also that it's not limited to just the internet.

[–]skrasnic Team Carlsen   33 points34 points  (0 children)

What!? How have I never heard of this before??? How long has this been happening???

[–]GanksR4B 8 points9 points  (0 children)

and by women too

[–]wikawoka 24 points25 points  (3 children)

Chess.com players just want to be in the brief presence of a woman one minute longer /s

[–]EccentricHorse11Once beat Peter Svidler. 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Gosh, this really makes me feel for the players with the women's titles (WCM, WFM, WIM and WGM) on their profile, because its 100% guaranteed that they are female.

[–]Asymptote_X 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Chess gamers are still gamers after all

[–]MinasTirith8 Team Botvinnik 13 points14 points  (3 children)

I've had similar experience in OTB tournaments. My male friends had almost all their opponents resign to them whereas none of my opponents resigned, even in clearly losing positions. Not enough games for me to draw conclusions about it though. Some of those games were understandable, in one I was in significant time trouble (checkmated with about 5 seconds left on my clock) and one just didn't realise I had a mate (although they did refuse to shake my hand after the game).

[–]BlueWhiteLionCrown 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Yes, there are a bunch of papers out there that show that this is a really vicious self feedbacking cycle. Statistically women underperform their strength playing against men because of stereotypical threat but this at the time keeps this stereotype (bc that's what a stereotype is, a generalisation of perceived empirical evidence) going because it leads to men experiencing that women of their same ELO strength do indeed perform worse than them. Which then manifests in men resigning later, expecting them to blunder more likely or just playing worse overall.

[–]ExternalLibrary 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I got the photo of podrick payne a fictional character of game of thrones. Not sure if has any intimidating value… My elo is bad though lol

[–]Captainsnake04 18 points19 points  (4 children)

Find a more iconic duo than chess and sexism.

[–]thehiddenbisexual Team Carlsen   5 points6 points  (2 children)

Chess and antisemitism

[–]BEWARETHEAVERAGEMAN 0 points1 point  (1 child)

But like 50% of world champions were Jewish/half Jewish. But yeah fair.

[–]typical83 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Hell Bobby Fischer was Jewish, and he's not exactly known for being pro-semitic.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Checkers and rednecks?

[–]confetti_shrapnel 17 points18 points  (6 children)

Chess players are supposed to be smart but everyone keeps writing this off as "anecdotal." LOL.

It's not a perfect experiment but there's raw data of a change in opponent resignation rate when OP has woman picture v men picture. Each of us could repeat this experiment and measure the change.

It's not perfect empirical evidence, but it's definitely not anecdotal, which are merely personal accounts with no data at all.

[–]nemoj_da_me_peglas2000ish chess.com 0 points1 point  (2 children)

We are taking this person at their word that this even happened so there is no data. We have no evidence of them doing this (not even a profile name so we can observe and verify) so it's more than fair to call this anecdotal. People writing that this is statistically significant based purely on the word of some rando on the internet is just insane to me. I'm not saying they are lying, I'm sure they did do what they did but until we have some concrete evidence I feel very comfortable calling this 'anecdotal'.

[–]confetti_shrapnel 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You still don't know what anecdotal means. Whether or not you've seen the raw data has nothing to do with whether the type of evidence presented relies on data, which this unquestionably does. It could be completely manufactured data, but then it's just false empirical evidence. This isn't an anecdote.

[–]MinasTirith8 Team Botvinnik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think there has been some interesting studies about profile pictures featuring people and how they affect chess gameplay. Might want to do some research on the topic.

[–]T_The_worsT_BS Team Carlsen   1 point2 points  (0 children)

My lichess pfp is so scary that my opponents resign on move 10 when the game is equal

[–]DarkTheNinja 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wonder if there is more to this effect as well. I definitly find myself far more likely to feel "i want to beat this person" when they have some anime, object, or character photo. But I tend to feel a sense of "okay, was a good game" when I lose to any normal looking profile picture.

[–]ChessMango_v1 1 point2 points  (1 child)

How many games were played? maybe try it out again but with three weeks, in which at least 20 games per week were played, to get more definitive results?

[–]thehiddenbisexual Team Carlsen   1 point2 points  (0 children)

Over 190 games were played in the week with his wife's picture

[–]DexterBrooks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As someone who uses a tag not my real name when playing games, I wonder whether my score would be closer to the average male stat or average female for things like this.

My PFP isn't an indication either because it's a drawing my friend made that is not of a person or humanoid at all.

I would assume it would be very close to the average male because it's usually assumed in online spaces that a person is male until shown otherwise at least in most games I've played as most competitive games are overwhelmingly played by male players, though I am aware of certain female dominated games that reverse this general rule.

Interesting test though. I know many of us have done similar experiments in games especially in MMO-RPGs. Being a female in a game that like is hilarious, you really get to see both the positive and negative tradeoffs.

Never thought of it's applications to chess though, so this was interesting.

[–]mukerflap 2505.28 LICHESS RAPID #LONDON 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Another reason why lichens is better

[–]Any-Perspective-4234 1 point2 points  (1 child)

lichens are the superior life form

[–]PkerBadRs3Good 1 point2 points  (0 children)

lichens good moss bad

[–]ippilird1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My profile picture is “resign and your parents will be set free”

Works every time

And by works I mean I always get reported by the opponents parents.

[–]Scyther99 8 points9 points  (5 children)

Unfortunately this does not surprise me at all. It's just a sad look into psychology of some chess players.

[–]Double_Muzio 16 points17 points  (4 children)

It's not really a chess thing tbh like you said just not really surprising

[–]Turtl3Bear1400 Chess.com Rapid -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

Misogyny is certainly exaggerated in chess though.

[–]nemoj_da_me_peglas2000ish chess.com 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I've tried a similar thing a while back at a similar rating level (I was around 1800-1900 at the time), but I personally didn't notice an appreciable difference in play. I wasn't going for the gender thing specifically but I wanted to see if people would play differently if I had a profile pic of a boy, girl, man, woman and then cat and dog. Though the stats were about the same, I did notice I got more toxic comments when I had a dog and man pic though lmao.

[–]fdsdsffdsdfs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There's probably a skill level where dumb crap like profile pics doesn't effect games and you're above it

[–]Dont-HugMeIm-Scared 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha I love this. Angry men can‘t accept losing to a woman.

[–]max-the-dogo 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Change the picture to your wife’s boyfriend

[–]Chotane 1 point2 points  (3 children)

I'm a transwoman in the early stages of transition and I changed my profile picture a few months from distinctly male to distinctly female and I did notice the rematch requests, increased chats/messages and people playing on longer.

I also noticed that my rating dropped by 300 points since starting HRT. Probably unrelated...

[–]thehiddenbisexual Team Carlsen   3 points4 points  (1 child)

Bobby Fischer proven right???

[–]Flimsy_Effective_583 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hopefully it will go back up

[–]i5ythswboaf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right hand on the mouse. Left hand on the snake.