Long Description

This book contains games from every singlefemale World Champion, as well as young up and comers, top seasonedprofessionals, streamers, and even a section at Beth Harmon from the recent famedQueen's Gambit hit show. This book is not just for girls and women,however. Any chess player can learn from these games and discover female chesshistory, both from the famous players in the past right up to the present day. How have these games been selected? It is at this point I can mention the realreason- my UK Girls chess project called 'She Plays To Win' (SPTW). This group has officially been going sinceApril 11th 2020. I had the idea even a few years before, but I wasnot sure how it could be set up. The unfortunate events of worldwide lock-downprovided the answer, as the switch to being online allowed me to offer zoomlessons for UK girls as well as weekly girls tournaments on the Lichess server.I do this for free and parents have never paid anything to get involved. Each week I cover a top female player andwe analyse the game. Over the past year I have built up a large collection ofgames and tactics, which I felt could be published. It is the most up to datecollection about women's chess covering a variety of ages and levels. After just one year, I have over 360 girlsacross the UK signed up, and a further 150 beginners in our new beginnersprogram. I hope this is just the beginning.

Author Comments

Being male and growing up aged 9 playingchess, I didn't pay too much attention to girls in chess. After all, when yougo to your first tournaments, it is the thrill and challenge to play our royalgame that we are concerned with. You also start to make your chess friends,often randomly at these competitions. It might be that one of my firsttournaments I played, the British Junior Chess Championships in Norwich in1994, where I played 4 girls in 7 rounds (losing most of these games) that Isubconsciously just assumed girls were commonplace in chess. It was also at this tournament that myfather pointed out a little girl who was holding 4 trophies she had won at thechampionships during the closing ceremony. She could barely hold them all atthe same time. 'Look' he said to me, 'they've come fromIndia to play here, and she's won all the titles she could have won'. Her name was Tania Sachdev. You will studyher in this book. My older sister used to (does still?) takegreat delight in defeating me at golf, tennis and other games and sports. Sheeven used to play chess, until she declared age 11 'that it could be yourthing'. That was very generous of her Certainly playing for her women's footballteam, I saw stigma attached to this. Back in the 1990s football was seen as a'boys thing' and these girls were trying to break this image. Why couldn't theyget involved too? As I write in 2021 we can see huge changeshave been made. Women's football, amongst other sports, are very popular. Interms of chess, however, it is still unclear. This one has confused me as I have been afull time chess coach for around 15 years. Chess is not a physical game, andhence I refer you back to the quote at the top by Susan Polgar- why on earthshould girls not be playing chess as much as boys? Whilst I do not intend to discuss thattopic in length here, I believe that maybe something should be made known forthese potential female chess enthusiasts; that there are role models for themto look up to, to be inspired by. It is for this reason I am writing this your role model!

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