She has set a goal to reach 2,100 this year; an Expert is anyone ranked over 2,000 while at 2,200 you are considered a Master. She also wants to one day become the first female to win the overall championship — not just in the female category, her father told The Boston Globe.
I didn't even know there were still different gender rankings in chess. I knew there were female tournaments and I knew that stodgy, repressed European tournaments had enforced a ridiculous dress code for women (such as no hats, unless you are a Muslim, figure that out) but I think they were tired of great players who also look like this winning because they are pretty:
Anna Sharevich. Link: Science and Supermodels
Oh wait, you can't actually win a chess match by being pretty. So is there any real reason why women can't win in any tournament they want? They hold their faces while playing as well as any man, which seems to be important...
Credit: Betsy Dynako. Link: Science and Supermodels
...so I can't figure a valid reason why men and women should have separate champions. Anyway, Carissa is already in the top 7% of the US overall and top 2% of females (why again are there separate rankings in 2013? I know someone out there knows).
Five-time U.S. women’s winner Irina Krush has the record for becoming a female master, at age 12. But Liz Vicary captures the attention of the science community because she wears Metallica stuff...
Liz Vicary, left and in the Metallica shirt. Irina Krush on the right. Link: Science and Supermodels
...and her blog on chess talks about lots of kid tournaments and makes terrible players like me feel a little smarter about the game. So that is a big plus.
Congratulations, Carissa. You have three years to get Master and I bet Irina is rooting for you too.
Edit: Parts of this incorrectly listed master and expert records and that has been fixed. Thanks to Audrey Anderson for the fact-checking
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