Back to News

Battle of the Sexes 2022 - Press Release 3

Dec 11, 2021

John Saunders reports: One of the ideas behind Gibraltar tournament organiser Brian Callaghan’s forthcoming #GibChess Battle of the Sexes – a Scheveningen-format match-tournament between two teams of ten men and ten women, 23 January - 3 February 2022 – was to test his hunch that the top women players tend to outperform their published ratings when meeting top-level male opposition in his award-winning series of Gibraltar Masters tournaments.

Brian Callaghan, who was awarded the OBE in the 2012 New Year’s Honours List for services to chess and tourism – the highest honour bestowed on a British subject for their contribution to chess in decades – decided to put his hypothesis to the test in this innovative project to mount a men versus women event, with teams chosen to be broadly similar in terms of rating and age. An equally important intention was to provide plenty of entertainment for the watching audience. As always in Gibraltar chess events, the competitors are encouraged to play hard as well as work hard.