Lazavik Defends Gender-Split Training Camps, Says Women "Don't Understand" What Men Are Taught
By Cameron W. · Sat, 19 Sep 2026
Denis Lazavik, Belarus's top-ranked player, used a recent interview with streamer Chess Yaroslav to defend the decision to split Mikhail Shereshevsky's chess training camps into separate men's and women's groups, arguing there's a fundamental gap in understanding between the two that makes joint training unworkable.
Denis Lazavik, Belarus's top-ranked player, used a recent interview with streamer Chess Yaroslav to defend the decision to split Mikhail Shereshevsky's chess training camps into separate men's and women's groups, arguing there's a fundamental gap in understanding between the two that makes joint training unworkable.What did Lazavik say?Lazavik recalled trying to study openings with GM Alexei Shirov the previous year and finding it unworkable when women were part of the session. He called the camps' split into men's and women's groups "a brilliant idea," adding: "it is madness to train with women, especially when looking at openings, there is a difference in level. They don't understand anything that we are being taught." When Chess Yaroslav read out a stream chat comment accusing both of them of being sexist, Lazavik didn't back down, saying he didn't find it surprising that men play chess better than women, "not only in chess," and that "you can't argue against the truth."The counter-evidence sitting in plain sightThe claim doesn't hold up especially well against the sport's own numbers. Judit Polgar remains the only woman to have ever broken 2700, peaking at 2735 and ranking 67th on the all-time list, a level the overwhelming majority of male grandmasters, including plenty who've never questioned a woman's understanding of an opening, have never come close to reaching themselves. The current top-ranked woman, Hou Yifan, sits at 2596. More broadly, researchers who've actually studied the rating gap between men and women in chess have generally attributed it to participation numbers rather than any inherent difference in ability or comprehension, women make up a small fraction of registered competitive players worldwide, and a smaller pool produces fewer statistical outliers at the extreme top end, the same effect you'd see in any sufficiently lopsided sample. Susan Polgar, the first woman ever to earn the grandmaster title, has made this exact point directly in response to similar comments from other players in the past: "It has nothing to do with the race or gender. It has to do with the opportunities."This isn't the first time a top player has said something like thisLazavik's comments land in a pattern rather than a vacuum. In 2022, GM Ilya Smirin was removed from FIDE's own broadcast team after saying live on air that chess was "maybe not for women" while commentating on the Women's Grand Prix, remarks that drew immediate, widespread criticism and cost him the job. Nigel Short has made broadly similar arguments about innate gender differences in chess ability for years, comments Susan Polgar has directly compared to arguing that a racial group lacks the capacity to play the game well.No ResponseNo formal response from FIDE, Shereshevsky, or Shirov had surfaced as of this writing, and it's unclear whether Lazavik's comments will draw the kind of institutional consequence Smirin's did in 2022. What's already clear is that a national number-one player defending a rigid, ability-based framing of the gender gap in chess, rather than the participation-based explanation most researchers and several of the sport's own pioneering female players have offered, is exactly the kind of comment that tends not to age quietly.