Pähtz: “The Championship of My Life”: The first German to play at the rank of Grand Master

Monday 8 November 2021

Bahtz: “The Championship of My Life”
The first German to play at the rank of great teacher

Elisabeth Patz is the first German to make her way to the rank of Chess Master. The Erfurt native is only the forty women in the world to have succeeded in doing so in a male-dominated sport.

The best German chess player, Elisabeth Bates, will in the future be the first German to hold the title of Grand Master. The 36-year-old Berlin player came second in the World Cup qualifiers in Riga. For this she received not only a prize money of $ 15,250, but also the criterion of the third title of Grand Master.

She had already won the Women’s Lower Rank title at the age of sixteen. Twenty years later, she is now the first German and forty women in the world to be awarded the highest title in chess. In front of the Kazakh Bipsara Asubajiwa Bahtz achieved the necessary victory in the last round and then talked about the “championship of my life”. Nearly 1,800 men and women have been awarded the honorary title of Master since 1950, 92 of them from Germany. Pähtz is the second in the family to work her way up to the rank of senior manager: her father, Thomas, has also been a senior manager since 1991.

Bates is the only woman in the list of the 100 best women in Germany. In January, she criticized the status of women in her sport: When asked if chess players as in the Netflix series “The Ladies Gambit” are more liked than their opponents by their opponents, Pähtz told the “Rheinische Post” in Düsseldorf: “Nobody Treat that with respect. This is also a fairy tale that will never come true. I think many men get angry when they lose to a woman. Still.” The Erfurt woman complained of “very severe social inequality. If you are talented as a boy, it is easier for you to find sponsors than as a young girl.”

Meanwhile, Vincent Kemer continued his climb to the top of the world in Riga. The 16-year-old scored seven points in eleven rounds against almost exclusively higher-rated opponents. With his fifth place among over a hundred senior masters, Keymer not only received $16773 in prize money, but also made himself the youngest number one in German chess.