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Woman Grandmaster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Woman Grandmaster (WGM) is the highest-ranking chess title restricted to women aside from Women's World Champion. The World Chess Federation FIDE introduced the WGM title in 1977, joining the previously introduced lower-ranking title Woman International Master (WIM).
The WGM title represents a level of chess skill significantly lower than that of the unrestricted Grandmaster (GM) title, and in fact WGM requirements are a little bit lower than the requirements for the unrestricted International Master (IM) title as well. The current regulations can be found in the FIDE handbook [1].
Many strong female players hold the IM title in addition to the WGM, and since about 2000 the top 10 women players have been mostly GMs [2]. (The winner of the Women's World Championship is automatically awarded the full GM title if she does not already hold it.) The July 2005 FIDE rating list records 184 women holding the WGM title. On this list 63 women hold unrestricted titles in addition to their women's titles, including 11 who are full GMs.