“Just because I decided not to go to Saudi Arabia. Not to play by someone’s rules, not to wear abaya, not to be accompanied getting outside and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature,” she said. “Exactly one year ago I won these two titles and was about the happiest person in the chess world but this time I feel really bad. I am ready to stand for my principles and skip the event, where in five days I was expected to earn more than I do in a dozen of events combined.”

"It's a very conflicting feeling for me, on the one hand, I should be happy and encouraged to be in the top 100," Hou tells CNN. "And on the other hand, it's a little bit upsetting to see the huge gap between the two genders."

"It was a long time ago, and I was always speaking my mind so that's why," said the famously belligerent Kasparov. "I don't believe that now," he continued, before adding that a female world champion is, at least theoretically, possible.

The game itself is notoriously unforgiving. It takes a special kind of mind to play chess at the highest level, Sachdev tells me. An ability to block out the world, to attain an almost Zen-like state of detachment, to feel no regret or frustration, to concentrate not only for the first hour of a game (which is easy, she explains), but for many hours.

Dorsa Derakhshani refused to wear the headscarf, known as the hijab, during the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess tournament in February, and joined the U.S. national team.