Beauty queens and battling knights: Risk taking and attractiveness in chess.

Highlights: [•] We use a large international panel dataset on chess competitions. [•] Photos of 626 expert chess players are rated for attractiveness in a large survey. [•] Male players choose riskier strategies when playing against attractive female opponents. [•] Playing riskier against attractive women does not improve performance. [•] Women's strategies are not affected by the attractiveness of the opponent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]