Blast from the Past - Judit Polgar - Batumi

Chess By Robert Byrne January 16, 2000 Polgar, Just One of the Boys,Hems In a Russian's Queen Terms that no longer have any application sometimes persist in a vacuous afterlife. One such is the locution ''men's tournament,'' when what is really meant is ''not exclusively for women,'' or ''open to both sexes.'' It would be reasonable to call such a competition an ''open tournament,'' but few sponsors make the effort to reach this level of verbal precision. In the European Teams Championship in Batumi, Georgia, we get the anomalous report that the best result on Board 2 of the ''Men's Tournament'' was achieved by Judit Polgar of Hungary. You can take my word for it that Judit Polgar, a grandmaster, is a woman, the strongest in the history of the game. Her score of 6�-2� and her gold medal were also not in dispute. She gave a taste of her skill in her third round game with the grandmaster Sergei Volkov of Russia. The capture with 4...de defines the Burn Variation of the French Defense. Black relinquishes his main center pawn, thus avoiding a cramped position, but after 5 Ne4, White has an advantage in space. After 5...Be7, a retreat with 6 Ng3 would lack punch, and 6 Nf6 Bf6 7 Bf6 Qf6 would oversimplify and create too many chances for a draw. The favored method is 6 Bf6, when 6...Bf6 7 Nf3 gives Black problems arranging a counterattack on the white center, and the best continuation, the recapture with 6...gf, leaves Black with doubled f pawns. After 9 Qe2, Volkov disdained the stodgy, defensive 9...c6, to be followed by 10...Qc7 and 11...Nbd7, in favor of Qd5, by which he prevented Polgar from castling queenside, the more potent of her two options. No sooner had Polgar taken the first step of a mating attack with 12 a4! than Volkov erred with 12...f5? and found after 13 Nc3! that his queen, cut off from h5, was in trouble. He should have defended by 12...a5. After 13 Nc3, he became rattled and blundered again, this time with 13...Qa5? instead of doing the best he could with 13...Qd6. However, that could not be expected to save him from 14 a5 Kb8 15 ab ab 16 Ra7! Bc6 17 Rea1, threatening the quietly crushing 18 Bb5! or 18 Nb5! Polgar's 15 c3 threatened to win material with 16 b4, thus forcing Volkov to loosen his king position with 15...c5. After 16 g3!, her king knight was released to do deadly damage. If 16...f4, then 17 Nd2 fg 18 hg Bd5 19 Bc4 Bc4 19 Nc4 Qa6 20 Ne5 Qb7 21 Nf7 Nf8 22 Nd8 Kd8 23 Rad1 will win easily. Volkov judged that 16...a6 17 Nd2! ab 18 ab Qa1 19 Ra1 cd 20 cd Bd6 would let him put up maximum resistance. After 22 Qc2, Volkov should have tried 22...Kb8, which would offer more resistance than losing a pawn by 22...Nf6? 23 Nb6 Kb8 24 Qc5. After 27 Ra4, Volkov had no defense against 28 Qa7 Kc8 29 Rc4, so he gave up.