From Bayou Buzz Online via CNN:
Beating men at their own board game
Judit Polgar has been ranked as the world's number one female chess player for 23 years
CNN) -- In the game of chess, one woman has dominated all others for more than 20 years.
Judit Polgar has defeated nine
world champions including Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky and Viswanathan Anand,
and is the only female ever to join an exclusive coterie of players rated above 2700 by the World Chess Federation.
Although she is the only woman
ranked among the World Chess Federation's Top 100, Polgar has never won the
Women's World Championship. By 14, she had so outstripped her female peers that
she ceased competing in women's tournaments.
"I have no problem with other
women," she said, "but if I had played against ladies there would be a huge gap between the two of us."
"I played against men because it
was challenging, it was interesting, and I felt I could improve the fastest and
the best (against them). It's very important to know what your aims and
ambitions are."
In chess, women's tournaments are
only open to females, but women may compete in tournaments for men. It was
Polgar's older sister Susan who broke this gender barrier, becoming the first
woman to qualify for the men's world championship in 1986, and the first woman
to earn a men's grandmaster title in 1991. Younger sister, Sofia, is an
International Chess Master, too.
The family's success ignited an
ongoing debate about whether genius is born or
created, the sexual politics of professional sport, and the value of mixed gender competition.
After Polgar became a mother in
2004, she posed another challenge to the establishment: She didn't retire.
Currently ranked 44th in the world with a rating of 2698, and a mother
of two, Polgar is competing at the Chess Olympiad,
which begins in Istanbul this week, and in the London Chess Classic in
December. [Wow! I had no idea Judit would be at the London Chess Classic! What WONDERFUL NEWS!!!!!]
Hothoused in chess
By the time she was five, Judit
could beat her father at chess. She and her sisters were home schooled as part
of an educational experiment by their father, Laszlo, who believed any child
could excel at an early age if given the right schooling. Besides learning
Esperanto, they were hothoused in the game of chess.
"My father believed that the
higher you put your goal, the higher you reach. That was the main reason me and
my sisters were playing mostly against male competitors."
Tigress at the
board
It might not have been Polgar's
explicit intention to challenge male domination in chess -- but a challenge was
nevertheless perceived. Media attention focused heavily on the spectacle of a
young girl competing against men sometimes four decades her senior.
No great chess player ever likes
to lose, but losing to a girl was seen as particularly humiliating.
When Polgar won the Boys Under
14 section of the World Youth Chess Festival in 1990, one columnist wrote
approvingly that it was easy to forget that Polgar was " just a girl."
But by 2001, the New York Times
reported that, "In the highly masculine world of top-level chess, it is no
disgrace to lose to Judit Polgar ... In person, Miss Polgar gives no hint that
she is a tigress at the chessboard. She is soft-spoken, modest and very feminine
... "
Today, Polgar says that, if it
was strange for chess pundits to see a young girl catapulted to the top, it was
strange for her too.
"There was a point when it was a
bit much for me, and I couldn't handle the journalists' questions and all the
fuss about my results ... I had to realize that I was a role model for other
girls and their parents -- they wanted them to follow in my footsteps. But I
focused on chess," Polgar said. "I didn't think about other things."
In 2002, Polgar finally defeated
Garry Kasparov, who had previously described her as "talented but not greatly
talented,'' explaining that "women by their nature are not exceptional chess
players ... not great fighters," in a 1990 interview with The New York Times.
But in a game Polgar described
as "one of
the most remarkable moments" of her career, she won in 42 moves.
Kasparov later credited the
Polgars' career success in a chapter on anti-complacency tactics in his book,
"How Life Imitates Chess."
"By seeking out and often
besting the toughest competition," he wrote, "the Polgars showed that there are
no inherent limitations to their aptitude -- an idea that many male players
refused to accept until they had unceremoniously been crushed by a
twelve-year-old with a ponytail."
Love this quote:
"My sister Susan -- she was 16 or 17 -- said that she never won against a
healthy man. After the game, there was always an excuse: 'I had a headache. I
had a stomach ache.' There is always something"
Judit Polgar, 2001
Judit Polgar, 2001
In 2003, Polgar enjoyed one of
her best results.
At a tournament in the
Netherlands, she finished half a point behind current World Champion Viswanathan
Anand, a point ahead of Vladimir Kramnik (who Polgar has yet to beat), and beat
Karpov. The following year, her son Oliver was born, and she took time out from
chess.
In 2005, she competed in two
tournaments which brought her to her highest spot on the rankings board -- world
number eight.
Things fall
apart
"Being professional means 100%
is not enough," she said. "Number one, two and three in my life was chess. The
reality for women is, when a child comes into the picture, priorities
change."
After her daughter was born in
2006, Polgar says, "things in my career dropped, pretty much. Not only my rating
points but I was not happy with the way I was playing." Her ranking dropped from
10th to 50th in the world and in 2008 she finished last in the World Chess Blitz
Championship.
"Everything really kind of fell
apart," she told Chess magazine, "even though I have had help with my
children from day one from grandparents and nannies.
"First of all, my priorities in
life and in my mind definitely changed. I didn't have the same interest in chess
as I had before."
As she reveals in an upcoming
book, "How I Beat Fischer's Record" it wasn't until she played
an opening gambit that had been a childhood favorite (the King's Gambit) against
the eventual winner of the 2009 World Cup, that she felt like devoting herself
to chess again.
"It felt like for a moment the
Judit from 1988, who many (including myself) had forgotten, had come back to
deliver her trademark brilliancies," she wrote.
Polgar has decided to continue
with her professional career despite the juggling she now has to do.
"I'm a maximalist and I like to
do things in a maximal way," she said. "It's extremely difficult to admit to
myself that maybe I cannot, because there are too many fields in my life that
I'm covering: Being a mother, being a wife, being a professional player,
coordinating chess events and writing books.
"(But) I started to play chess
when I was five and ever since, I liked the game. And after all, I can still do
things which give me a lot of pleasure."
"When I got married, many of my
colleagues thought my life was going to go in a different direction and I
probably wouldn't care about my game anymore. Actually, it was the contrary.
Somehow I became more balanced and my life became more complete."
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