BUDAPEST, September 13, 2019 – What would you expect a chess legend to be like ? Someone may expect this type of figure to be acting as if she is the center of the universe - as many people are doing, despite not having any special talent in life. You may imagine them to be very conceited. At the end of the day if you’re the best in a mental game you would assume you’re smarter than the majority of people.
Well, Judit Polgár is actually smarter than the majority of the people you could ever meet. But her easy going attitude makes her seem even more charismatic and fascinating to listen to. She achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 month, at the time the youngest to have done so. She earned her first 1000 USD money prize at the age of 9. She was the number one in Women's World Chess from 1988 to 2015, the year when she decided to retire from competition.
“I have so many other things to do and I can do much better for chess being away from the chess board” – she said when asked why she stopped. During the European Fair Play Movement 25th anniversary celebration in Budapest AIPS had the opportunity to meet with Judit Polgár (23 July 1976 – Chess Grandmaster), generally considered ‘the strongest female chess player of all time”.
Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and international Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis.
And we can’t say he was wrong. In September 2002, in the Russia versus the Rest of the World Match, Judith Polgar defeated Garry Kasparov in a game. It was historic as it was the first time in chess history that a female player had beaten the world's No. 1 player in competition.
Mrs Polgar is there anything you regret from your childhood?
No. It was a special childhood but a happy one. My parents were talented pedagogists who raised us during the socialism period and the Cold War, giving us the chance to make our lives with chess, travelling all around the world and actually opening up our minds.
And why did they choose chess as your ‘special subject’?
It was cheap! And then of course 1972 was the year of the ‘Game of the Century’ between Boris Spassky of Russia and Bobby Fischer of US in Reykjavik. It was right in the middle of the Cold War and for everybody it meant a lot, in particular to my father who used to like chess
How were the Hungarian media speaking about the Polgar sisters at the beginning of your career?
Well of course there was a bit of resistance from the Hungarian authorities and media themselves at the beginning as home-schooling was not a "socialist" approach. My parents also received criticism at the time from some western commentators for depriving us of a normal childhood. There’s a video documentary released a few years ago about our family which is touching a lot of interesting topics such as home schooling, gender issues, education and society. There was a lot of archive material about our youth because we were a big topic at that time.
How’s your life now?
So, one of my sister is in Israel, the other lives in the US and I stayed in Hungary. I married a vet who is passionate about chess who’s now also involved in the Hungarian Chess Federation (Judith has been Honorary FIDE Vice-President since 2018). We have two kids of 15 and 13 who told us in kindergarten that chess was boring: my daughter, aged 13, is now a contemporary dancer, while my son likes squash (she proudly shows their pictures on her mobile phone).
How are your parents with their grandchildren?
Well, dad used to ask me why we didn’t raise our kids as they did. And the reason is that my mom fully supported my dad’s idea to raise us at home. It was a family business: I earned my first 1000 usd at the age of 9, under socialism it was a huge amount of money and my elder sister was earning money too. This allowed us as a family to fit in this project.
What was your main attitude as a chess player?
I was a fighter. I felt very much I had the right attitude for competing. You can imagine how hard it was to always be the only woman in the competitions. Chess is a mental discipline, there shouldn’t be any difference between the genders, no? Well, unfortunately the situation I lived is not very much improved in 2019.
What does chess represent for you?
I speak the language of chess. Actually chess is my mother tongue. To me it’s a form of art, that’s basically the reason why I started working to build what is now the ‘Global Chess Festival’ here in Budapest at the Hungarian National Gallery, now in its 5th edition and set up for next October 12, 2019. It has to do with positive thinking, with economy, with psychology and many other human activities and attitudes.
Do chess players need a mental coach?
They do! Although you were expecting this to be quite accepted and normal…well, it’s not. When I was coach of the Hungarian Men’s Team it was clear to me that some people would desperately need a mental coach, but it wasn’t that easy to make them accept it. I then started thinking about how it was 20 or 30 years ago and I remember that in Chess you do have this figure called “second”. It’s a person who would travel with you, with a good knowledge of chess and that you trust. This was a mental coach before present times.
