Judit Polgár - Career

Career

Polgár has rarely played in women's-specific tournaments or divisions and has never competed for the Women's World Championship. "I always say that women should have the self-confidence that they are as good as male players, but only if they are willing to work and take it seriously as much as male players," she said. While László Polgár has been credited with being an excellent chess coach, the Polgárs had also employed professional chessplayers to train their daughters, including Hungarian champion IM Tibor Florian, Hungarian GM Pal Benko and Russian GM Alexander Chernin. Susan Polgár, the eldest of the sisters, 5½ years older than Sophia and 7 years older than Judit, was the first of the sisters to achieve prominence in chess by winning tournaments and by 1986 she was the world's top-rated female chess player. Initially, being the youngest, Judit was separated from her sisters while they were in training. However, this only served to increase Judit's curiosity. After learning the rules, they discovered Judit was able to find solutions to the problems they were studying and she began to be invited into the group. One evening Susan was studying an endgame with their trainer, a strong International Master. Unable to find the solution they woke Judit, who was asleep in bed and carried her into the training room. Still half asleep, Judit showed them how to solve the problem, after which they put her back to bed. László Polgár's experiment would produce a family of one international master and two grandmasters and would strengthen the argument for nurture over nature, but also prove women could be grandmasters of chess.