S3 E2 Judit Polgar v. S. Mamedyarov (2002)

In Season 1, we looked at one of the Polgar sisters - Susan. Today, we are looking at the youngest sister - Judit Polgar. Prepare yourself for a large list of records and milestones.

Judit was born in 1976 in Hungary as the youngest of her two other siblings - Susan and Sofia. They grew up as part of an educational experiment carried out by their dad - Laszlo Polgar - with the hypothesis of - “Geniuses are made, not born”. The philosophy was to have the children focus on a specialized skill - chess - a game historically dominated by men - to show that anyone could prove excellence in any skill if they put the work in for it from a young age. 

In 1986 at the age of 10, Judit defeated her first International Master. In 1987, she defeated her first Grandmaster. 

Throughout their career, the sisters ran into sexism and bureaucracy problems when competing in “Men’s” events. The oldest sibling needed to earn 11 norms before receiving her Grandmaster title when the typical threshold was 3. 

In the published ratings of January 1989, Judit (age 12) was rated 2555 - number 55 on the World list and 35 points ahead of the Women’s World Champion Maia Chiburdandize. This is the start of her reign at the top of Women’s rating leaderboard.  British Chess Magazine commented “Judit Polgar’s results make the performances of Fischer and Kasparov at a similar age pale by comparison”, GM Nigel Short remarked - “one of the three or four greatest chess prodigies in history”. GM David Norwood described Judit as: “this cute little auburn-haired monster who crushed you.” 

In 1991, Judit shattered several records by achieving her Grandmaster title after winning the Hungarian National Championship. At the age of 15 years and 4 months - she beat Fischer’s record by a month (a record that stood for 33 years). She was the 4th woman to become a Grandmaster behind - Gaprindashvili, Chiburdanidze, and her older sister Susan Polgar. Judit beat Susan’s record of being the youngest woman grandmaster by 7 years. 

There are so many accomplishments for her, I can't get all of them from the script into this description. Check out the Wikipedia page for more info! 

During her career, she never competed for the Women’s World Championship, but she is the only woman to have won 11 games against reining world number 1, current, or former World Champions including - Carlsen, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Spassky, Smyslov, Topalov, Anand, Ponomariov, Khalifman, Kasimdzhanov. 

This week, we are traveling back to the Olympiad of 2002, where Team Hungary lost 1 game out of the 56 played. Judit Polgar versus Shakhriyar Mamedyarov.

Now, if we’re ready, let’s begin. 

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Youngest GM, first woman in top 10, first woman to break 2700, first woman to play in the Candidates tournament, and the top ranked female player for 25 years - if anyone has any doubt of Judit’s skills, her Wikipedia article has 15 citations for “strongest female chess player of all time”. 

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Nxe4 6. d4 b5 7. Bb3 d5 8. dxe5 Be6 9. Nbd2 Nc5 10. c3 d4 11. Ng5 Bd5 12. Nxf7 Kxf7 13. Qf3+ Ke6 14. Qg4+ Kf7 15. Qf5+ Ke7 16. e6 Bxe6 17. Re1 Qd6 18. Bxe6 Nxe6 19. Ne4 Qe5 20. Bg5+ Kd7 21. Nc5+ Bxc5 22. Qf7+ Kd6 23. Be7+ Kd5 1-0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1256017 

https://blindfoldchesspodcast.com/