Best female chess player
“The women’s gambit”: deja vu for Judit Polgar
The Hungarian Judit Polgar, considered the best chess player of all time, was once a child prodigy. Just like Beth Harmon, from the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit". And what Beth experiences against her male opponents is deja vu for her. Most men's chess players reacted extremely obliquely when they lost to her.
Polgar was also confronted with sexist prejudices in the male-dominated sport: "I almost always played against male opponents. I was often the only woman in the tournament," she told the French news agency AFP.
Set a record - weird reactions
Polgar (44) already held the title of "youngest chess grandmaster of all time" at the age of 15, beating legends such as Bobby Fischer. She went on to beat other greats of the chess world. "The first grandmaster I beat banged his head against the wall in the elevator. Another didn't want to shake my hand and stormed out of the hall in a huff".
Parallels to the movie
Similar to the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit", in which Beth takes on the Russian champion Vasily Borgov, Polgar established himself as a great opponent of Garry Kasparov, who is considered by many to be the best player in chess history. However, this did not prevent him from making disparaging remarks about women's chess.
In 1988, at the Chess Olympiad, Judit was just 12 years old. She played in a team with her older sisters Zsuzsanna and Zsofia and won gold for Hungary. Kasparov was world champion at the time and was very impressed by the child prodigy's play. But at the same time he called her a "circus doll" and claimed that women should be content with having children. And he ruled out the possibility of a woman ever beating him.
Kasparov taught a lesson
"Women can't handle that kind of pressure, I'm almost certain it's impossible for them," he is said to have told Hungarian journalists, according to Polgar. But he was wrong. 14 years later, Kasparov (pictured below) lost to Polgar in Moscow, which was a "historic moment" in international chess, and not just for the Hungarian.
"I sat in front of the screen with a feeling of deja vu when I saw Beth's tension before her decisive game against Borgov. She wasn't sure if she could handle the whole thing, that's what I felt against Kasparov," said the chess legend.
Lots of sexism
Since then, she has reconciled with Kasparov. Her opponent was hired by Netflix as a "technical advisor" for the film. Polgar assured us that she enjoyed the series and could definitely see parallels to the real world. However, she denied that alcohol and drugs could have a positive effect on a player's performance: "That would make top performance impossiblein modern chess," she said. And added: "But sexism is even more present than portrayed in the movie. All female chess players have to struggle with this."
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