Judit Polgar reigns without a crown

``I think that chess is the type of game which belongs entirely to men. In a contest like chess one is trying to assert oneself, to prove the supremacy of one's own ego. Women have a different psychology.'' - Garry Kasparov

``I could cede the odds of a knight to any woman player and still beat her easily.'' - Bobby Fischer

JUDIT POLGAR was not born when Fischer said that. She was only nine when Kasparov more or less agreed with him thus.

At 15 Judit became the youngest Grandmaster in the history of chess. Who was holding that record for the past 33 years? Fischer, considered by many as the greatest chess player ever. That was something not even Kasparov, the strongest player of all time, could do. She hasn't beaten the great Russian yet, but she did come close on a couple of occasions. She is one player who will be missed in the Delhi championship.

What makes this good-looking Hungarian girl special is not just the fact that she is the greatest female chess player ever by a long distance, but that she has proved herself in the extremely competitive men's game at the highest level. Unfortunately Judit is not discussed when we talk about the world's greatest sportswomen, because she happens to play in a less glamorous sport.

She is the only woman in the history of any sport to enjoy success against top men players. How many women have broken into a men's top ten in their sport? For all her versatile talent, not even Babe Didrikson Zaharias was able to do that. If there has ever been a greater sportswoman than Judit, we haven't seen her yet.

Strange it may sound, but she has never been a women's World champion, because she stopped playing in all-female tournaments long ago. Her ambition is to become the men's World champion. Though she is only 24 now and there is time yet for her game to mature, she may find it difficult to realize that dream. She has already indicated that she may have to take a hard look at the number of tournaments she would play after her marriage (she travels with her boyfriend Dr. Gusztav Font). ``It's okay for women chess players to get married. But problems arise when they have children, because they will have lot of responsibilities. It depends on whether you want to educate your own child,'' she said.

Judit and her two elder sisters were educated by their parents, Llaszlo and Klara, who were both educationists. The Polgar couple wanted to test their theory that a genius is made, and not born, on their own children. They did not send their children to schools, and when Zsuzsa, the eldest girl showed a preference for chess to mathematics and music, they knew in what field they were going to create geniuses. The experiment aroused controversy at the time and once the communist government in Hungary sent armed men to the family's residence in Budapest.

The Polgar experiment was a phenomenal success, for Zsuzsa became the women's World champion in 1996, and Sofia, her younger sister is a men's International Master. The three sisters made a sensation in 1988 when they ended the unbeaten reign of the Soviet women in chess Olympiads in Greece. At that time, Zsuzsa was 19, Sofia 14 and Judit 12.

But is Judit a player totally made?

That cannot be. If that was the case, then how come her sisters could not emulate her? Their father says Judit worked the hardest. But if hard work alone could take one to the top, Steve Waugh would have become the greatest batsman in the world; he is not the best batsman even in his own family.

Judit completed her Grandmaster title when she won one of the strongest Hungarian championships in 1991. Two years ago she had become the only girl to win a boys' World championship, clinching the under-14 title in 1989. That year she took the No. 1 spot in FIDE's ranking for women.

- PKAK.

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