All posts tagged: Judit Polgar

Chess legend Judit Polgar declines offer to become Hungary President

Chess legend Judit Polgar declines offer to become Hungary President

Published by Webster

3 min readUpdated: Jul 21, 2026 12:57 PM IST Chess legend Judit Polgar has declined an offer to become the next Hungarian President, a day after the country’s Prime Minister, Peter Magyar, said that he would meet her to ask if she was willing to accept the position. Magyar said that he wanted Polgar to stay in the role until the adoption of the new Hungarian Constitution. After a meeting on Monday, Polgar took to social media to announce that she had declined Magyar’s offer, a nomination that was said to have been put forth by “respected figures in Hungarian public life”. “I do not feel I have the strength to take on the historic responsibility of uniting a divided nation, and so I am unable to accept the invitation,” Polgar wrote on social media. ALSO READ | Judit Polgar to The Indian Express: ‘I believe the next Judit Polgar should come from India’ “I will do everything in my power to support a new, independent, and respected President of the Republic in achieving these goals,” …

Chess hero Judit Polgar could shatter another glass ceiling as Hungary president | Chess News

Chess hero Judit Polgar could shatter another glass ceiling as Hungary president | Chess News

Published by Webster

4 min readJul 20, 2026 07:00 AM IST Chess legend Judit Polgar is in line to become the next Hungarian president. The country’s prime minister Peter Magyar said that he would meet her on Monday to ask her if she was willing to accept the position after she was nominated for the presidency by “respected figures in Hungarian public life”. Magyar said that he wanted Polgar to stay in the role until the adoption of the new Hungarian Constitution. Polgar is the undisputed greatest female player in chess history. Over a storied career, she regularly challenged preconceived notions of what female chess players could do by playing in open tournaments with men. She shattered chess’ glass ceiling back in the 1990s and the early 2000s by breaking into the top 10 ranks. She broke not only Bobby Fischer’s record as the youngest grandmaster in chess history, but also beat 11 world champions, including Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand, over the board.   Besides her exploits in individual chess, Polgar is also a five-time Chess Olympiad champion, …

‘Need to improve quite a bit’

‘Need to improve quite a bit’

Published by Webster

3 min readMay 16, 2026 11:40 PM IST The strongest woman ever to play chess, Judit Polgar, has given her verdict on who she feels will win the upcoming Women’s World Chess Championship. The legendary Hungarian has placed her bets on the defending and five-time World Champion, China’s Ju Wenjun, to successfully defend her crown for a record sixth time against India’s R Vaishali. Polgar said Ju will be a very big challenge for Vaishali, and the Indian would need to significantly improve her game in order to be ready for the high-stakes event. “Well, it’s a very tough match and very interesting. Ju Wenjun already has experience playing in World Championship matches. She’s very tough, very much ready for long games, and the big experience is something that matters a lot,” she told FIDE, the international chess federation. “For Vaishali, it will be a very big challenge, and I think she will have to improve quite a bit to be ready for the World Championship match. Well, let’s see if experience will win or …

How Javokhir Sindarov brushed off a chess prep leak — and why it’s not the first time

How Javokhir Sindarov brushed off a chess prep leak — and why it’s not the first time

Published by Parlour News

4 min readApr 7, 2026 11:11 PM IST What is a big-ticket chess event without whispers of a player’s meticulously-concocted preparation being out in the open? On a day the rampaging Javokhir Sindarov ended his round 8 Candidates match against the bottom-placed Andrey Esipenko with a 24-move draw in Cyprus, he was asked repeatedly about his opening prep leaking. The rumours came from the fact that an account belonging to Sindarov on the chess platform Lichess had opening ideas left unguarded in its study feature. Soon after the discovery spread on social media — Reddit in particular — the studies were made private. In a sport where grandmasters go through extraordinary lengths to hide their preparation — protecting even the identity of their seconds — a player’s opening lines being visible to the world, including their opponents, is the chess equivalent of a wardrobe malfunction. Months of work rendered unusable overnight. The 20-year-old Sindarov, however, was nonchalant. “It was not a big deal because I don’t remember the last time I opened those studies,” he …

Move over, Beth Harmon: New documentary on Judit Polgar details the gambits that shaped a queen | Chess News

Move over, Beth Harmon: New documentary on Judit Polgar details the gambits that shaped a queen | Chess News

Published by Webster

Just over six years after the Queen’s Gambit brought in a fresh wave of audience to chess, leading to never-before-seen popularity for the sport, a new documentary, Queen of Chess, released last week. Told with the help of real-life footage, and peppered with post-punk soundtracks, Queen of Chess chronicles the tale of Judit Polgar, the undisputed greatest female chess player in history. For a generation just getting into the sport, it’s a perfect occasion to discover one of the most influential trailblazers in the sport, a woman who took a sledgehammer to the glass ceiling back in the 1990s and the early 2000s. So risky was what she stood for in her career — playing mostly in open tournaments where she would usually be the only woman in a field of men — that it’s still a path seldom travelled. Even now, we only occasionally see someone like Divya Deshmukh play in more than one open tournament a year rather than in women-only events. Judit was born and raised in Communist Hungary, which had the …

‘Removing women-only events would kill Women’s Chess’: FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky

‘Removing women-only events would kill Women’s Chess’: FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky

Published by Webster

The debate over the relevance of women-only titles and tournaments in chess has been ongoing for several months, with various grandmasters voicing their opinions. Most recently, FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky defended the continuation of such events, claiming that removing them would deprive women players of critical development opportunities. “If we were to remove all the possibilities to compete in women-only events, if we were to remove the possibility to support travel and so on, I think we would deprive many of these talents of opportunity under a false pretence that we will try to prove that women can grow in open tournaments better than they can by competing in women-only events,” Sutovsky said in an interview on FIDE’s official YouTube channel. According to Sutovsky, while top women players previously reached a rating of 2500 at ages 15-17, today only a few are rated above 2400 by that age. Currently, no female player apart from Hou Yifan has crossed the 2600 mark in recent years. “It is also important to rely on real data and not …

Boris Spassky: The man who dared George Bush to put him and Bobby Fischer in same cell, ‘and give us a chess set’ | Chess News

Boris Spassky: The man who dared George Bush to put him and Bobby Fischer in same cell, ‘and give us a chess set’ | Chess News

Published by Webster

Boris Spassky, the 10th world champion in the history of chess, breathed his last in Moscow on Thursday at the age of 88. For the world at large, Spassky’s is the name that lives on in hyphenated eternity with Bobby Fischer’s: the duo wrestled for the world champion’s crown in 1972 in frigid Reykjavik in a match billed the Match Of The Century. Spassky was a man who stood out for his grace. In September 1972, barely three days after he had lost the world champion’s crown to the brash, loud-mouthed Fischer in the Match of the Century, Spassky was asked in an interview if his opponent’s shenanigans in the match had affected him. On the way to beating Spassky, Fischer had kept the world including his opponent on edge about the match happening at all, skipped the opening ceremony, forced game 1 of the world championship to be deferred, forfeited game 2, forced game 3 to be played in a small room behind the actual playing arena, and complained incessantly about things like the …

Gukesh stuns and impresses chess legends by rejecting draw vs Ding Liren

Gukesh stuns and impresses chess legends by rejecting draw vs Ding Liren

Published by Webster

The 18-year-old challenger for the world champion’s crown, Gukesh, earned the respect of chess legends like Magnus Carlsen, and the Polgar sisters with his decision to reject a draw offer and to play on in game 8 of the world chess championship against Ding Liren. On move 41, Gukesh could have played 41…Qg2 and brought the game to an end as a draw due to a threefold repetition. At that stage Gukesh was in a worse match situation than his opponent from China. Follow our liveblog of Game 10 of the World Chess Championship here: World Chess Championship Game 10 But instead of playing 41…Qg2, the Indian chose to keep the game continuing with 41…Qa2+ to reject a draw offer. This is now the second time in eight games that he has pulled out of playing for a certain draw and tried to push for a win. His attitude earned him praise from veritable chess legends. “I used to say that chess players should be somewhere between optimistic and delusional. This clearly was on the …

Why Gukesh’s start in Game 5 left chess legend Judit Polgar unimpressed

Why Gukesh’s start in Game 5 left chess legend Judit Polgar unimpressed

Published by Webster

The fifth game of the World Chess Championship between Gukesh and Ding Liren saw the 18-year-old from India play with white pieces. The game ended in a 40-move draw. Game 5 saw the French Defence being employed on the board by Ding Liren as Gukesh started with 1.e4. But chess legend Judit Polgar was less than impressed by the Indian teenager’s third move: 3.exd5. “I’m just speechless to tell you the truth. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this. I was like ‘what is this?’ This is game 5, the way Gukesh came in to the playing hall it was clear to me that now it is going to be the time. Now it’s going to be sharp. And he goes e takes d5! It is so much not Gukesh,” said Judit Polgar on the Chess24 stream where she was doing live analysis. Ding Liren sneaks a glance at Gukesh in game 4 of the World Chess Championship in Singapore. (PHOTO: FIDE/Eng Chin An) READ MORE: In contrast to inscrutable Gukesh, Ding …

Chess legend Judit Polgar says women’s titles should be abolished: ‘It would not hurt at all, neither women nor men’ | Chess News

Published by Webster

Chess legend Judit Polgar has suggested that women’s titles should be done away with in order to ensure that the “environment and the life of girls and women in chess could change”. One of the strongest female chess players of all time, Judit Polgar is the youngest of the three Polgar sisters (Susan and Sofia being the other two). Judit Polgar was talking about her views on what’s holding back women in chess in a podcast for the New in Chess magazine, hosted by Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam. In 1991, Judit Polgar became a grandmaster at the young age of 15 years and four months, thus breaking the record of the legendary Bobby Fischer, which the American had held since 1958. Judit Polgar then went on to become the first and only woman to ever break into the world’s top 10. There are four specific titles that a female chess player can achieve: Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE Master (WFM), Woman Candidate Master (WCM). This is besides the four other titles …