Judit
Polgar is one of the most celebrated chess players in the world, and as a woman
competing in a male-dominated game, her achievements are unparalleled. It is
not often that an active world-class player goes to the trouble of writing a
highly personal account of their life and chess career, but now, with the help
of the British publisher Quality Chess,
the strongest female player of all time has made just such a gift to the chess
world.
“I started flirting with the idea of publishing a collection of my best games a long time ago. For years, I was aware that the moment when I could fulfil my dream was far away. As a professional player, I spent most of my time and energy playing in tournaments and training, so each time the idea of my book popped up, I had to say to myself “Later, later...””
So writes Judit Polgar in the preface of her new book, How I Beat Fischer’s Record. The first in a three-part series, it documents her early life and chess development, spanning a period from the early 1980s up to 1991. The latter was the year in which she made history by achieving the grandmaster title approximately one month younger than Bobby Fischer.
Breaking Fischer’s record was a monumental achievement, but when you read the book it becomes clear that it was far from being Judit’s primary goal. Rather, it can be viewed as more of a by-product of her love and boundless enthusiasm for chess. Later in the preface she writes:
“Looking at my old games brought back unique memories, but I was also surprised by my strength as a player at that age. I gained the distinct feeling that to me playing chess used to be as natural as breathing.”
Throughout the book Judit has provided an abundance of personal insights and anecdotes, from the “lucky sweater” that helped her to victory in New York, to summer snowball fights in Iceland! Above all else though, she set out to give the book real instructional value so as to benefit players of varying abilities, as well as chess trainers. The fifteen chapters have been structured according to themes (including “Tricks”, “Zwischenzug”, “Pawn Play” and “Attacking without Queens”) rather than robotically structuring the material in chronological order.
Novi Sad 1990: standing are mother Klara, Pal Benko, Susan Polgar, Miklos
Morvay,
Laszlo Hazai. Front row: Mihail Marin, Judit and Sofis Polgar
In Chapter 13 (entitled “Decisive Games”), Judit recalls her experience before the final round of the Hungarian Super-Championship:
The 1991 Championship in Budapest was a round-robin tournament which gathered together every single one of Hungary’s strongest players and was rightly named the Hungarian Super-Championship. As a curiosity, I remember that one of the demo board boys was Zoltan Almasi, now Hungary’s second strongest player and a Super-GM.
I was getting used to playing my most important tournaments abroad and so it felt unusual to take part in such a strong event in my hometown. On a positive note, I would mention the moral support of local fans and friends as well as the comfort of preparing for the games at home.
Even the venue was very familiar to me: we played in a small theatre called Orfum Casino inside the four-star Beke Radisson Hotel. My sisters and I used to swim in the Beke Hotel pool quite frequently and we had some friends working in the hotel. From time to time during the championship, the porter or other employees would sneak into the playing hall to check out the situation on the demo boards.
On the other hand, the pressure was much greater than abroad, and sometimes I felt that being under the local media’s spotlight took away a lot of energy. Besides, no one is a prophet in their homeland and I felt that there were some people who were definitely not rooting for me.
In high level tournaments at this time (the Interzonals, for instance) the organizers used to apply a rule that players from the same country should meet in the early rounds, in order to avoid any doubts about the justness of the results. The organizers of the Hungarian Super-Championship decided to extend this rule to the two sisters in the tournament, Susan and I, so we were scheduled to meet in the very first round.
I drew number one and Susan was awarded number ten automatically. We made a short, fightless draw, as usual. By contrast, my second round draw with Portisch came after six hours of struggle.
As the tournament progressed, I won two games with White against the Rauzer Sicilian, against Groszpeter in round 4 and Sax in round 6. Before the last round, I was sharing the lead with Adorjan (on 5 out of 8) half a point ahead of Sax, Joszsef Horvath and Susan. A win in the last round against Tolnai was essential to secure the title, but a draw would be enough for my third and final grandmaster norm. I had turned 15 in July, meaning that I could break Fischer’s long-lasting record and become the youngest ever grandmaster! The obvious question was whether to aim for a draw or go for the norm and the championship.
Before the last round we had our third day off (a common feature in closed events at that time), which gave me some time to deal with this psychologically complicated situation. I was the rating favourite (2550 compared to Tibor’s 2480), but Tibor was an unpredictable player who could produce fantastic tactical games once in a while.
I remember that the evening before the game we discussed the situation with a very good family friend whom we had invited for dinner. The general opinion was that Tibor would not really mind a bloodless draw, since his results so far had been modest, which had probably caused him to somewhat lose interest in the tournament. A peaceful attitude seemed to be justified by the fact that earlier that year in Munich I had missed the grandmaster norm by losing my last round game with white against Beliavsky. (You can find three other games from Munich in this book: against Wahls on page 30, Hübner on page 90, and Anand on page 287).
However, I did not want to give up my chances of winning the championship so easily. However, I promised that if things were not going my way, I would consider offering a draw.
The post mortem analysis of a very fateful game
This book is a rare gem from the undisputed Queen of Chess. Available in hardcover from all major chess shops, it has been priced modestly at the publisher’s standard paperback price. An extract is available in PDF here. Judit’s second volume, entitled From GM to Top Ten, is scheduled for publication in 2013. The third and final volume, A Game of Queens, will follow in 2014.
Pictures of Judit taken from the ChessBase Players Encyclopedia. They
are dated
1988, 1989, 1993, 1996 (it was a phase), 1996 (the famous hat picture) and
2002.
