Angelica Pastorelli is a Dutch national who studied Art & Design. Some
years ago she travelled to Italy, bought a book on the significance and meaning
of numbers. A week after her return she played, for the first time, in a local
Lottery, using the numbers from the booklet, and won the jackpot (and "an
obscene amount of money"). She decided to dedicate her life to writing,
cooking and creating healthy recipes, especially geared towards weight loss.
She also created Angie's Diary, an online
writing magazine and resource for published authors and aspiring writers to
get read, published and sell more books.
Why do we tell you all this? Because we found a number of interesting articles
on chess that have been submitted to Angie's Diary. We will bring you a few
of the more interesting articles, starting with one that was published yesterday
by Andrew J. Sacks, an English professor and freelance writer,
with whose kind permission we reproduce the
original article on Angie's Diary
Andy Sacks was born 1948 in New York City. His family relocated to Southern
California in 1960, where he attended grade school, high school, and college
(UCLA, Masters in English Literature) in greater L.A. area. Andy learned chess
at 13 years old and started playing in rated tournaments at 14. He won the Los
Angeles High School Championship and inaugural Student Chess Club of Los Angeles
Club Championship in his teens, and later attained a USCF Master rating and
a USCF Life Master title. He drew with Bobby Fischer in simultaneous exhibition
in Hollywood during Fischer’s nationwide simul tour of 1964. He has taught
at public and private colleges and universities all of his adult life, primarily
English Composition and Literature. Andrew Sacks has done freelance writing
of many chess articles, published mainly at Chess
Dryad and www.angiesdiary.com. Other interests include international cinema
and fine art.
Judith Polgar: Queen among the Kings
When Vera Menchik dominated women’s chess in the late 1920s and through
the ‘30s, she was thought to be almost a type of chess anomaly that could
never be repeated. So strong a player she was that she was invited to and participated
in a number of Grandmaster men’s tournaments, scoring respectably. Her
dominance of the Women’s World Championship tournaments and matches of
the era was so complete that then-current men’s World Chess Champion Alexander
Alekhine opined that it was “unfair” for the Czech-British player
to compete in these events.
In the decades following her untimely death caused by the German bombing of
England during World War II, it certainly seemed that no woman would again attain
such heights in the chess world. But that was before the “The Polgar Experiment.”
The Polgar Experiment? The phrase seems somehow sinister and may bring to mind
either the Manhattan Project or a number of pedestrian science fiction film
entries of the 1950s. In actuality, though, it was a program for the chess education
and development of children, which was conceived by, and implemented on, his
own three daughters by Hungarian Laszlo Polgar, a strong chess player, chess
book collector of thousands of volumes, and previously successful and respected
chess teacher. The “experiment” involved intensive daily chess training
to accompany traditional schoolwork, and the project turned out to be more successful
than probably even papa Polgar dared to imagine.
All three girls, Zsuzsa, the eldest, next Zsofia, and then Judit, the youngest,
all quickly reached Master caliber playing level, and then international competition
level, all while still in their teens. Zsuzsa (usually Anglicized Susan, its
English equivalent) became the first woman to gain a Men’s International
Grandmaster title in the traditional manner. She reigned as Woman’s World
Champion for years. The middle sister, Anglicized Sofia, attained a Men’s
International Master title in addition to a Woman’s Grandmaster title
(the latter honor somewhat less challenging to attain than its male title counterpart).
But it was the youngest, Judith (the English equivalent of her birth Judit),
who ascended the pinnacle and became by far the strongest woman player of all
time. Born in July of 1976, at 15 years, 4 months of age she became the youngest
person ever to achieve a Men’s International Grandmaster title, surpassing
the old record of American prodigy and later World Champion Bobby Fischer. She
decided early to bypass women’s-only tournaments and matches, so she never
secured the title of Woman’s World Champion, although her rating has for
years now been much higher than any woman (including Ms. Menchik) who won that
title. Judith plays only with the big boys, and they have learned to respect
and to fear her aggressive and tactically sharp play.
Judith’s tournament victories and impressive individual conquests over
the past 20 years are far too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say that
in 2005 she was ranked number eight in the world (among all players) and included
in her tournament conquests in individual victories have been then-reigning
World Champion Garry Kasparov, later World Champion Visnathan Anand, and former
World Champion Anatoly Karpov. The only female player to have defeated a Men’s
World Chess Champion in a rated game, she has beaten a total of nine! For years
now, she has played only in elite “Super Grandmaster” tournaments
and a few international team matches, all by virtue of her invitation because
of her extremely high rating and her previous stellar results.
In the past several years, she has married and started a family, causing her
to experience two separate chess layoffs, which in turn resulted in some performance
and subsequent rating decline when she returned to the board, understandably
a bit rusty – yet her current ranking is high and steadily approaching
its former height. She is currently active in tournaments and ranked 31st in
the world at the time this writing, having gained rating points in three successive
recent tournaments as she recaptures her peak form of the early 2000s. In the
Chess World Cup, held in September of 2011, she reached the Round of eight in
this 128-player knock-out match tournament, along the way disposing of the event’s
number one seed, Russian Grandmaster Sergey Karjakin, the world’s fifth
highest rated player at the time. She is back with a vengeance.
In America we live with cults of celebrity, but chess Grandmasters are not
among the sought and followed. They are not, for example, recognized at airports
and hounded for autographs. Yet in some parts of the world it is different.
Judith is a national heroine in Hungary and is widely known, recognized, and
admired in most European nations as well as in Russia and other locales.
Perhaps it would ultimately make more sense to feature stories and updates
on Judith Polgar in the weekly and monthly periodicals we find assailing us
everywhere from newsstands to supermarkets, rather than tales of the latest
flavor-of-the-month minor movie or television celebrity we are crazy for in
February but have forgotten by August–for here is a young woman who has
forged a distinctive and indelible impression on the most intellectual and challenging
of all the world’s games.
Copyright
Sacks/ChessBase
