Humanly Genius Podcast

Episode 2: The Polgar Sisters Remade Competitive Chess

There was a family with 3 girls that changed the world of chess and its competitive aspect. Chess, as any sport was divided between the two sexes, there was no bridge arching to connect them, females could not compete with males, they had different sets of thresholds, and competition standards, men really believed that women hadn’t had the mental capacity like men did, and interestingly it was ok, nobody complained. A girl and her father broke this divide, followed by her two sisters, so later girls and women would have equal chances in chess. All three girls were the best in chess at their time; they were the first in many categories, but their ultimate legacy will live on beyond world championships and Olympics.

Chess became gender neutral, and now more and more women coaches work with talented girls to increase the number of women in this world of Men.

Hello and Welcome to the Humanly Genius Podcast. My name is Julia Bright and I am your host today. 

I am going to show you how the Polgar sisters grew up, but not how you might have heard before. I will tell you what they said about their childhood, their experiences and how they would evaluate Laszlo Polgar’s unorthodox methodology of raising geniuses. I will touch on their accomplishments, their ups and downs, however I will give the spotlight to the one success that they, as a family accomplished and what will have a long lasting legacy to girls and women and not just in the field of chess.

Some self advertisement first: you can hear more about Laszlo Polgar’s methodology of Raising a genius, the family’s struggles and circumstances that ultimately led to success in the last decade of the last millennium, at The Let Your Genius Emerge Podcast. You can read about them in more detail on the HumanlyGenius.com website.

Laszlo and Klara Polgar’s first child, Zsuzsa was born in 1969. In the first five years she was an only child and as she remembers, she had an average girl’s early childhood, she played with dolls and imitated mom  as she was cooking in the kitchen. 

The one difference was that she started learning other languages very early on. She spoke Hungarian, of course, then Russian. She attended a Russian speaking daycare for a while. It was very important for Laszlo to teach his children Esperanto, but I will only tell his reason in the methodology episode later on.

Other than that, she said she was a hyperactive child, always moving, always looking for something to do.

One day, when she was about 4 as she was playing in the living room, she opened the closet to find something interesting there, and so she did! There was a board and lots of pieces of figures, black and white. She went to her mother and asked her what it was, and what you can do with it. Her mother told her it was a fun game and put the board on the table helping Susan to set all the black and white pieces next to it. Susan wanted to know how to play the game, but Klara said she didn’t really know so Susan had to ask her father. So she did. 

Laszlo sat down with her by the table and started to play with two figures of the same kind, one black and one white. He showed how this piece moved, then he gave Susan a piece and had his piece be chased by Susan’s. The girl had to make sure she only stepped the way it was supposed to move. Then they switched and the chaser became the chased.

After that Laszlo told the name of  another figure, and explained how it was supposed to move, so the race began between black and white again. Laszlo patiently introduced all the pieces, their names and how they moved. They started to chase with two pieces, then with three. Soon enough it was time to put the pieces to their right places on the board, and one by one they involved more and more figures in the game.

Susan said, from the time she started to play, she was glued to the chair and couldn’t stop!

She learned so fast that soon her father took her to a chess club. Just remember, she was still four years old, and did not reach five yet. The club was full of smoke, middle aged and older men sat by the tables focusing on their games. When they looked up, they saw Laszlo with a little girl on his side, so they asked him if he wanted to play with them. He said no, he was there so his daughter could play. They burst out laughing, because the girl was barely taller than the table itself. So Laszlo placed a cushion on one chair and sat Susan down. The men were puzzled, they really thought it was below them to play with a four-year-old, let alone a girl. 

But Laszlo was insistent so finally one of the men sat across Susan and started to play. It didn’t take too long for Susan to win, so another man came and lost, then another. 

As Susan later said, when a man lost against a child, let alone a girl, they always made up an excuse, like they had bad sleep or they had a cold. They could never just admit that the girl was better.

Susan was still not five yet when she won with a perfect 10 10 score in her first ever Hungarian tournament for children under 11 years old. 

Zsofia was born in 1974, she too was playing as an average girl, learned Russian and Esperanto and had to wait until she was 4 to start playing around the chess board. 

Two years later Judit was born, and started following in the steps of her sisters. Sofia was 2 and Susan was 7. 

They played with neighborhood kids and relatives, they played sports, later on, just as a side hustle they did swimming, played tennis and table-tennis, even competitively.

They later said that they never felt like they were missing out, they made many life long friends through chess.

They had a very happy childhood and a very loving home.

When Sofia was 4 years old, she started to play around the chess board and by that time Susan was practicing 5-6 hours a day. It really bothered Judit. How come both her sisters could go and play with dad but she couldn’t! She was told, when she was 4 and learned the chess pieces, she could enter “The Room” where the magic chess boards lived.

She learned her languages but was more eager to find out about chess and have a peek into the room from time to time.

So finally, she was let in, and from that moment on she was unstoppable. According to her sisters, Judit was the most driven, most disciplined and most aggressive player. Sofia loved chess, but she was lazier. Not that she didn’t accomplish all that she could, on the contrary! She was also very successful in competition. Susan was the pioneer though. She was the girl who had to break down the door of the house of men’s chess.

In 1981, when Susan was 12, she won her first major international world youth title in London.

Judit was separated from her older sisters, because they were already training for competitions. This however just increased her curiosity. She learned fast and her problem solving skills got so good that finally she was invited to join the family chess group.

At age 5 she defeated a family friend without looking at the board. After the game the friend jokingly said that “you are good at chess but I am a good cook.” What was Judit’s answer? “Do you cook without looking at the stove??

Another time when Susan was studying an endgame with her trainer, an International Master, They were unable to find a solution, so they woke Judit up and carried her into the training room. While she was half asleep, Judit showed them how to solve the problem, then she went back to sleep.  She started playing in tournaments at 6 years of age. All three sisters were members of a chess club in Budapest where they would gain experience from master level players. 

When Judit was 6, Sofia 8 and Susan 13, they played two games of blindfold chess against two chessmasters and won. They even complained that one of their opponents was playing too slowly and suggested a clock should be used. 

Just a quick note here. I am going by each year talking about the girls parallel to each other, not separately, because it is very useful to see how the methodology worked for each of them.

Another interesting tid bit. A chess master or champion would have memorized around a 100 thousand different chess  opening sequence moves plus any other patterns!

At age 15 in 1984, Susan reached the number 1 ranking among women globally.

1986 was a memorable year for all three sisters. Good news or bad news first?

Bad news. Susan was 17 and qualified for the World Chess Championship Zonal cycle ( at the time it was referred to as the Men’s championship cycle) after tying for 2nd place at the Hungarian National Championship in Budapest. Despite that, she was barred and refused participation by the Hungarian Chess Federation and FIDE due to being a female.

That was really when the fight for equality started!

Sofia finished second at the World Under 14 Championship and was crowned the World under 14 Girl Champion.

In April 1986 when Judit was 9, Sofia 11 and as I said Susan was 17, Judit played her first rated tournament in the US, finishing first in the unrated section of New York Open. Sofia finished second in her section and Susan competed in the Grandmaster section and won. 

Again I have to note, that the Polgar’s passport to travel to the west (yes, there were two passports, the red one going to socialist countries and the blue one going to western countries); so for a while, their passports were revoked for 5 years, and they could not compete in the west.

There was an incident in a hotel in London that shook Susan. She was sexually assaulted, which she said later was not a rare occurrence. Young girls and women were very small in numbers at competitions so males would hit on them and take advantage of them. She doesn’t know his name or what happened to him, but she says it is very risky for young girls to travel with males, even male coaches. This is why she is promoting having more and more female coaches so preteens and teenagers would not have to be at the mercy of male coaches and other male players.

In 1989 at just 14, Sofia won at the Magistrale di Roma tournament in Rome. It was famously called the Sack of Rome. She defeated multiple seasoned grandmasters and international masters. And her score was 8.5 out of 9.

Susan became the first woman in history to earn full, unrestricted men’s Grandmaster title in 1991, at the age of 22.

Later in December 1991, Judit achieved the grandmaster title by winning the Hungarian National Championship, at the time she was the youngest ever at the age of 15 years and 4 months. This way she beat Fisher’s record by a month. This made her both the first woman to be the youngest ever grandmaster and the fourth woman to become a grandmaster.

In the summer of 1993 Bobby Fischer stayed with the Polgar’s for a while in Hungary. Due to an arrest warrant issued by the US for violating the UN blockade of Yugoslavia with his 1992 match against Spassky, he lived in seclusion in Yugoslavia. During his stay with the family he played many games there and helped the sisters analyze their games. 

Susan said that he was friendly on a personal level and recalled mostly pleasant moments with him as their guest, although conflicts arose due to his political views. On the suggestion of a friend of Fischer, a match of blitz chess between Fischer and Judit  was arranged and announced to the press. However, problems ensued between Fischer and László Polgár and Fischer cancelled the match, telling a friend who asked if the match would take place, he said "No, they're Jewish.  More specifically he told his friend, he wouldn’t play with her because she was Jewish. “ No, they are Jewish. The Jews are criminal people, they mutilate their children, they are murderous criminals, stealing lying bastards” All that after taking advantage of their hospitality over that summer!

In 1996 Susan won the Women’s World Chess Championship becoming the first Triple-Crown Winner (holding Classical, Rapid, and Blitz world titles simultaneously in that year.

Sofia earned her International Master and Woman Grandmaster titles.

Susan's title defense against Xie Jun of China was scheduled to take place in 1998, but FIDE had been unable to find a satisfactory sponsor. In early 1999 a match was arranged but under the conditions Susan objected. She requested a postponement  because she was pregnant and due to give birth to her first child. Tom was born in March 1999. Susan felt that she did not have enough time to recuperate as the match was to be held in China, the home country of the challenger. She also wanted a larger prize fund matching at least the minimum stipulated by FIDE regulations at the time. When Susan refused to play under the set conditions, FIDE declared that she had forfeited the title. Susan sued in the court of arbitration for Sport in Lausanne Switzerland for monetary damages and the restoration for her title. In 2001 the case was settled with Susan withdrawing her claims and FIDE agreeing to pay her attorney’s fees and paid her $25,000. Since Xie Jun had already been crowned Women’s World Champion, FIDE couldn’t restore the title. This way Susan decided not to participate in later Women’s World Championship cycles.

And I almost forgot to tell you, FIDE is the International Chess Federation.

This incident highlighted the problems women in chess faced. In an all-men led environment a natural life event was ignored and discredited instead of taking her natural maternal state into consideration, on top of that, in a women’s championship!

Susan became the Women’s World Champion at her second attempt in 1996. 

Sofia ranked as the sixth strongest female player in the world.She played very little between 1996 and 2010. She married the Israeli Grandmaster Yona Kosashvili and moved to Israel. They have two children.

Judit took some time off from chess in 2004 to give birth to her first son. After that she was considered inactive, until Susan activated her status. She went on playing competitively for years, with various successes. She announced her retirement from chess at the highest level in 2014 through the London’s newspaper, The Times.

The three Polgar sisters ruled the chess world both in female and male categories. They finally not just opened the door but demolished the wall dividing females and males and made chess gender neutral. 

Their successes and their tireless work with young girls today helped to increase women in the competing  world from under 1% to 15%.

All of them are involved in organizing national and international chess festivals and events and they all have foundations and Susan coached more achievers in her SPICE, Susan Polgar Institute for Chess, then all the male coaches combined.

Judit and Sofia wrote children’s chess educational books, Sofia created the illustrations. 

Judit lives in Budapest, working with children and trying to bring chess into schools. Susan lives in the US, works and travels from there. Sofia lives in Israel where she is a designer and an artist, a painter.

Susan wrote or co-authored over 10 books, Her last book is a memoir, titled Rebel Queen: The Cold War, Misogyny and the making of a Grandmaster released in 2025. Sofia wrote 2 books, and painted many many

pictures! Judit authored and co-authored multiple chess book series and volumes. 

They are all happily married and have two children each.

They fondly remember their childhood, when they played with neighborhood kids and relatives, and met many friends, even their spouses through chess. They travelled to more than 80 countries.

There may have never been a female US president, but in the third millennium every healthy girl can become a Grandmaster, a World Chess Champion competing against women and men, or inherit Judit Polgar’s place and become the Queen of Chess.

I hope you enjoyed the story of these one of a kind sisters and became more interested in them as well as how genius is nurtured.

Next time in the Let Your Genius Emerge, I will talk about the Polgar parents, their struggles and their circumstances, and by persisting they finally helped their children to get to the top and achieve the impossible at the time. In The Julia Bright Podcast I will talk about Love, but not as you would expect let's say on Valentine’s day.

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Talk to you later. Bye for now.