Today is an incredible, historic, wonderful day for women in chess!
Judit Polgar beats Veselin Topalov. Topalov is the highest ranked chess player in the world. He was the FIFE World Chess Champion for 2005. This is the first time that a woman has ever beaten the highest ranked player. Topalov’s chess rating has been at 2890, and is currently 2813. Polger’s chess rating is currently 2710.
The Essent Chess Tournament 2006 is currently going on (Oct 20-28). (The site is mainly not in English, but the chess moves, photos, and standings are quite readable. Judit is in the Crown Group.) In this tournament (today’s news), Judit Polgar, 30, beat Veselin Topalov, 31. There are six rounds in the tournament, and so far, Polgar is winning the first two rounds!
To watch the winning game, click here. Then hit the play button “>” to watch each move. Judit plays white. It is incredible to me that in her moves 16-17 and 26-27 are both two-part moves to accomplish something – that she is calm enough to move her pieces in time to where she wants them to be. Try to guess move 26 before she makes it. The commentators say this was her winning move. Pause at move 25 and see what you think.
Links:
* She is a mother of two, and returned to chess in January ’06 after a fifteen-month maternity leave.
* Judit Polgar wikipedia entry.
* The chess games of Judit Polgar.
* Some photos of Judit.
* I wrote about the Polgar family before here (specifically her father and how he trained his three daughters, the youngest of which, Judit, is the most successful in chess).
* Brief bio from chessgames.com, “Judit Polgar was born in Hungary in 1976. Her childhood consisted of an extensive chess education from her father and her sisters, and she began to compete internationally as early as 1984. In 1991 she became an International Grandmaster by winning the “men’s” Hungarian championship. At fifteen years and five months of age, she was the youngest grandmaster in history, breaking a record that Robert James Fischer had held for over 30 years. She has been the highest-rated woman ever since FIDE’s January 1990 list, and in 2003 she entered the overall top ten.”
* Judit’s sister Susan Polgar runs a Chess Center in NY and has an active and very interesting blog.
Meeeph! Chess! The one thing I run away from :P
Didn’t know you were a chess fan! I played in high school with friends (no chess teams in rural West Tennessee in the 69-72!). I can remember getting to where I would look at the salt shakers, forks, etc. on the table and see combinations! Got to where my best friend and I finally quit because games were just too long and tiring. We didn’t know about time clocks!
Played again for a while in law school against my downstairs neighbor in our married students apartmenet building. Bruce was brilliant; first liberal arts graduate student to win UVA’s award for the outstanding graduate student and his dissertation on the extra-judicial political activities of Supreme Court Justices was published as a book and got great reviews. Never beat him in a sit-down game; never lost when we passed moves back and forth by notes (usually stuck under the door).
My older son played in elementary school because his 4th-grade teacher’s husband taught the team. He was great and it developed one of my rules about kids: I’ll put ’em in almost anything if 1) the adult working with it is passionate and knowledgeable about it, and 2) he or she really enjoys sharing that passion and knowledge with kids. Doesn’t matter what it is, tiddly-winks or tae-kwon-do, it’ll be a great experience for the kid. They may not stick with the activity after they’re out of that relationship, but the learning and fun will last for years.
Hey Dave! I didn’t know you played chess either! Sweet! Oh, yes, clocks are the way to go. I play better without a clock, but my opponents enjoy playing against me much more with a clock!
Alvin, try it, you’ll like it! :)