Judit Polgar: Index-Card Training, Fischer's Record and Beating Kasparov

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Judit Polgar grew up in 1970s Budapest inside an experiment. Her father, Laszlo Polgar, believed any healthy child could be made into a prodigy, and with his wife Klara he homeschooled their three daughters, Susan, Sofia and Judit, in chess and Esperanto while authorities threatened to intervene. The family catalogued tens of thousands of master games on physical index cards. Laszlo refused to let the girls play in women-only events, sending them into open competition against men and angering the Hungarian Chess Federation. Judit won the unrated section of the New York Open at nine, entered the world top 100 at 12, and in 1991 became a grandmaster at 15 years and four months, breaking Bobby Fischer's age record that had stood for 33 years.

At 17, at the 1994 Linares tournament, she watched Garry Kasparov release a knight and then move it to a safer square; a Spanish television crew caught it on film, and Kasparov refused to speak to her for three years. In 1996 she entered the overall top 10, and in the 2002 Russia versus the Rest of the World rapid match she steered Kasparov into his own Berlin Defense and forced him to resign two pawns down. She stepped back in the mid-2000s to have two children, returned to win bronze at the 2011 European Individual Championship, and retired in 2014 without ever playing for the Women's World Championship.

• As a small child she peeked through a cracked door at her sisters' sessions and was once woken to solve an endgame that had stumped Susan and her coach.
• At five she beat a family friend at blindfold chess and asked him whether he cooked without looking at the stove.
• She was the highest rated woman in the world for 26 consecutive years.
• Susan Polgar, the third woman to earn the grandmaster title, credited Judit's success to work ethic rather than innate gift.
• She has beaten Spassky, Karpov, Anand and Magnus Carlsen, and later coached the Hungarian men's national team.