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Ashta’s chess tales

Three sisters and an experiment

Budapest, the 1970s and 1980s · 3 minute read

A teacher believed that champions are made, not born. He decided to prove it at home.

László Polgár was a teacher in Budapest with an unusual belief. He thought that no child is born a genius: any healthy child, he said, can become outstanding at something if they start early, practise seriously, and enjoy it.

He and his wife Klára, also a teacher, decided to test the idea with their own children. They had three daughters: Susan, Sofia and Judit. The subject they chose was chess — because in chess, results can be measured, and nobody can argue with a score.

The girls were taught at home. Chess was part of every day, treated as play rather than as a chore. Among other things they practised blindfold chess: following and playing games with no board in front of them at all.

The results were hard to argue with. Susan became women’s world champion. Sofia became an international master and once won a tournament in Rome with one of the most remarkable scores ever seen from a fourteen-year-old.

And Judit, the youngest, became a grandmaster in 1991 at the age of fifteen — younger than anyone before her, including the great Bobby Fischer. She went on to be ranked among the ten best players in the world, men or women.

Not everyone agrees with everything László Polgár believed. But his daughters showed that practice, begun early and enjoyed, takes a child much further than most people expect.