Susan Polgar

Susan Polgar (born April 19, 1969, as Polgár Zsuzsanna and often known as Zsuzsa Polgár) is a Hungarian-American chess grandmaster. Polgár was Women's World Chess Champion from 1996 to 1999. On FIDE's Elo rating system list of July 1984, at the age of 15, she became the top-ranked female chess player in the world. In 1991, she became the third woman to be awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE. She won eleven medals at the Women's Chess Olympiad (4 gold, 4 silver, and 3 bronze).

Also a trainer, writer and promoter, Polgar sponsors various chess tournaments for young players and is the head of the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE) at Webster University. She served as the Chairperson or co-chair of the FIDE Commission for Women's Chess from 2008 until late 2018.

Personal life

Polgar was born and brought up in Budapest, Hungary, to a Hungarian-Jewish family. In 1994, Polgar married computer consultant Jacob Shutzman, and moved to New York. They have two sons, Tom (born 1999) and Leeam (born 2000). They later divorced. In December 2006, she married her longtime business manager and friend, Paul Truong. She now lives in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.

In 2023, she received the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Great Immigrant Award.

Chess career

Polgar and her two younger sisters, Grandmaster Judit and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, who sought to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialized subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the principal subject. In 2007, National Geographic released an hour-long documentary entitled "My Brilliant Brain" with Susan Polgar as the main subject (re-released as a DVD in multiple countries in multiple languages through 2010). The father also taught his three daughters Esperanto. Most of her family eventually emigrated to Israel, but Susan Polgar moved to New York after marrying an American citizen in 1994. Members of the Polgár family, who are Jewish, perished in the Holocaust, and both grandmothers were survivors of Auschwitz.

At age 4, Susan Polgar won her first chess tournament, the Budapest Girls' Under-11 Championship, with a 10–0 score. In 1981, at the age of 12, she won the World Under 16 Girls Championship. Despite restrictions on her freedom to play in international tournaments, in July 1984, at age 15, Polgar had become the top-rated female chess player in the world. In 1986, aged 17, she narrowly missed qualifying for the Zonal, the first step in the "Men's" world championship cycle.

In November 1986, FIDE decided to grant 100 bonus Elo rating points to all active female players except Polgar, which knocked her from the top spot in the January 1987 FIDE ratings list. The rationale was that the FIDE ratings of women were not commensurate with the ratings of the men because the women tended to play in women-only tournaments, Polgar being an exception because up to that point she had played mainly against men.

In January 1991, Polgar became the third woman awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE, after Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze. Polgar was the youngest woman to become grandmaster at the time, but this record was soon broken by Judit in December 1991 (where Judit became both youngest female grandmaster and youngest grandmaster).

In 1992, Polgar won both the Women's World Blitz and the Women's World Rapid Championship.

Prior to 1992, Polgar tended to avoid women-only tournaments. She entered the candidates' cycle for the 1993 Women's World Championship and was eliminated after the candidates' final match with Nana Ioseliani. The match was drawn at the chessboard and the winner advanced to the championship based on the drawing of lots. She became the Women's World Champion at her second attempt in 1996. Her 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 conditions to which Polgar objected. As a result, Polgar requested a postponement because she was pregnant and due to give birth to a child, Tom, in March 1999. She felt that she did not have sufficient time to recuperate, and secondly because the match was to be held entirely in China, the home country of her challenger. She also wanted a larger prize fund matching at least the minimum stipulated by FIDE regulations at the time (200000 CHF).

When Polgar refused to play under these conditions, FIDE declared that she had forfeited the title, and instead organized a match between Xie Jun and Alisa Galliamova for the Women's World Chess Championship, which was won by Xie Jun. Polgar sued in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland for monetary damages and the restoration of her title. In March 2001, the case was settled, with Polgar withdrawing her claims and FIDE agreeing to pay Polgar's attorney's fees in the amount of $25,000. Since Xie Jun had already been crowned Women's World Champion, FIDE could not restore the title to Polgar. Polgar has not participated in subsequent Women's World Championship cycles.

American career

In 2002 Polgar changed her national federation from Hungary to the United States. The United States Chess Federation named her "Grandmaster of the Year" in 2003, the first time a woman has won that honor. In that same year, Polgar also became the first woman to win the US Open Blitz Championship, against a field which included seven grandmasters. She won that title again in 2005 and in 2006.

She helped train and played the top board for the United States women's team at the 2004 Chess Olympiad held in October in Calvià on the island of Mallorca, Spain. Overall, the team won the silver medal, and Polgar won an individual gold medal for achieving the highest performance rating in the women's event and the highest point total. She has a total of eleven Olympiad medals: four gold, four silver, and three bronze. She has played 56 games in the Women's Olympiads, never losing a game.

In July 2005, Polgar gave a large simultaneous exhibition in Palm Beach, Florida, breaking four world records: the largest number of simultaneous games played (326, with 309 won, 14 drawn, and 3 lost); consecutive games played (1,131); highest number of games won (1,112); and highest percentage of wins (96.93%).

In October 2005, Polgar joined former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former World Champion Anatoly Karpov in Lindsborg, Kansas, to promote "Chess For Peace." There, Polgar participated in the second Clash of the Titans - Battle of the Genders match against Karpov at the same location, with Gorbachev making the first move for Karpov. The match with Karpov ended in a 3–3 tie, with each player winning two games and two draws. Their first match had taken place in September 2004. That also ended up in a 3–3 tie.

In June 2006, Polgar organized and played in the 2006 New York City Mayor's Cup, a 30-minute competition and the highest-rated double round-robin tournament in US history. She finished second, behind Gata Kamsky and ahead of Alexander Onischuk, Boris Gulko, Ildar Ibragimov, and Alexander Stripunsky. In July 2006, Polgar represented the US in a side event to the Football World Cup in Dresden, Germany. She won the event by defeating Elisabeth Pähtz

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