Don't Play Around with the Polgars

By Jamie Murphy.

Chess, like mathematics and music, is a nursery for child prodigies. Great players often distinguish themselves at tender ages. Before he reached 14, the renowned champion Paul Morphy (1837-84) had reddened the faces of the best adults in his hometown of New Orleans. International Grand Master Samuel Reshevsky, when he was six, toured his native Poland playing two dozen opponents simultaneously and rarely losing. At 14, Bobby Fischer, the game's reclusive genius, won both the U.S. junior and senior championships. But none of these men quite prepared the chess world for the triple-threat Polgar sisters of Budapest, who last week took the New York Open Chess Tournament by carefully calculated storm.

For starters, Susan, 16, the eldest of the Polgars, finished just one victory away from accumulating enough points to achieve grand-master status. Tied with Sweden's Pia Cramling, 22, as the world's second-ranked female chess player (behind the Soviet Union's Maya Chiburdanidze, 25), the teenager soundly thrashed six-time U.S. Champion Walter Browne, 37, on her way to a respectable showing of 25th in the top section of the tournament. Sister Sophia, 11, meanwhile swept to second place in the expert category. Finally, the baby of the family, Judith, a pudgy, self-confident nine-year-old, astounded observers by posting seven straight victories and a draw to take first place among the tournament's 1,000 unranked players. "A family might have one prodigy, but to have three is simply incredible," marveled Tournament Organizer Jose Cuchi. "To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever happened before." He predicts that Judith's performance will earn her master status when the new U.S. Chess Federation rankings are released in June. If so, she will be the youngest ever, eclipsing Fischer, who achieved the rank at twelve.

The Polgars' success has been as carefully plotted as a Nimzo-Indian Defense. "I knew that any children of ours would be champions since the day my wife and I decided to marry," says their father Laszlo. "He's not joking," Susan explains. "When I was four or five, they told me to choose between chess and mathematics. I thought chess would be better." Her sisters just naturally followed. Their parents, both teachers and neither gifted chess players, now oversee the children's careers full time. The girls have never attended conventional schools, and study a high school curriculum at home between practice games. On a typical day, they rise at midmorning, trot out for a game of soccer, then hunker over their chessboards until early afternoon, when teams of expert volunteers arrive to rehearse opening gambits and defense strategies until late in the evening.

The Polgars are controversial in Hungary, where the game is extremely popular. Susan was at one time dropped from the national team because of feuds with chess authorities, and Laszlo has fought to keep his daughters from being | limited to playing in women's tournaments. Has their father made pawns of them? Do the girls feel deprived by the regimentation? "No," says Susan. "We don't feel that we have missed out on anything." She pauses, her eyes veiled reflectively: "To win is the reward." Check.