Judit Polgar

Judit Polgar (born July 23, 1976) is a Hungarian chess player. Considered the best woman chess player in history, in the January 2004 FIDE rating list (including men and women) she was ranked number eight in the world with an Elo rating of 2728.

Judit and her two sisters (Zsusza (GM) and Sophia (IM)) were reportedly part of a psychological experiment carried out by their father in an effort to determine if women could achieve high mental aptitude when trained from a very early age. The controversial experiment appears to be a success since these woman have achieved heights in chess few men ever achieve.

Judit has refused to participate in women-only chess events. Few doubt that any other woman (besides possibly her sister Zsuzsa) could possibly earn a draw, much less a win, against her in any fair game. Amongst her achievements is achieving the men's Grandmaster title at the then record age of 15 years and 4 months, one month earlier than Fischer's record. Her climb up the ranks seemed to put her on target for world champion. But although she has played many winning games against some of the world's best players, she has not won any major tournament. She has also been unable to beat former champion Garry Kasparov in any of their encounters in standard time control games. It appears as though she has plateaued, but she has plenty of time in which to prove herself.