Any chess fan watching the 2020 Netflix hit “The Queen’s Gambit,” a show about a fictional orphan who makes it to the top of the competitive chess world in the 1960s, probably couldn’t help but think (and kvell!) about the Jewish Hungarian chess star Judit Polgár.
Polgár is a chess trailblazer who made history in a male-dominated world and is still considered the best female player in history. At age 12, she became the youngest player to earn the title of International Master, and at age 15, she was the youngest to earn the title of Grandmaster. She has since been “dethroned” from these titles by a generation of young players, but she remains chess royalty, as one of the first girls to show other girls that chess wasn’t just a boys’ game.
Now, a documentary about Polgár is coming to the same streaming service behind “The Queen’s Gambit.” “Queen of Chess,” directed by Rory Kennedy, will be premiering on Netflix on Feb. 6.
The documentary follows Polgár’s incredible career and passion for the board game. It all started in her Hungarian, Jewish home, behind the Iron Curtain. Polgár’s father, László, believed that geniuses were made, not born, and along with his wife, Clara, homeschooled their three daughters, Susan, Sofia and Judit, with that philosophy. The son of two Auschwitz survivors who experienced antisemitism growing up in Hungary, László once said that “being a Jew gave me extra motivation to succeed.”
It was Susan, a chess Grandmaster like her sister, who first started playing chess, and Judit recalled not being allowed to enter the room where Susan played until she learned the game at age 5. Judit and her sisters made history together in 1988, representing Hungary in the women’s competition at the chess Olympiad, becoming the first team to beat the Soviet team. By the mid-1990s, Judit would stop competing in women-only competitions. Before her 2014 retirement, Judit was known for her killer moves and instincts, deeply attuned with how psychological the game really is. She would compete against many of history’s greatest players and go on to face her idol, Garry Kasparov, multiple times.
Kasparov, who is prominently featured in “Queen of Chess,” did not at first believe that Polgár could be his match.
“She has fantastic chess talent, but she is, after all, a woman. It all comes down to the imperfections of the feminine psyche. No woman can sustain a prolonged battle,” he said back in 1990. Polgár would show him how wrong he was when he eventually played her (and, in 2002, lost to her). As she continued to rise in prominence, Kasparov said, “None of us viewed her as a female player; she was one of the top 10 players in the world. Period.”
But there was one chess legend Polgár never played against professionally, Bobby Fischer, but Fischer did stay in the Polgár’s family summer house for a period and played the Polgár girls during his stay. He saw how a chess match between him and Judit could be advantageous to his career, until “one day Bobby just changed his mind.” A confidant of Fischer’s shared with the Atlantic that the infamously antisemitic player (who was, incidentally, born to a Jewish mother) reportedly told his friend: “‘No, they’re Jewish!’ He just couldn’t handle it and walked away.”
The Polgár family remained proud to be Jewish, with Judit sharing pictures on social media of Passover celebrations with her sister Sofia, who now lives in Israel.
Judit once shared that she sees chess as a profoundly Jewish pastime: “Kind of like the violin, chess is both intellectual and easy (and cheap) to carry, therefore it suits the constant wanderings of Jewish history.”
Polgár, a mother of two, continues to be heavily involved in the chess world, training, judging, and encouraging generations of women to be daring chess players. She is one Jewish icon who definitely deserves her own Netflix documentary.
“Queen of Chess” premieres on Netflix on Feb. 6.
