Chessmoso
Thursday, September 11, 2014
THERE are few 24-carat heroines in history. What comes to mind are Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale. The fourth in my book is Judit Polgar.
Joan of Arc is considered a heroine of France and is a Roman Catholic saint. Mother Teresa is about to become one, while Florence was a philosopher of modern nursing and a social reformer.
Judit is the strongest female chess player in history and has defeated 10 current or former world champions--Magnus Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Last month, she announced her retirement from competitive chess at age 38.
She and her two older sisters GM Susan and IM Sofia, were part of an experiment carried out by their father Laszlo Polgár, who wanted to to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained at a very early age .”Geniuses are made, not born”, was Laszlo’s belief.
Polgár became a GM at the age of 15 years and 4 months in 1991, the youngest to have done so of either sex, breaking the record previously held by Bobby Fischer which had stood for 33 years. At that time, training with the use of computers were not available and a GM was as rare as a dodo.
She is the only woman to qualify for a World Championship tournament in 2005. Also, she is the only woman to have surpassed the 2700 ELO rating barrier and was rated 2735 in 2005 and ranked no.8 in the world.. She has been the No. 1 rated woman in the world since 1989 (when she was 12 years old).
She is retiring to focus on the Judit Polgar Chess Foundation and to spend more time with her children. She now finds it increasingly hard to summon the laser-like concentration that propelled her to becoming a legend.
“You have to be a winner,” she said. “You have to be more motivated, you have to work more, and if you lose you have to stand up and fight again and again.”
In her view, the world may have to wait some time before it sees someone like her again. Asked when chess would have its first female world champion, she said, “I hope in the next 20 years.”
WESLEY. The Grand Prix Series schedule and participants has just been announced. The first two players will qualify to the candidates tournament to select the challenger to the world champion.
The participants are Caruana Fabiano (2801), Grischuk Alexander (2789), Nakamura Hikaru (2782), Karjakin Sergey (2777), Vachier Lagrave Maxime (2768), Giri Anish (2758), Dominguez Leinier (2756), Mamedyarov Shakhriyar (2756), Gelfand Boris (2748), Jakovenko Dmitry (2747) Svidler Peter (2732), Andreikin Dmitry (2722), Radjabov Teimour (2717), Kasimdzhanov Rustam (2706), Tomashevsky Evgeny (2701) and Ghaem Maghami Ehsan (2591).
Wesley So (2755) should have been one of the participants had the NCFP released him to
the USCF. How very sad!
the USCF. How very sad!
BBRC TOURNAMENT. Cepca will put some sunshine to the life of chess-playing inmates of BBRC this Sunday at 1 p.m.
The format is five rounds Swiss and time control will be 15 minutes per player plus 10-second increments. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top five players—P1,000 ,P800 ,P600, P400 and P200.
If there will be time, there will be a simul by Cepca members to the participants and winners will receive a token prize of P100.
The sponsor is Cepca vice president Marvyne Guardiana.
(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com)
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