Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport Page 10

  When I ask her about future plans, Judit continues in the traditionalist vein. “Right now I care more about family than career.” Drinking tea with her on that Tuesday morning, it struck me that Judit resents the idea of being a symbol for feminism, or any other cause. Her cool manner and traditional opinions disappointed me—I was hoping that Judit would be more bombastic about her own accomplishments and more vocal in her support of other women in chess. She says, “I’ve been playing chess since I was a little girl and I have achieved so much. There is nothing new for me in the chess world. Being in a serious relationship is new and excites me more. I will continue playing chess, but I am not putting any timeframe on when I will have a child, regardless of how it affects my career.” The ordinary and the extraordinary have been flipped for Judit, who had been trained from infancy to aspire to dazzling heights in the chess world. The very goals Judit strove so hard to achieve have now, with their attainment, become banal.

  Throughout the interview Judit asks me questions about my thoughts on feminism and my experiences in Budapest. Even after years of being interviewed, she is still uncomfortable with the format, and would prefer just to have a conversation. As soon as the interview is over, Judit’s guarded posture and diction morph into those of a friendlier person. Because I am a chessplayer and a member of her sister Susan’s training team, Judit likes me and wants to chat, but she is clearly suspicious of my journalistic intentions.

  Judit has been hounded by the press for as long as she can remember. This has resulted in a lifelong distaste for fame. When I asked her about the plusses and minuses of celebrity, she disregarded the first half of the question: “When I was younger, it was particularly unpleasant. I would walk around and people would be pointing at me and whispering, but they wouldn’t even approach me and introduce themselves—just point.” The Polgar family is notorious for its mercantilist nature. Judit often charges reporters for interviews—from which I was happily exempt—at rates as high as $2,000. Recently, though, Judit has been giving many interviews for free, especially to chess-related reporters.

  The custom of charging journalists for interviews was Laszlo’s idea—and certainly one that made many people less sympathetic to the girls. Reputable magazines and newspapers rarely pay subjects, since it would create an atmosphere for auctioning off celebrity interviews to the highest bidder. As a result, the media coverage of the Polgars, though prolific, has not been so far-reaching or as deep as it could have been. Some journalists have had to use comments from others about the Polgars or reprint quotes from other sources. A typical scenario occurred at the World Youth Championship in Wisconsin, in which Judit played and won the Under 16 division. A woman filming a documentary called Chess Kids was denied an interview and had to resort to using a voice-over of a printed quote from Judit.

  Besides making money, Laszlo probably did this to shield his daughters from an onslaught from the media. After all, if Judit accepted every interview and TV spot she was offered, she would have little time to work on her game. In contrast to Judit, who claims to extract little pleasure from her fame, Susan has mixed feelings. Susan reveled in the international recognition she and her sisters received after winning gold in Thessaloniki. Highlights included a trip to the White House and a spot in a commercial for O.P.T., the biggest bank in Hungary. When the press threatened to swallow up too much of their time, Susan says, “Laszlo was very good at pulling us away.”

  The Polgars have always been sensitive about their public image, and the entire family was disturbed by an unauthorized biography,

  The Polgar Sisters: Training or Genius (1992), written by Cathy Forbes. To this day, Susan refuses to autograph copies of the book. Laszlo said, “The book strives to portray us in a negative light,” a summary that in my opinion, is untrue. The ethical standards, however, are fair to critique—Cathy often quotes anonymously or from unreliable sources. (She describes an incident in which Judit and Susan are chatting in the bathroom—as heard from a woman eavesdropping in a stall.) She did not attempt to contact the Polgars themselves for interviews or fact-checking. In her own defense, Cathy says she didn’t believe that the Polgars would consent to interviews, adding, “Any book which tries to be interesting and truthful is bound to offend a lot of people.”

  I met Cathy at a café in Selfridges, the historic department store in London, to discuss her views on women in chess and the criticism of her book. Selfridges was the same place where, in 1926, handsome Cuban World Champion Jose Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition to thirty-six women.

  Despite its historical import, Selfridges is an inconvenient meeting spot, since there are several cafés in the department store, and when I finally did find Cathy I was more than half an hour late and frazzled. She calmed me immediately with friendly greetings. Cathy was extremely well put together, with neat red hair and small features. I marveled as Cathy consumed cappuccino after cappuccino while explaining her views. Cathy quotes intellectuals in casual conversation, a habit that might smack of pretension if it weren’t for her passion. Such writers as Germaine Greer, Naomi Wolf, Sammer Ashani, and Oscar Wilde all came up as we chatted. “I always memorize a few quotes from the books I love.” Cathy has been removed from the chess world for some years. The controversy over The Polgar Sisters wounded her and she prefers to talk about other subjects, such as literature, politics, and London.

  When I do get her to speak about her book, Cathy intimates that she took the criticism of her book to heart, and is nearly in tears when she tells me that she “regrets deeply not trying to contact the girls,” adding that she “didn’t have a thick enough skin to accept the harsh reviews.” She says, “I was twenty-two when I wrote it. Such a young biography is bound to tell more about the writer than the subjects, and upon reading my own work today I see myself more than I see the Polgars.” Indeed, on the last page of the book, Cathy, a competitive player herself, writes, “I respect and envy—yes, envy—their achievements…and have sometimes wondered whether I could have…been brought up in the same disciplined way.” Cathy concludes that her “lazy freedom has always been so dear to me!”10

  Cathy’s thoughts have become even clearer in retrospect. After our interview, Cathy wrote me a letter:

  My book rather clumsily attempts to express the tension between a positive feminist response to the sisters’ achievements on the one hand and unease on the other at the personal and ethical price of those achievements. The Polgars seemed to me to belong to the type of people who are interesting primarily in what they do rather than in terms of who they are. Oscar Wilde, my hero of creative individualism, was the opposite type; he put ‘all [his] genius into [his] life, and only [his] talent into [his] works.’ His friends felt that his conversation was more brilliant than his writing, and the dramatic tragedy and pathos of his life is more moving and fascinating than his fiction or his plays. The genius of the Polgars, however, is to be found in their chess, not in their personalities. I instinctively felt profoundly disappointed by the apparent completeness of their compliance with the parental project. Ideally, a female chess grandmaster, to have a more lasting feminist role-model value, should be more self-invented.

  Cathy still believes that the Polgars have had a positive impact inside and outside the chess world, and is aware that her expectations going into her research and writing were quite high, confessing, “I wrote the book because I wanted to be them.”

  At the start of 1986 Susan Polgar was the highest-ranked woman in the world, her name at the top of the list published by FIDE. She had won the women’s grandmaster title and the girls’ junior competitions. Eager to compete with men, seventeen-year-old Susan tried to enter the Boys’ Under 20 Championship. The Hungarian Federation refused to send her. They argued that since boys were not permitted to play in the girls’ sections, girls ought not to play in boys’ sections. At the time, all of the most prestigious tournaments on the chess calendar were strictly divided by gender into separate sections—women against women
and men against men. Included in these was the most prestigious of them all, the World Championship, for which Susan should have qualified when she tied for second in the 1986 Hungarian Championship. Once again, the Hungarian Federation refused to send her. She was bitterly disappointed—devastated. “How would you feel if you were invited to the big dance and never got to go?”

  Susan went to war with FIDE and her federation, battling for the right to play against men. ans campaigned on her behalf, writing letters and organizing Polgar supporters. She won on paper during the 1986 FIDE Congress, when the name of the World Men’s Championship was changed to the Absolute Championship. Women could play in either the traditional women’s event or, if—like Susan—they were qualified to play against the stronger competition, in the absolute championship. The problem was that the national federation of each country decided who would go, and the president of the Hungarian Chess Federation had a bad relationship with the Polgars, and did not want Susan to play against men.

  Finally in 1988, the FIDE president at the time, Florencio Campomanes, intervened. He demanded that the Hungarian Federation begin to nominate Susan and her sisters for absolute titles. That year in Adelaide, Australia, Susan was finally permitted to play among her young male peers. She placed a respectable eighth in a strong field of fifty-two players.

  Susan was the first woman to challenge the gender divisions in international chess tournaments. She set the precedent. Women’s tournaments still exist, but it is now commonplace to see a handful of women playing in the “men’s Olympiad,” or in the boys’ sections at the World Junior Championships. Susan and her followers, who compete and succeed in tournaments once comprised solely of men, threaten the fundamental assumption upon which the segregated structure was based—the one that implies that men are stronger than women.

  Susan was the first woman to become a grandmaster in the customary way. (Nona and Maya, the first two female grandmasters, were awarded the title on the basis of their world championship titles and high standard of play.) After years of near misses, Susan’s third and final norm came in 1990 in Salamanca, Spain. She told me that “it was a joy to finally win the grandmaster title.” Then, as if to dispel any notion that she might have been worried about winning it, she added, “There was no doubt in my mind I would achieve it.”

  Susan made history as a teenaged chess prodigy. She led the women’s rating list and fought to give women the right to compete with men. All her accomplishments, though, paled in comparison to her younger sister’s meteoric rise to the top. When Susan was just nineteen, her twelve-year-old sister, Judit, had a rating that exceeded hers, which must have been painful for Susan. We were talking about Judit’s play in a recent tournament in Budapest when I detected a hint of resentment: “I am proud to have paved the way for my sister Judit. By the time she came onto the international chess scene, I had already fought and won many battles.” After I remarked that Judit must be very grateful for this, Susan pauses before saying cryptically, “Yes. You would think she’d be grateful.” In a recent interview for New In Chess, Judit acknowledged what her sister went through: “It was clear to me from a very early age that I was the lucky one. Whenever someone was against my father’s ideas, she [Susan] would be the first to hurt.”

  Susan has not improved substantially since becoming a grandmaster. In 1992, she decided to make a comeback by going all out to win the Women’s World Championship. Laszlo was dead set against this, believing that the separation of women and men in chess was unnecessary and insulting. Daughter Sofia echoed her father’s strong opinion: “I have always hated the idea of separate women’s tournaments. It is like admitting that we are weaker than men.” Judit, for whom women’s tournaments were never very important, was somewhat less critical. She said, “I have only played in three women’s tournaments in my life,” adding wryly, “I’m not a big fan of them.”

  Susan, however, had much to gain from playing in the Women’s World Championship. Changing her mind dramatically on segregated women’s tournaments, she now saw them as a way to encourage more girls and women to play and improve. “I came to realize that for an average girl, who did not have the support I had, there is much more resistance from both society in general and the male-dominated chess world. My father always believed that I should shoot for the ultimate and not play for women’s titles. But I was determined to play because I knew that the title would give me the respect from the press I needed in order to promote chess fully.”

  Susan had to undergo a grueling qualifying cycle to determine who would challenge the current World Champion, Xie Jun from China. After the final qualifier the two women left standing were Susan Polgar and Georgian Nana Ioseliani. Nana, often overshadowed by her countrywomen Nona and Maya, is a great player, and like Susan has a composed, commanding presence. The two would meet in Monte Carlo for the right to play the champion.

  Rated 100 points higher than Nana, Susan was the heavy favorite in the match. Living up to her ranking, Susan got off to an early lead (3.5-1.5), scoring three wins and a draw in the first five games. Unfazed, Ioseliani began to climb back into the match. She won the sixth game, and Susan’s lead narrowed to a single point. By the final game, Nana could tie the match with a win. She traded Queens early, hoping to squeeze a full point out of a slight endgame advantage. Susan’s nerves got the better of her, while Nana, calmly and coolly, managed to exploit her advantage and eke out a win.

  The match was tied, the winner to be decided by a series of tiebreaks. After three mini-matches, Susan and Nana were still deadlocked. At that point a bizarre FIDE rule came into play: If, after twelve games, a tie has not been broken, the match can be decided by the drawing of lots. To no one’s surprise, Susan was opposed to the unorthodox tiebreak. FIDE also agreed that the rule was unfair. If

  Susan and Nana both consented, the tie could be broken by more usual methods. However, Nana, who must have understood that she was the weaker player, took the shameless but understandable position that she preferred a fifty percent chance by drawing lots.

  An absurdly complicated ceremony was staged to determine the winner. First, a Mrs. Van Oosterom, wife of the organizer, picking between two envelopes, pulled out the one that read “Nana Ioseliani.” Then, Ioseliani chose between two more envelopes. The paper inside that one read “Susan Polgar.” Then Susan was asked to pick between two boxes offered by the arbiter. If she selected the gold coin, she would be the new champion. When she opened her box, Susan’s heart dropped. Inside was a silver coin. “My eyesight was blackened for a few seconds, I thought I was fainting. The meaning was clear: You are second.”11 In her entire career, Susan could recall no more disappointing moment. Nona went on to lose to Xie Jun in the Women’s World Championship match.

  While all of this was taking place, Susan was reeling from another type of heartache. Julio Granda Zuniga, her muscular, square-jawed, Peruvian lover, was in Monaco to accompany and assist her. Julio is a free-spirited grandmaster who is considered to be one of the most talented players in the world. He walks around with an air of sublime confidence. Based in Peru and isolated from a community of strong players, Julio has always managed to keep pace with the top players, relying on his talent and energy more than on detailed theoretical knowledge. In Monaco, Julio had made up his mind to end his relationship with Susan, but had not yet told Susan. She guessed that something was amiss because of Julio’s uncharacteristically cold behavior. Later Susan discovered just how removed the real Julio was from his free-spirited chess persona: he had a wife and two children back in Peru!

  After the fiasco against Ioseliani, Susan was more determined than ever to compete at the next Women’s World Championship in two years. Once again she made it to the semi-finals, where she would face an even more formidable Georgian opponent, former World Champion Maya Chiburdanidze, who was hoping to avenge her 1991 loss to Xie Jun. This time Susan had the support of her sister Judit, who trained her especially for the cycle. After seeing how disappointed Susan had
been to lose to Nana, Judit “was determined to do anything I could to help Susan.” In the match against Chiburdanidze, Susan was victorious, taking her one step closer to the championship.

  The match against Xie Jun was held in Jaen, a small town in the mountains of northern Spain. The first game was a comedy of errors for Susan. With the white pieces she overextended her position, squandered her opening advantage, and later miscalculated, giving Xie Jun a winning endgame. Susan regained her composure with draws in the next two games, followed by a win with the black pieces in the fourth. The match was tied at 2-2. At this point Susan was ready to unleash her secret weapon. Throughout her chessplaying career she had almost always12 started her game with white by moving her Queen pawn two squares (d4), one of the two leading ways to open the game. Beginning with d4 tends to lead to slower, more strategic battles, while the slightly more popular alternative, e4 (moving the King’s pawn), results in more tactical games. Judit and Sofia have always been e4 players, while Susan was loyal to d4. Most professional players stick to one or the other, because there are dozens of ways to respond to either, all of which must be studied in detail and require experience to master.

  For the first time in her career in this crucial game, Susan opened with e4, a radical switch for a professional player in any game, let alone a game of such importance. Xie Jun was shocked. She could have had no inkling that Susan would do such a thing, and probably spent little or no time preparing for King pawn openings. Xie lost the game in just twenty-five moves. Susan’s brave opening strategy delivered a psychological blow to her opponent. Xie Jun was never able to regain her ground and Susan won the match easily, with a lopsided score of 8.5-4.5.