Queen's Move (A Memoir)

The extraordinary, inspiring, and enthralling life story of the legendary grandmaster Judit Polgár, the greatest female chess player of all time

Judit Polgár was born in communist Hungary in 1976. Her family lived modestly, but her father, László, had very unconventional, exceptional ideas about education. He believed genius could be cultivated in children. So, in the face of enormous opposition, he and his wife, Klára, embarked on a mission to raise their three daughters—Sofia, Susan, and Judit—as chess prodigies. Judit spent her childhood in a small Budapest apartment, which became an improvised experimental laboratory dedicated entirely to her chess education.

With intensive training and the devoted support of her parents, Judit took the brutal, male-dominated world of elite chess by storm. Her rise through the ranks had no precedent. Astonishingly, at the age of just 15 years and 4 months, she broke Bobby Fischer’s record to become the youngest ever chess grandmaster. Judit would go on to be the number one ranked woman in the sport for over 25 years, and the only woman ever to be ranked Top Ten in the world. During her singular career, she faced off on more than one occasion with many highly ranked men who doubted not only that Judit belong at the table opposite them. But that women could compete against men at all. Over the course of her long, illustrious career – during which she became famous for her audacious, aggressive style of play – Judit would go on to defeat eleven world champions.

The story of Judit’s astonishing achievements has almost no parallel. Her life offers deep insight into the nature of genius across different domains and fields. Much has been said about Judit and her family—including in the recent Netflix documentary Queen of Chess—but never has she herself told the full story of her extreme but ultimately joyful childhood and family life. None of her success would have been possible without the constant and unconditional love and support of her parents, and of her mother, in particular. Judit today is herself a mother, and her career has evolved from grandmaster to leading educator, as she takes the language of chess and applies it to the mission of unlocking human potential in children.

Queen’s Move is a memoir destined to be read for generations. It is not just a rare window onto the mesmerizing, virtuoso world of high-level professional chess, but also a heroic story of a woman entering a completely male-dominated world and competing with the very best – never accepting that she should be put in a separate category.