{"id":402860,"date":"2026-02-01T20:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/402860\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T20:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:52:09","slug":"chess-great-judit-polgar-stars-in-documentary-queen-of-chess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/402860\/","title":{"rendered":"Chess Great Judit Polg\u00e1r Stars In Documentary ‘Queen Of Chess’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt a private home in Park City, Utah, Alec Baldwin sat across a chess board<\/a> from Judit Polg\u00e1r \u2013 he sighted, she blindfolded. Despite the visual disadvantage, it didn\u2019t take long for Polg\u00e1r to checkmate the actor, but he shouldn\u2019t feel bad \u2013 that exhibition at the Sundance Film Festival ended as most matches against Polg\u00e1r do, with her victory.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hungarian phenom, considered the GOAT among women chess players, is the focus of Rory Kennedy\u2019s new documentary, Queen of Chess, which just premiered at Sundance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was approached by a producer friend, Steve Nemeth, to see if I might be interested in doing a documentary about Polg\u00e1r. And I said, who is Judit Polg\u00e1r?\u201d Kennedy said as she and the chess champ stopped by Deadline\u2019s Sundance Studio. \u201cSo, I did some research and I was stunned to find out that Judit Polg\u00e1r was the greatest female chess player of all time, hands down. She was in the number one position of the top women chess players for 26 years. She had broken Bobby Fischer\u2019s record as the youngest Grandmaster ever, and she was the only woman ever to have broken into the top 10 [among all chess players, male and female].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKennedy continued, \u201cI was kind of just amazed that I didn\u2019t know her name. And then I did some more research into her backstory and coming out of Hungary and during the Communist regime and all of the challenges and struggle that she faced to get to the place that she was, and I was hooked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA young Judit Polg\u00e1r at the chess board<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/p>\n

\n\tPolg\u00e1r first started playing chess at age five. Within a few years she could defeat male players of enormous skill and distinction, but they typically didn\u2019t respond well.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I won against the first Grandmaster in my life, I was 11. The guy couldn\u2019t really take it,\u201d Polg\u00e1r recalled. \u201cI heard that when he was going around the elevator pressing it after that [loss], he was hitting his head [against] the elevator. So, people were handling it pretty badly sometimes, but mostly they were just thinking, okay, I had a bad day, she was lucky, and I just made a bad move. So, there were excuses in different ways, and they were not taking me so seriously. And I felt it that if I would have been a boy performing those results, they would just much faster acknowledged my performance. So, it took time and I understood that I have to show it and perform and show it on the board that I\u2019m really good. And then at one point they said, well, she\u2019s one of us. This was one of the biggest compliments I got from the chess community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPolg\u00e1r\u2019s success may remind some of the storyline of The Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/a>, the 2020 Netflix series that launched actress Anya Taylor-Joy to fame. \u201cThat was an amazing series,\u201d Polg\u00e1r said. \u201cI enjoyed it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Queen<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix, in fact, will be the home for Kennedy\u2019s documentary, and it won\u2019t take long for people everywhere to get to see it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously, because of the success of The Queen\u2019s Gambit, when I decided to make this film, [Netflix] was the first call I made and they got on board right away,\u201d the director said. \u201cI think we were all aligned with the vision of the film and making it kind of an exciting sports film. So, it\u2019s been a wonderful partnership and it\u2019s great to be here with their support. And we\u2019re really thrilled that it\u2019s going straight to streaming after Sundance on February 6th.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the full conversation in the video above, where Polg\u00e1r addresses her rivalry with champion Gary Kasparov, and Kennedy speaks to the \u201cexperiment\u201d in parenting by Polg\u00e1r\u2019s father that turned Judit and her older sisters into genius players.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline Studio at Sundance presented by Casamigos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a private home in Park City, Utah, Alec Baldwin sat across a chess board from Judit Polg\u00e1r…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,150474,2839,392,150475,150476,145242,150477,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-402860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-judit-polgu00e1r","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-netflix","12":"tag-queen-of-chess","13":"tag-rory-kennedy","14":"tag-sundance","15":"tag-sundance-studio","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}