{"id":124954,"date":"2026-02-06T10:43:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/124954\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T10:43:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T10:43:29","slug":"queen-of-chess-review-how-the-greatest-female-player-of-all-time-checkmated-the-sexist-establishment-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/124954\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen of Chess review \u2013 how the greatest female player of all time checkmated the sexist establishment | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judit Polg\u00e1r won her first chess tournament in 1981 when, at the age of six, she marmalised a string of middle-aged Hungarians and toddled off with a swanky Boris Diplomat Bd-1 Electronic Chess Computer. \u201cI was a killer,\u201d says the amiable 49-year-old in Netflix<\/a> documentary Queen of Chess. \u201cI wanted to kill my opponents. I would sacrifice everything to get checkmate.\u201d Archive footage captures the bloody aftermath of Polg\u00e1r\u2019s inaugural victory; a roomful of solemnly jumpered victims looking on, dazed and ashen-jowled, as the vanquishing Hungarian scowls at photographers from beneath a bowl cut that could confidently be described as \u201cferocious\u201d. The triumph put paid (at least temporarily) to Polg\u00e1r\u2019s painful shyness, making her feel \u201cexceptionally powerful. After this, it was so obvious for me that I\u2019m going to be a chess player. And if you want to become the best,\u201d she says with a wry smile, \u201cit\u2019s very important to have the challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah, yes. The challenges. But with which to start? Queen of Chess<\/a> \u2013 a rhapsodic account of the life of the greatest female chess player of all time \u2013 is spoiled for choice. There is the punishing chess-training regime, designed as an experiment by Polg\u00e1r\u2019s educational psychologist father L\u00e1szl\u00f3 to prove \u201cgeniuses are made, not born\u201d. (School and weekends were banned so \u201cevery day was a working day.\u201d) There is the communist regime so threatened by the family\u2019s ambitions to compete in the west that it confiscated their passports. There is the relentless sexism that trailed the tiny trailblazer and older chess-playing sisters Susan and Sofia, outraged at the temerity of their insistence on taking on the male-dominated sport\u2019s grandmasters while delivering pronouncements of the \u201cwomen lack the pure mental ability needed to understand chess\u201d variety. It\u2019s all here, and Queen of Chess throws its arms wide in an effort to capture the frequently depressing reality of Polg\u00e1r\u2019s experiences. Not quite wide enough, though. There is throughout the documentary\u2019s 90 minutes the persistent sense that there\u2019s more to Polg\u00e1r\u2019s story; that if only Emmy-winning director Rory Kennedy had been steadier with her magnifying glass the results might not feel so emotionally underdeveloped. Instead, we get a garish, skittish account of Polg\u00e1r\u2019s youthful ascent to chess superstardom, with grainy scenes of strategic prowess accompanied by jarring neon graphics and an aggressively irksome soundtrack by various female-fronted post-punk types.<\/p>\n

At its heart, however, is Polg\u00e1r\u2019s rivalry with revered former world champion Garry Kasparov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018She delivered\u2019 \u2026 Polg\u00e1r playing against Garry Kasparov. Photograph: Javier Bustos Lozano\/Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way she played chess was not compatible with the best way to handle Garry Kasparov,\u201d rumbles the Russian grandmaster, flapping a meaty paw dismissively. And yet, ultimately, it was: after 14 fraught games (the most notorious of which, in 1994, saw Kasparov violate the \u201ctouch move\u201d rule), Polg\u00e1r finally, at the age of 26, defeated her idol. At the time, the record-breaking feat was greeted by the Russian with a desultory handshake. And now? \u201cShe delivered,\u201d he harrumphs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to prove myself 10 times more than if I\u2019d been born as a boy,\u201d says Polg\u00e1r with the weariness of one long aware that no matter how extraordinary her achievements, they will never be enough for some.<\/p>\n

Enter, sighing, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Polg\u00e1r. \u201cI never scolded [the girls] for not winning a game. Still, losing is a very bad thing,\u201d tuts the combatively bearded septuagenarian, slumped in his huge chair like a deposed lion.<\/p>\n

It is only in its dying moments that Queen of Chess touches on the complexity of Judit\u2019s relationship with her father. \u201cHow do you feel about being the subject of that experiment?\u201d asks Kennedy. Uncomfortable laughter, then silence. Polg\u00e1r\u2019s gaze drifts off. \u201cOf course, in one hand it is not a nice way of being part of an experiment,\u201d she says, moist-eyed, over a montage of bowl-cutted early victories. \u201cBut my father was the one who showed me the beauty of chess \u2026\u201d she continues, before wandering into a thicket of platitudes about self-improvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cJudit Polg\u00e1r was a guinea pig,\u201d says one contributor. \u201cThe fact that she achieved all these things that her father dreamed of and still remains a very normal and pleasant person, that\u2019s \u2026 some sort of a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not, you suspect, the half of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judit Polg\u00e1r won her first chess tournament in 1981 when, at the age of six, she marmalised a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-124954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}