Judit Polgár was born on 23 July 1976 in Budapest, to a Hungarian Jewish family. She is the world’s No.1 woman chess player since 1989, and she was ranked 8th among men in 2005. She was awarded the chess Oscar prize seven times and was also elected the woman chess player of the century.
She was 9 when she first won an international chess tournament, and at 12 and 14 she won the world chess championship for boys in her age group. With 12 when – for the first time in the history of Hungarian chess – she won an Olympic gold medal among women together with Ildikó Mádl and her two sisters Zsuzsa and Zsófi. They repeated this achievement in 1990. Since winning the second Olympic gold medal, she has only played against men. She was 13 when she first achieved the men's grandmaster norm, and at 15, she became the youngest ever international grandmaster among men. On four occasions, she played in the Hungarian men’s Olympic chess team, and it won a silver medal in 2002. She has defeated former world chess champions Spassky, Karpov, Kasparov, Topalov , Anand and Carlsen at international tournaments, dual chess competitions and rapid tournaments.
Awards:
- Olympic Champion, winner of five Olympic gold medal
- Leading the world rankings of women chess players for 25 years
- Best Woman Chess Player of the 20th Century
- Became Chess Grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer’s record as youngest grandmaster in history at the time
- Awarded the Chess Oscar seven times
- The first girl, who won the boys’ World Youth Chess tournament two times
- The first woman at the best ten places of the world rating list
- The first woman who won European Championship medal
Defeated World Chess Champions:
Kasparov, Karpov, Anand, Spassky, Topalov, Khalifman, Kasimdzhanov, Ponomariov, Smyslov, Carlsen